No reminders are necessary.
The New Orleans Saints have game film from the 2020 and 2021 seasons, and are aware of what happened against Philadelphia. Specifically, they know the damage caused by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts in 24-21 (in 2020) and 40-29 (in '21) Philadelphia victories.
In the first game – the first start of Hurts' career – he completed 17 of 30 passes for 167 yards and a touchdown and ran for 106 yards on 18 carries. The second game was a bit more of the same – 13 of 24 passing for 147 yards, and 18 carries for 69 yards and three rushing touchdowns.
The Saints (2-0) will host Hurts and the Eagles (1-1) on Sunday in the Caesars Superdome as New Orleans looks to open 3-0 for the first time since 2013, and Hurts is off to another solid start, having completed 43 of 64 passes for 461 yards and three touchdowns, with three interceptions.
He also has run for 118 yards and a touchdown on 26 carries – gaining nine first downs on runs – and on Monday night against Atlanta he ran for 85 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries. New Orleans only allowed 126 rushing yards and a touchdown on 41 carries in the first two games.
"You definitely have to have great rush awareness," said Saints defensive end Chase Young, the second overall draft pick in Hurts' rookie class, who has faced the Eagles five times (four times with Washington, once with San Francisco). "Jalen, he's a hell of a quarterback, so we definitely know what we're getting ourselves into.
"I know in my mind it's going to be just keep rushing, keep rushing, keep rushing, because you never know when you can crowd them and get them. So that's just what you're going to deal with, when you deal with scrambling quarterbacks. Sometimes they can go left, sometimes they can go right, sometimes they (take the middle). You've just got to try your best to have rush awareness, and rush together as one."
"I think everybody has to do their job," safety Tyrann Mathieu said. "It's not going to be too complicated, the most important thing is everybody doing their job. If you're responsible to play pass, then play pass. If you're responsible to play run, play run. I think a lot of big plays happen when guys start doing other folks' job."
The Saints fell prey to that in earlier games against Hurts, and running back Miles Sanders was able to take advantage in the 2021 game. Sanders ran for 94 yards on 16 carries.
"These guys that are really good running the football, I wouldn't say that's a unique challenge that we have," Saints Coach Dennis Allen said. "I'd say they've been fairly effective running the ball on a lot of teams, I know that that's a big part of what Philly has done offensively over the last few years.
"One year we did a pretty good job of kind of minimizing Jalen Hurts in terms of being able to run the football but didn't do as good a job of stopping the running back, and then vice versa the previous year or the year after. We know that they've got two really good weapons back there in the backfield. It'll be a tough challenge."
The other weapon Allen referenced is running back Saquon Barkley, whom the Eagles added as an unrestricted free agent. The two-time Pro Bowler and 2018 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year has 204 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 46 carries this season, and totaled 5,211 rushing yards and 35 touchdowns in 74 games (six seasons) with the Giants.
"Hurts' ability to hurt you with his feet makes him a significant challenge to have to deal with," Allen said. "He's perfectly capable of just dropback pass, throwing the ball from the pocket, delivering the ball on time and yet when he begins to scramble, it makes life challenging on the back end.
"They do a good job of getting to the secondary play and uncovering and getting themselves open. I think his ability to run the football makes things more challenging in run defense, because they can have the runner, Saquan Barkley, going this way with some kind of counter action with the quarterback keeping it on the backside. They make you play 11-on-11 football and they do a really good job of it."
The Saints also understand that the Eagles can, and possibly will, come through with one or more big plays and that it's important to not dwell if it happens.
"Guys are going to make plays on you, especially in this league and especially with the Eagles," Mathieu said. "A lot of their explosive plays, first downs, they're back on the ball. It's tempo.
"So we've got to just erase that, we've got to move on to the next play in any game, but especially with this team because part of their identity is to get big plays and get back on the line of scrimmage and just make it challenging for the defense."
