Player
Jalen Hurts
QB · PHI Eagles
Fourth-and-1 is the highest-leverage routine decision in football, and Philadelphia has effectively deleted the risk from it. A 92 percent conversion rate turns every fourth-and-short into a first down waiting to be claimed, which changes how the Eagles call the whole series before it: three yards on first and second down is already a successful set of downs.
Short-yardage country
35 of 38 on fourth-and-1. The best conversion rate football has seen in a quarter century.
RareFourth-and-1 runs, min 25 attempts, 1999-2025 regular season
| Rusher | Attempts | Converted | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jalen Hurts | 38 | 35 | 92.1% |
| Drew Brees | 25 | 23 | 92.0% |
| Josh Allen | 36 | 33 | 91.7% |
| Tom Brady | 32 | 29 | 90.6% |
| Carson Wentz | 29 | 25 | 86.2% |
The baselines, same span
| Group | Attempts | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| All other QBs | 1347 | 80.7% |
| RBs and everyone else | 2857 | 64.8% |
Give Jalen Hurts one yard on fourth down and the drive keeps going 92.1 percent of the time, the best rate of anyone with 25 tries since 1999. He edges the two most famous sneak artists of the era, Brees and Allen, and laps the handoff: running backs convert the same situation at 64.8 percent. Three failures in a career. Thirty-five conversions.
Why it matters. Fourth-and-1 is the highest-leverage routine decision in football, and Philadelphia has effectively deleted the risk from it. A 92 percent conversion rate turns every fourth-and-short into a first down waiting to be claimed, which changes how the Eagles call the whole series before it: three yards on first and second down is already a successful set of downs.
Inside the 5, a Hurts carry scores more than half the time. No group of ball carriers in football can match that.
ComparisonTD rate on carries from inside the opponent 5 (regular season)
| Rusher | Carries | TDs | TD rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jalen Hurts, career 2020-2025 | 87 | 46 | 52.9% |
| All other QBs, 2020-2025 | 781 | 380 | 48.7% |
| RBs and everyone else, 2020-2025 | 3842 | 1465 | 38.1% |
From inside the 5-yard line, handing the ball to a running back produces a touchdown 38.1 percent of the time. A quarterback keeper raises that to 48.7 percent. Hurts raises it again: 52.9 percent, 46 touchdowns on 87 career carries. Every goal-to-go snap in Philadelphia starts with the defense having to account for the most efficient short-range scorer in the sport.
Why it matters. The gap between 38 percent and 53 percent, compounded over a season of goal-to-go trips, is roughly a field goal of expected points per red-zone game, and it explains why Philadelphia's offense keeps finishing drives that stall for other teams. It is also the mechanism behind the rushing touchdown totals in the card above: the role creates the record.
The passer nobody credits
MYTH TEST: too short to play quarterback? The 6-foot-1-and-under group throws FEWER picks than the giants. Hurts beats both.
Interception rate by listed height, QB seasons with 100+ attempts, 2008-2025
| Group | Attempts | INTs | INT rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| QBs 6-foot-1 and under | 45,998 | 1,048 | 2.28% |
| QBs 6-foot-5 and taller | 77,238 | 1,966 | 2.55% |
| Jalen Hurts, career | 2,393 | 45 | 1.88% |
The old scouting worry says a 6-foot-1 quarterback cannot see over the line and will throw picks. Pooled across 18 seasons, the short group intercepts less often than the 6-foot-5 group, 2.28 percent to 2.55. And Hurts, listed at exactly 6-foot-1, sits below both bands at 1.88 percent for his career, with three seasons of 6 or fewer picks. The perception fails the test twice: for the height class, and for its most prominent member.
Why it matters. The filter is the real story: a short quarterback has to be exceptional to get drafted and keep a job, so the short ones who start are a selected group of elite processors. Hurts is the live exhibit, a second-round pick precisely because of frame doubts who has since posted one of the lowest interception rates of any active starter. The height discount is paid once, in draft capital, not every Sunday.
The 2024 leader in completion rate over expected was the quarterback everyone calls a runner.
AnomalyCompletion % over expected, 2024, min 300 dropbacks
| QB | Dropbacks | CPOE |
|---|---|---|
| Jalen Hurts | 399 | +7.52 |
| Joe Burrow | 701 | +6.79 |
| Jared Goff | 568 | +5.71 |
| Geno Smith | 629 | +5.64 |
| Lamar Jackson | 494 | +4.55 |
Hurts CPOE by season
| Season | CPOE |
|---|---|
| 2021 | +0.12 |
| 2022 | +2.72 |
| 2023 | +3.79 |
| 2024 | +7.52 |
| 2025 | +3.18 |
In the season Philadelphia won it all, Hurts completed passes 7.52 percentage points above expectation, the best mark in football among 300-dropback passers, ahead of Burrow on 300 fewer dropbacks. It capped a five-year climb from a rookie-year accuracy problem to the most efficient version of himself: his 0.100 EPA per dropback in 2024 was also his career best. The passing grew up while the highlight reels stayed on the legs.
Why it matters. CPOE strips out degree of difficulty: it credits a quarterback only for completing throws the situation says he should miss. Leading the league in it while attempting the fewest passes of any season since his rookie year means the efficiency was not a product of easy volume. The runner-first label is roughly three years out of date, and the market that still prices him on it is mispricing the actual player.
Three kinds of Hurts runs: the scramble is gold, the sneak is money, the open-field keeper merely breaks even.
SplitHurts career runs by type (regular season, kneels excluded)
| Run type | Plays | EPA per play | Success rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scramble | 244 | +0.567 | 63.9% |
| Designed, 2 or fewer to go | 193 | +0.379 | 74.6% |
| Designed, 3+ to go | 272 | +0.045 | 47.4% |
Not all Hurts runs are the same play. The improvised scramble is worth over half an expected point every time it happens. The short-yardage keep is nearly as valuable and succeeds three times in four. The designed run in open field, the play that looks the same on TV, produces almost nothing: +0.045 EPA and a below-half success rate. League-wide that third category actually loses points; Hurts breaking even on it is itself unusual.
Why it matters. The split tells you which Hurts run to want. Scrambles ride on defenses breaking down and cannot be scripted, short-yardage keeps are the highest-percentage call in football, and the open-field designed keep spends hits on a quarterback for nearly no value. Philadelphia's 2025 shift, fewer designed carries with the sneak package intact, kept the two profitable categories and trimmed the one that pays worst.
The 2026 file
2025 rewrote the job description: 45 fewer carries, a career-high 25 touchdown passes.
TrendHurts by season (regular season)
| Season | Carries | Rush TD | Pass TD | INT | PPR points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 139 | 10 | 16 | 9 | 312.2 |
| 2022 | 165 | 13 | 22 | 6 | 378.0 |
| 2023 | 157 | 15 | 23 | 15 | 356.8 |
| 2024 | 150 | 14 | 18 | 5 | 315.1 |
| 2025 | 105 | 8 | 25 | 6 | 301.1 |
For four seasons the formula was constant: about 150 carries, double-digit rushing scores. In 2025 the carries fell to 105, his fewest as a full-time starter, and the rushing touchdowns halved to 8. The passing absorbed the load: a career-high 25 touchdown throws against just 6 picks. Total production barely moved (301 PPR points, an eighth straight top-10 pace), but the shape of it changed more in one year than in the previous four combined.
Why it matters. For fantasy purposes the mix matters as much as the total. Rushing production is steadier week to week than touchdown passes, so trading 45 carries for 7 passing scores makes the same seasonal output slightly less predictable game by game. The open question 2026 answers is whether the carry cut was a one-year plan for a banged-up November or the new normal at age 28.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: eight or more rushing touchdowns again in 2026, a sixth straight season nobody else has ever strung together.
Longest runs of consecutive 8+ rush TD seasons by a QB since 1999
| QB | Consecutive seasons | Span |
|---|---|---|
| Jalen Hurts | 5 | 2021-2025 |
| Josh Allen | 3 | 2023-2025 |
| Josh Allen | 3 | 2018-2020 |
| Cam Newton | 2 | 2011-2012 |
Every 8+ rush TD QB season, 1999-2024: what the next year brought
| Cohort | Value |
|---|---|
| Seasons in cohort (next year had 40+ carries) | 19 |
| Average rushing TDs the next season | 7.3 |
| Reached 6+ again | 11 of 19 |
| Reached 8+ again | 9 of 19 |
| Hurts himself, repeating 8+ | 4 for 4 |
The call: Hurts runs for at least 8 touchdowns in 2026. The base rate for the whole cohort is roughly a coin flip, but Hurts is not the whole cohort: he has repeated the feat four times in four chances, no other quarterback since 1999 has even done it four years straight, and the same staff that built the short-yardage package still calls his number. At an ADP of 80.7, a seventh-round pick, that floor is the cheapest it has been since 2021.
Why it matters. A quarterback's rushing touchdowns look like luck but mostly are not: they come from designed goal-line packages that belong to the player and the staff, and both return in 2026. The one real risk is the trend in the arc card, a shrinking carry count, which is why the claim is set at 8 rather than the 14 of his peak years. If the sneak and the goal-line keep survive the next play caller, the 8 does too.
He finished QB8 overall and top-6 in points per game. The 2026 draft market charges a seventh-round pick.
Comparison2025 QB fantasy leaders (PPR, regular season)
| QB | Games | Total PPR | Per game |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Allen | 16 | 364.6 | 22.8 |
| Drake Maye | 17 | 352.0 | 20.7 |
| Matthew Stafford | 17 | 350.4 | 20.6 |
| Trevor Lawrence | 17 | 338.2 | 19.9 |
| Caleb Williams | 17 | 318.7 | 18.7 |
| Dak Prescott | 17 | 313.8 | 18.5 |
| Bo Nix | 17 | 304.8 | 17.9 |
| Jalen Hurts | 16 | 301.1 | 18.8 |
Hurts finished eighth among quarterbacks in total PPR points in 2025 despite playing one fewer game than most of the names above him; his 18.8 points per game ranked sixth among quarterbacks with 10+ games. The market's 2026 price: ADP 80.7, the seventh round, behind the shine of the newer names. A five-year run of top-10 seasons rarely goes on sale like this.
Why it matters. Quarterback scoring is flat enough in the middle that per-game rate matters more than the season total, and Hurts's per-game rate was one spot behind Lawrence at a fraction of the draft cost. The bear case, fewer carries, is real and priced in twice over; the bull case, a 25-touchdown passing season that nobody seems to have noticed, is priced at zero.
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