Handing Out Five Awards At Halfway Point Of Eagles Season

PHILADELPHIA – The Eagles are halfway – sort of – through the regular season, having played eight of their 17 games and winning six of them, so far. So, what better way to recap the first half than to hand out some awards.

MVP – OFFENSE

Jalen Hurts. Name another quarterback who has played eight games and has thrown one interception? You can’t. Hurts is the only one. He has just two turnovers, counting a fumble forced by the Rams that was more like a mugging than a sack. He has accounted for 20 touchdowns, with 15 passing and five rushing, and his completion percentage is 70.2 percent, which, at the moment, is higher than his career-best of 68.7 set last year when he became the Super Bowl MVP. He should be in the regular-season MVP conversation.

Runner-up: Dallas Goedert. The tight end has put himself in a good situation to earn another contract, perhaps for as many as three years, either here or somewhere else after developing into a red-zone threat. Six of his career-high touchdowns have come in the red area.

MVP - DEFENSE

Zack Baun. His on-field prowess is one thing, and it hasn’t dipped in the slightest from a season ago when he was a finalist for the NFL Defensive Player of the Year award, but his work with rookie Jihaad Campbell is unsung. Campbell sings Baun’s praises in helping learn the NFL game, and Campbell is having a solid first season.

Baun’s numbers: 98 percent of the defensive snaps, three sacks, 64 tackles, a forced fumble, five tackles for loss, four QB hits.

Runner-up. Jordan Davis. The defensive tackle lost weight, and he has played 67 percent of the defensive snaps, well up from his career-high of 45 percent set two years ago.

his snap count has gone up and so has his production. He has a career-high three sacks, 30 tackles (15 away from a career high) and four QB hits (one off his career best).

Best Play And Biggest Surprises Good And Bad

BEST PLAY

Jordan Davis’s field goal block and touchdown return. Rams kicker Joshua Karty had flummoxed the Eagles all day long with his knuckleball kickoffs, making the Eagles’ returners look like they were back in Pop Warner again. His 44-yarder would have given the Rams a win in Week 3 until Davis got his big paw on the kick, scooped it up, then got his 330-plus pounds moving in the same direction for a 61-yard TD to account for the final score, 33-26.

Runner-up: Jihaad Campbell’s interception. It came in Week 4 against Tampa’s Baker Mayfield, and it happened at the goal line to thwart a drive with the Eagles clinging to a 31-23 lead. The Bucs reached the 11 but went no further when Campbell picked Mayfield with 7:48 to play in the game. It was Mayfield's first interception of the season.

BIGGEST SURPRISE (Good)

Nakobe Dean. The linebacker’s return from a serious patellar injury is one thing, but returning to the form he showed in a standout 2024 season is another. Dean looks like he hasn’t skipped a beat as his role ramps up.

Runner-up. Tank Bigsby. In the final game before the bye, the running back showed what he can do when given an opportunity, running for 104 yards on just nine carries for a 11.6 per-carry average.

BIGGEST SURPRISE (Bad)

Saquon Barkley. Another 2,000-yard season wasn’t expected, but a season in which he may struggle to get too far north of 1,000 yards? That was not expected in anyone’s wildest dreams. Perhaps he is due for a big second half after rushing for 10.7 yards per carry and 150 yards in the last game before the bye, and he needed that game to just get to 519 yards rushing on the season.

Runner-up. A.J. Brown and his disruptive what-about-me attitude.

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