The Josh Innes Show - Is Jalen Hurts The Most Underappreciated Player In The NFL?

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

I was reading a USA Today story about Jalen Hurts being underappreciated. I'm aware that most NFL teams wouldn't take him top 10 among current QB's. Many teams who haven't won as much as him wouldn't even trade their QB for him. But, especially in Philly, he's underappreciated. I think much of that stems from the lazy, boring convos on local radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So I'm looking at this story in the headline reads, Jalen Hertz, underappreciated NFL quarterback, The Quiet Superman. What's interesting, I was reading this thing the other day. It was in The Athletic, and the story was they surveyed 31 anonymous NFL executives and coaches, and they asked a multitude of questions relating to NFL players and teams and stuff. Like, for instance, one of the questions was, which team is not going to live up to expectations this year?

And, like, the number one was the Detroit Lions, you know, and then number two was the Redskins and all that. And there were a lot of questions about players. Like, who do you think is the best offensive player in the league non-quarterback? And it's, well, there's Saquan Barclay. and oh, there's Jamar Chase and Justin Jefferson, those kind of questions. And one of the questions was, if you were to start a franchise with one quarterback right now, you could take one quarterback, and that quarterback is who you start your franchise with, who would it be?

And the most votes went to Josh Allen, which if you think about how crazy that is, Josh Allen cannot get past Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs, has never been to the Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes won three of them, and he's been to others, yet we're like, We'll take Josh Allen over Pat Mahomes. Pat Mahomes is number two, and number three is Joe Burrow. I don't know how far down that list went. I only saw the top three, but that's kind of the consensus. When you ask people who you'd start a team with, and then you'd start working your way down,

and you'd get guys like Justin Herbert, probably, if I had to guess. Like, he'd probably be a very popular name if you're trying to start a team today. You'd get guys like that. You'd probably get a Jaden Daniels after the big first year he had. Like, you'll get a lot of those kind of guys. and you never see Jalen Hertz on these kind of lists. Like, his story is fascinating. Let's actually get into that a little bit.

We will do that after these words. All right, it's game week, baby, and we are ready for football with Draft King's Sportsbook and official sports betting partner of the National Football League. You know, I love my live bets, but I'll also put in some pregame spread bets over unders, anytime touchdowns. We do it all.

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I don't know that there's a more perfect place for Jalen Hertz to play than Philadelphia because he's a divisive figure who shouldn't be a divisive figure, and that's what Philly thrives on, Philly Media, not necessarily fans, but Philly Media. And I guess in turn the fans, because the fans kind of go the direction that the media takes them. So if Spike and the guys on WIP are in the middle of summer and they need quick content to fill a day,

they find some way to talk about how Jalen Hertz isn't one of the top athletes in Philly or whatever, and all these dipshits call and that's, what you get there because it's just uninteresting, low-hanging fruit shit. And hey, good for them. They found an angle and the angle works for them and everybody's making money there and the station's doing well. So I don't begrudge them for finding success. I begrudge them for taking the angles they take just to engage dipsets. What you're taught is, the callers are such a small percentage of your show and your listenership, more importantly, that you shouldn't just program for them. yet in Philly it's the opposite.

It's like, please program for shit that's going to make people call the radio station. And that's what they do. And that's why guys like Jalen Hertz are such big talking points in that city because Jalen Hertz, you can take the angle of, well, nobody would actually start a team with Jalen Hertz over blank, blank, blank and blank. And you know that that will elicit an emotional response from McDougal. And before you know, you've filled four hours and you've had to do very little except say, hey, Sully, you're on WIP, guy. Like, that's all you're going to fucking do.

But Jalen Hertz is an interesting case because nobody is starting a team with Jalen Hertz. Yet if you look at the guys above him, Joe Burrow hasn't won a Super Bowl, Lamar hasn't won a Super Bowl, Josh Allen hasn't won a Super Bowl. You look at the guys that get the love over Jalen Hertz. He's just won a Super Bowl and bend to another. And all he does is just fights through criticism, much of it coming from the city that he plays in. being done under the guys if oh we're a tough town we're tough place we're tough and uh you know if you can make it here you can make it anywhere blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah but hurts is

interesting because when i was in philadelphia for those three years or so the talk was always if we can just get that parade we just need that parade and that's why that's how wing bowl was born wing bowl was born because the eagles were never going to the super bowl so this is the best we can do is wing bowl, right? Like, the big talking point was always, we just want a parade down Broad Street. That's what we're here for. Give us a parade down Broad Street.

And then this guy gives you a parade down Broad Street, and he's been to another Super Bowl. So you've won two Super Bowls. You've been to three Super Bowls since I left there, okay? So that's since 2016. You've been to three Super Bowls. You've won two of them, and you were cheated out of one of them. So you very well could have, shoulda, would have had three.

Hurts could have, should have would have had two. Yet one guy, backup quarterback that wins the Super Bowl, Nick Foles is a hero, and he's got this Bud Light statue, and no one says a negative thing about a career backup that outside of a few moments in his career did, I mean, he did nothing. He was a dud everywhere else he played. He had a great run when Wentz got hurt, and he had that one year of Chip Kelly that was fantastic, right?

That's all the guy's ever done. big picture but he and maybe it's because he's the first whatever he is considered a god among philadelphia people there's not a person that will listen to anything negative about him but then jalen hertz who's been to two super bowls and won one one you can spend hours on wip baiting for calls and you'll get half the people that think he sucks and half the people who think he's great a lot of it'll come down to racial makeup like you can listen to it on the calls and tell, oh, look, there's a black guy that's super angry that the white people are criticizing hurts. Then you hear a bunch of white people who are just criticizing him because he's not

Nick Falls. And like, it's predictable. It is a very obvious, predictable path that that discussion will take. But I don't know that there's a team historically that's had this kind of situation where you're obviously winning a shitload of games with someone. Yet the whole world feels you could have seven, eight, nine, ten guys that are better than that guy. Like, that's a very unique situation. Like, the chiefs win a lot, but everybody would take Patrick Mahomes. The bills win a ton of football games, but everybody would take Josh Allen. Like, even a team like the Chargers who goes up and goes down, everybody in the world will take Justin Herbert. If you gave a general manager in the NFL an opportunity to take

Jalen Hertz, two-time Super Bowl participant, should have won two, has won one, they would all take Justin Herbert over him. Not one general manager would say, I'll take Jalen Hertz, he's a winner. Nobody would do that. They would 100% slam dunk, no doubt, take a bunch of them. But they would certainly take Herbert and they would take probably Jaden Daniels. They would take a lot of guys in the league would be taken before they would take Jalen Hertz. And I think my problem with people as it relates to Hertz is that the name of the game is winning. The name of the game isn't who's the sexiest quarterback to have on your roster. The name of the game is, who is the best player for what you are doing?

Who is the best player that helps you win? Does hurts suck sometimes? Yes. Does hurts miss and throws sometimes? Yes. But is there something to the idea that somebody is a winner? And for that particular team, he just works for that particular team. Are there other examples of guys like that?

The guys that you'd go, I don't know that I'd take him anywhere else. Like if I were in need of a quarterback in, I don't know, Vegas. or I were in need of a quarterback like the Saints, right? The way the Saints are right now, the Saints have Spencer Rattler and they have Tyler Shuck and Jake Hainer. Those are the quarterbacks the Saints have. Would the Saints just automatically drop everything they have? Would the Saints trade multiple draft picks to bring in Jalen Hertz?

Fuck no. And the Saints are terrible. Like to be a good quarterback, to be someone that the world coveted, they would have to give up a shitload to want to get you, and then they would have to believe you're going to change their franchise. Jalen Hertz is not changing anybody else's franchise. That said, all Jalen Hertz has done his entire life has been successful. So he's a fascinating case study.

Like he really is. He is a guy that when you look at him, he runs a lot. He gets the tush push. So he's kind of a touchdown vulture, a touchdown thief from Sequin Barclay. He's not a guy that if the game's on the line, you're super confident. If you need to throw the ball because you're down 14, 17 points in the game, you don't feel good. Defensees feel better knowing that he has to throw the football. Yet here he is super successful, Super Bowl winner, and not just a fluky Super Bowl because he's gone to another one.

I mean, there are guys that can get to one. Everybody goes back to like Brad Johnson and guys like that. Guys that can kind of stumble into one. Like, you know, Matt Hasselbeck's a nice quarterback, but Matt Hasselbeck has never been mistaken for Peyton Manning. But he went to a Super Bowl because he's on the right team. And what you've got here, and I know that I'm oversimplifying this, and you can say, Josh, there's no real hard take in this. Jalen Hertz is a guy that I don't know that 30 NFL GMs would take him over the quarterback they have.

Because it's an ultimate team game, blah, blah, blah, you know, use whatever hokey thing you want to say. It's the ultimate team to support. But most teams wouldn't take Jalen Hertz. But maybe the Eagles don't win that Super Bowl without him. and they don't go to the other one without him. Sometimes dudes just fit in a perfect situation. Sometimes there's someone who's not all that appealing and you look at them and you go like,

I don't know what this person sees in them, but they're perfect for that person. Sometimes that just happens. And I think at some point, if you're Eagles fans, shut the fuck up about it. I know that you follow the lead of Spike and all the guys at WIP and they know that you're brain dead and they know that you're not going to think for yourself on this shit.

And they know that they could lead you. you to the slaughter, so they're just going to keep doing these topics so idiots will call and the smart people will yell at the radio. But the name of the game is not how sexy you win games. And the name of the game isn't, you know, Josh Allen wins a lot of games. And then at the end of the year, it goes to the same place. He goes to the Pro Bowl and doesn't have a championship. Lamar puts up a lot of stats and wins MVP's and doesn't do shit.

What does Jalen Hurts do? He's been to two Super Bowl. Look, again, I'm with those guys. If you say Josh start a team with Josh Allen or Jalen Hertz, I would 100%. I'm not going to sit here and blow the guy and say, oh, no, I'd take him he's just a winner. But he's just your winner, and he works for what you're doing. If the defense got worse, would you win with him? Probably not.

If A.J. Brown isn't there and Devante Smith isn't there and Sequin's. not there? Would, you know, is he the kind of guy that shows up and because he's there makes the team exponentially better? No. But I think at some point, the Philadelphia people just have to shut the fuck up. I know that's hard. I get it. And I know it's hard when WIP is constantly telling you that Jalen Hertz isn't very good because somehow this, back to the whole point of, hey, we just want a parade. We just want a parade until we get that parade. Then we want a shit on the guy that helps bring you a parade. And that's what you get from people. That's why people are dopes and people are frauds.

Because they all claim they want something until they get something, then that something isn't enough. And Jalen Hertz, again, not going to... Jalen Hertz doesn't blow anybody away with any particular skill except the guy, and it sounds trite, but he is a winner. And the guy's a hard worker. But he's not a hard worker in the way that you look at him and say he works hard, so that supersedes the fact that he's untalented.

He's a talented guy, too. And mentally he's tough. I mean, dude, to get demoted mid-champions, game and then have the guy who came in for you win that game become a star to the point that you leave a school and go to another school and still go to that other school and thrive and then get into the league and thrive. The guy has done a lot of admirable shit, but I know it's sexier to just get on the radio and yell and rant and rave about how I take Josh down because you know it's going to get

people to call. But maybe embrace the guy a little bit because you're in the golden era of Eagles football right now. And he's the guy that's leading the charge. Like, he is the leader of the pack. So again, I didn't even bother reading the story that was up there. I just read the headline. Like,

this story, why, let's see what this says. Why isn't, I don't know what the thing, why isn't Jalen Hertz respected more? Oh, it's a good question. Because he's in Philadelphia. If Jalen Hertz played football in Houston, he'd be super respected by people there. I just think

Philadelphia is a miserable place, a lot time and Philadelphia people don't like and it's not really the people I shouldn't shit on the people the media people have to find controversy they have to find something to bitch about you can't go on the radio every day and just be in a good mood and be happy that you've got a good football team you have to bitch about something that's the name of the game in sports radio you have to find the negative like write it out enjoy it anyway more to come