New Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni had a painful to watch press conference this week, in which among other things he refused to name Jalen Hurts his starting quarterback, saying there will be a quarterback competition this summer. In a word: Right.
Maybe the Eagles draft a quarterback early next week. They were reportedly interested in trading up in the first round for a passer, before trading back with the Dolphins, and now are supposedly looking into trading up again. So it's certainly possible they select a rookie early who will compete with Hurts. But personally I doubt it. And if they don't, the idea that 36-year-old Joe Flacco will mount any kind of a threat to Hurts' starting job is ludicrous.
I took a look at Flacco's last 16 starts -- a season's worth of games. His last four with Baltimore (before being replaced by Lamar Jackson), eight with Denver, and four with the Jets. In those games his teams went 3-13, and Flacco threw a total of 16 touchdowns. He averaged 224 passing yards, threw 11 picks, and took 38 sacks. Bottom-10 type numbers across the board, even if you could look past the pitiful win-loss record. In 2020, he would have been the 24th-ranked fantasy quarterback. (Even Carson Wentz, in 12 games, was 21st, and he was terrible.)
| JOE FLACCO'S LAST SEASON WORTH OF GAMES | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Result | Yards | TD | Int | QBR | Sk |
| 2018 | at Ten. | W 21-0 | 238 | 1 | 1 | 82.9 | 0 |
| 2018 | N.O. | L 23-24 | 279 | 2 | 0 | 98.1 | 1 |
| 2018 | at Car. | L 21-36 | 192 | 1 | 2 | 56.8 | 2 |
| 2018 | Pit. | L 16-23 | 206 | 0 | 0 | 77.1 | 2 |
| 2019 | at Oak. | L 16-24 | 268 | 1 | 0 | 105.3 | 3 |
| 2019 | Chi. | L 14-16 | 292 | 1 | 1 | 83.1 | 2 |
| 2019 | at G.B. | L 16-27 | 213 | 0 | 1 | 75.8 | 6 |
| 2019 | Jac. | L 24-26 | 303 | 3 | 1 | 98.9 | 0 |
| 2019 | at LAC | W 20-13 | 182 | 1 | 1 | 94.2 | 3 |
| 2019 | Ten. | W 16-0 | 177 | 0 | 1 | 67.1 | 1 |
| 2019 | K.C. | L 6-30 | 213 | 0 | 0 | 79.7 | 8 |
| 2019 | at Ind. | L 13-15 | 174 | 0 | 0 | 76.8 | 3 |
| 2020 | Ari. | L 10-30 | 195 | 1 | 0 | 82.3 | 2 |
| 2020 | at Mia. | L 0-24 | 186 | 0 | 1 | 50.0 | 3 |
| 2020 | N.E. | L 27-30 | 262 | 3 | 1 | 128.7 | 1 |
| 2020 | at LAC | L 28-34 | 205 | 2 | 1 | 80.6 | 1 |
| Avg | 224 | 1.0 | 0.7 | 83.5 | 2.4 | ||
| Tot | 3-13 | 3585 | 16 | 11 | 83.5 | 38 | |
Just maybe the Eagles put themselves in position to select a top rookie passer, yanking the rug out from under Hurts before he gets a chance to run away (literally) with the starting job. But if they don't, I'll put the odds of him losing any kind of preseason competition to Flacco at just about zero. And Flacco behind center (if Hurts gets, er, hurt) would be a bad thing for Philadelphia's other skill players.
--Andy Richardson