Philadelphia Eagles 2023 Midseason Awards: MVP, Best Player, Most Disappointing
PHILADELPHIA - You can thank the NFL’s greed for no official midpoint of the season any longer unless you consider halftime of Game No. 9 for each club a proper demarcation line.
That said, the Philadelphia Eagles bye week coming on Week 10 after an 8-1 start is a pretty solid dividing point for the Delaware Valley’s football fans and that means it’s time for SI.com’s Eagles Today annual midseason awards:
FIRST HALF MVP - QB Jalen Hurts - The modern game has virtually rigged this kind of award for quarterbacks if you happen to have a good one and the Eagles officially have a great one in Hurts.
The runner-up for last year’s NFL MVP honors to Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, Hurts is again on the shortlist for this season’s award despite playing through a painful bone bruise to his left knee suffered on Oct. 8 against the Los Angeles Rams.
With his mobility curtailed Hurts is dominating as a pocket passer, amassing a gaudy 125.5 passer rating over his past three games against Miami, Washington, and Dallas while completing 75.0 percent of his passes, averaging 8.7 yards per attempt and throwing eight touchdown passes against just one interception over that span.
Through nine games, Hurts is 10th in the NFL in passer rating (97.0), tied for fourth with fellow MVP hopeful Lamar Jackson of Baltimore in yards per attempt (7.7), fifth in passing yards (2,347), sixth in completion percentage (68.9), sixth in touchdown passes (15), sixth in completions of 20-plus yards (32) and second in total touchdowns by a quarterback (22).
Perhaps most importantly the Eagles are 25-2 (.926) in the last 27 regular-season games started by Hurts dating back to Week 15 of the 2021 season.
Sources say that’s pretty valuable.
BEST PLAYER AND OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE FIRST HALF - WR A.J. Brown - The best pure football player on the Eagles over the season’s first nine games has been Brown, who already has 67 receptions for 1,005 yards and six touchdowns.
Any time you can accomplish something that’s never been done before in the NFL confirms a ridiculous level of performance. Brown did exactly that by putting up six consecutive games with 125 or more receiving yards, numbers even players like Jerry Rice, Randy Moss, and Calvin Johnson never mustered.
FIRST HALF DEFENSIVE MVP - CB Darius Slay - Slay’s willingness to move inside to shadow CeeDee Lamb late in the Week 9 win over Dallas, along with how much he’s on the field, highlights why the veteran cornerback gets this award over the better players Philadelphia has on the defensive line.
Slay has played 513 defensive snaps this season and his leadership has helped an injury-ravaged secondary find ways to hang in week in and week out.
A.J. Brown
Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
BEST DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE FIRST HALF - DE Josh Sweat - Maybe the most underrated edge rusher in the NFL, Sweat wins a close race over fellow edge Haason Reddick and rookie defensive tackle Jalen Carter.
Reddick was hampered by a surgically-repaired thumb for the first month of the season before taking off while Carter has been the most dominant Eagles defender but Philadelphia still has the gifted interior player on a pitch count and he’s played 183 fewer snaps by Sweat, nearly three full games worth of action.
Sweat, meanwhile, has 6 ½ sacks and is near the top of the league with 46 pressures, per Pro Football Focus, and has been a constant hindrance to opposing quarterbacks.
BEST ROOKIE OF THE FIRST HALF - DT Jalen Carter - Carter in a landslide here as he’s been one of the most dominant defensive players in the NFL and graded as the No. 2 interior defender in the entire NFL by PFF.
The only thing missing to get into the conversation for NFL Defensive Player of the Year never mind the best Eagles defender is more playing time but one of Philadlephia’s core defensive philosophies is rotating the deepest defensive line in football.
MOST IMPROVED - S Reed Blankenship - Blankenship went from an unheralded undrafted rookie out of Middle Tennessee State in 2022 to a key contributor on defense when C.J. Gardner-Johnson was injured last season. This time around rookie Sydney Brown was the betting favorite by many to beat out Blankenship for the starting job opposite free-agent pickup Terrell Edmunds in training camp.
Turns out Blankenship was the Eagles’ top safety entering camp and everyone else – Edmunds, Brown, Justin Evans, and K’Von Wallace -- rotated for the right to play next to the second-year pro.
Edmunds and Wallace are not even in Philadelphia any longer, Evans is on injured reserve, and two-time All-Pro Kevin Byard, a fellow MTSU product like Blankenship, was brought in to settle down the position but through it all Blankenship remains the Eagles’ best safety.
SPECIAL TEAMS Co-MVPs - Punt Gunners Josh Jobe and Kelee Ringo - We are removing placekicker Jake Elliott from this conversation or perhaps giving him a specialist MVP award because it’s time to highlight the most improved part of the Eagles, which is special teams.
Philadelphia was a bottom-five special teams unit in 2022, according to both Rick Gosselin’s statistical rankings and PFF’s film assessment. This season it’s been a consistent top-10 group as Jobe and Ringo have become difference-makers as coverage players and contributors that Michal Clay often cites as blockers when Britain’s Covey’s punt return acumen is brought up.
Covey, by the way, earns an honorable mention in this category as well as one of the NFL’s best returners.
BEST LATE SIGNING - LB Zach Cunningham - Howie Roseman brought in Cunningham and Myles Jack on Aug. 6 when it became apparent that the linebacker group brought to camp wasn’t going to be good enough.
The two swings delivered one solid return. Jack retired and didn’t make it out of camp when he saw the writing on the wall but Cunningham quickly seized the weak-side role and has been a consistent plus-player for Sean Desai’s defense.
BEST JOB BY AN ASSISTANT COACH - Nickels coach Ronnel Williams - Talk about tough duty.
The Eagles have had to use eight different bodies at slot CB during the first nine games starting with Avonte Maddox and finishing with Slay trying to stop Lamb against Dallas.
In between were Mario Goodrich, James Bradberry, Sydney Brown, Eli Ricks, Bradley Roby, and Josiah Scott. And that doesn’t even include Maddox’s presumed backup Zech McPhearson, who was lost for the year with a preseason Achilles injury.
Former coach Doug Pederson once said the quickest route to a poor season was multiple injuries at the same position. There have been plenty of ugly moments along the way against Justin Jefferson, Cooper Kupp, Tyreek Hill, and Lamb but somehow Williams has been able to help hold this mess together enough to not screw up an NFL-best 8-1 start.
BEST POSITION GROUP - The Defensive Front - If you follow the Eagles, you understand how Howie Roseman builds things and who the two finalists in this category will be.
This season, the defensive front edges the offensive line due to a little more depth although Sua Opeta and Tyler Steen have been serviceable in replace of starter Cam Jurgens at right guard while the rest of the league keeps pilfering deep reserves from Jeff Stoutland University (think Josh Sills (Indianapolis), Brett Toth (Carolina) and Julian Good-Jones (Washington).
MOST DISAPPOINTING - LB Nakobe Dean - Much was expected of the second-year player who was supposed to be the on-field leader of the defense. Instead, Dean is headed to injured reserve for the second time with a Lisfranc sprain and has been outplayed by veteran Nicholas Morrow.
