PHILADELPHIA – The plan was simple enough for Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown and quarterback Jalen Hurts.
Step 1: Score a touchdown.
Step 2: Dance.
“That was our moment to tell everyone to shut up,” Brown said after the Eagles won their franchise-record 10th straight game with a 27-13 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.
There had certainly been plenty of talk about Hurts and Brown this past week. Not that Brown was completely innocent in calling to attention what was a lackluster, yet mostly efficient, passing attack as the Eagles rode running back Saquon Barkley, a bullying offensive line and burgeoning defense to the top of the NFC.
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Brown caught eight passes for 110 yards and a touchdown, while fellow receiver DeVonta Smith had 11 catches for 109 yards and a score. Hurts, who revealed after the game he’s playing with a broken finger on his non-throwing hand, finished 25-for-32 with 290 passing yards, his second-highest total of the season.
Asked what the Eagles’ offense needed to improve upon following last week’s close win over the Carolina Panthers, Brown tersely replied: “Passing.”
Brandon Graham, out for the season with a triceps injury in what he said was his final campaign, poured kerosene on those flames by discussing the supposed discord during a weekly media appearance and mentioning the longstanding relationship between Hurts and the receiver that dates back to their high-school days.
“We have guys that are very close, that can have those conversations, it only makes everybody around us better,” Smith said.
Brown said he “absolutely” thought his words from last Sunday helped.
“I said it for a reason,” he said. “I only had good intentions behind it. It wasn’t for me to get the ball. It was for us to all be on the same page and put our best foot forward. We know what we’re capable of. I knew it wasn’t the standard.”
His teammates agreed with him, Brown said. What he said didn’t take them by surprise.
“I kind of got crucified for it, but it’s cool,” he said.
Having those types of conversations is “very uncomfortable,” Brown said, but he maintained that he didn’t call anybody out.
“Behind closed doors, we talk about that (stuff),” he said. “We call each other out. That’s very uncomfortable. Because you don’t want to feel like you’re being attacked.
“I think we’re moving in the right direction. We did what we needed to do today in the pass game.”
What a difference a week makes. The detente was reached Wednesday, but officially, it came with 1:13 left in the first quarter. Hurts threw off-balance from the pocket to Brown, who broke open in the middle of the end zone, for the game’s first touchdown. The Eagles entered as the league’s lowest-scoring team in the first quarter and left with 10 points.
“We knew getting on the ball fast was going to be hard for them, so we did that,” Smith said of the Eagles’ fast start.
Philadelphia threw on the first three plays of the game and four of the first five. Hurts, sounding like a carpenter and gardener after the game, used one of his favorite analogies: sharpening all tools at one’s disposal “so when it’s time to use them, you can go.” Going to Smith and Brown consistently was intentional.
“I don’t think there’s a doubt in that. I think, frankly, there’s an effort there,” Hurts said. “The approach was a little different this week. The grass will be green where you water it. We decided to water it and saw the fruits of our labor in that.
“Obviously we’ve been watering the running game a good bit. It’s natural to put emphasis on one thing and take emphasis off of another and see what you guys have seen. We want to continue to be well-rounded, push to be well-rounded, and water all areas of our yard.”
During the week, asked about the latest WIP drama-dream, left tackle Jordan Mailata said that the game against the Steelers wasn’t going to be the ‘A.J. Brown and Jalen show.’ He was glad to add an addendum after the win.
‘It ended up being the Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown and (DeVonta Smith) show,’ he said. ‘That was pretty cool.’
A point of emphasis from the coaching staff and wideouts, Brown said, was to overcommunicate – “we even exaggerated,” he said – during meetings, which they also simply extended.
“You talk about something 10 times it’s like, ‘OK, I got it.’ It’s needed though,” Brown said.
The receivers and Hurts were more on the same page throughout the week because of it, Brown said, and he thinks it’s something that will last the rest of the year.
Head coach Nick Sirianni said the dust-up may have been perceived as chaos from the outside. The Eagles saw it as an opportunity to elevate.
“It was just something that we used as something to kind of galvanize us and get better from, and they did that,” the fourth-year coach said.
Hurts carries himself as a laser-focused leader who hopes that his mentality can seep throughout the locker room. But there are too many bodies for everybody to tune everything out. Social media is invasive. The Philadelphia media seek accountability on behalf of a public that demands it from its sports teams.
“Scrutiny is never-ending. It’s nothing new,” Hurts said. “That’s something that I find a thrill in. I appreciate being told I can’t and that we can’t. I know that I lead this team, and it takes a lot out of it. It demands a lot out of you. And I just want to show up and be the best teammate, quarterback, and be the best I can be for the guys on the team.”
This team, however, has not let anything infiltrate its walls. Not an offseason ESPN report indicating that Sirianni and Hurts had feuded and not mended the wounds from the disastrous end to the 2023 season. Not the arrival of new coordinators on both sides of the ball for the second straight season. Not the recent alleged spat between Brown and Hurts.
Last year, the noise consumed them. They are impenetrable to outside narratives, it appears, so far in 2024.
With tight end Dallas Goedert (knee) on injured reserve, the target shares for both Brown and Smith have understandably increased.
The presence of Barkley has also placed less importance on the Eagles’ passing game. But the league’s leading rusher was also absent for part of the game due to an undisclosed injury. Hurts’ 32 pass attempts were his most since a Week 4 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
At that point, the Eagles found themselves at 2-2, and Sirianni faced questions about his job security. He’s more than answered those. And once those within the locker room stirred the pot – on purpose or not – they wasted no time wasting that worry, too.
“We know what the end goal is,” said Brown, adding that winning 10 games in a row means little when the goal is to win the Super Bowl.
“It’s easy for us to have these tough conversations, to call each other out, because we know what we want.”