Jalen Hurts to have extension talks but 'not today,' Derek Carr will help new team | NFL | THE HERD

Jalen Hertz, everybody's talking money now. The media is obsessed with what players make. I couldn't care less. I want my teams to be flexible. But Jalen Hertz has already been asked about making big money. And he's 24 years old, but sounds like he's 44. And this is another reason why you do sign him, of the many elements that make him a franchise quarterback.

Leadership, toughness, athleticism, arms better than everybody thinks. And he's a little bigger, I think. If you watch the Super Bowl, there's so many cameras at a Super Bowl, he'd run near the camera. You really got a sense of how much bigger he is than we think, character, all the things you want he has. Yesterday, it really struck me, there may be a bigger gap of talent between Jalen Hertz and the next best NFC quarterback than Mahomes and Burrow. So when I put up the 10 best quarterbacks, most of the great ones, Mahomes, Burrow, Lawrence, Herbert, out, they're all AFC. Now, Mahomes is the best, but it's inches not feet on a lot of those.

But look at Jalen Hertz at six. I like Matt Stafford, but right now the Rams are trying to renegotiate his deal. He comes off a litany of injuries. He can be reckless at times. He's not mobile. And if they don't rework his deal, he'll again have a below average offensive line, which will mean it's an average team. Aaron Rodgers is at eight.

Aaron may be in the AFC. Right now, Aaron's going to be 39 during the season, and as much talent as he has, he's kind of non-committal in the off season. And then Jared Goff, who cannot play on the road, did have a great year, but couldn't lead his team to the playoffs in a year in which the Packers were down. The gap between Hertz and the number two NFC quarterback, especially if Aaron's traded after Brady retired, you could argue by Thanksgiving, Geno Smith was having the best year at quarterback outside of Jalen Hertz. Geno Smith. Jared Goff good at home, not mobile, not good with the money pocket, struggles on the road, and couldn't make the playoffs. So of the many reasons you would sign Jalen Hertz, is the gap? You have to also consider this.

San Francisco is the next most talented team, and they don't know what they're doing at quarterback. They have no idea what they're doing. Now, I think the Eagles run Jalen Hertz too much. 15 times in the Super Bowl, the average 11 carries a game during the regular season. Only Lamar Jackson runs that much. But it does matter who do you play, who are your rivals? How does everybody stack up at the position? And when you go to the top 10 quarterbacks in the NFL, the first five are AFC, the next is Jalen Hertz. And I think almost everybody agrees with that this morning.

You start going to reckless guys, old guys, and guys that could be in the AFC in two weeks following him. Just another reason you got to sign him. So in the AFC, the tougher conference, and in the AFC West, arguably the toughest conference, he had the 26th ranked defense, and the 28th ranked run game, an interim coach, Darren Waller missed a third of the year, and there was chaos because of the receiver and the corner kicked off the team all over the building. What did Derek Card do? And Rich Gannon says, I don't know if he can carry a team to a title, so let's get specific NFC South. In the last four games of the season, Derek Carr went four for four with three game-winning drives. But in the fourth quarter of those games, the key quarter in football, he completed 74% of his throws, his passer rating 103, two of the four games of fourth quarter comeback. In fact, an overtime game-winning drive in week 18 against the Chargers, a game most of us watched.

So not only is he good enough to carry a team in the weakest division in football, he carried his team in the better conference swimming in chaos. So we've seen it happen before. We got to stop the Derek Carr slander. Nobody is saying he's my homes. But in nine years, seven head coaches. I've seen him carry this franchise a year and a half ago to the playoffs. Go back to the final month, what he was dealing with with the Raiders.

He was spectacular in the fourth quarter in four straight games. Three game-winning drives, two come from behind. So when you say he can't do something, I've seen him do it recently. And remember, there is a big difference between facing my homes twice a year and Justin Herbert twice a year and Desmond Ritter twice a year. No shot at Desmond Ritter. But right now the NFC is probably the weakest division as of this morning the NFL has had in a decade. It's abysmal.

We don't know if we have the right coaches outside of Frank Reich. And he has his doubters. We don't have any franchise quarterbacks. All four teams outside of Tampa are in a rebuild. So, yeah, I've seen it with Derek Carr. He's going to be fine.

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