The internet is a battleground during the dog days of summer. ESPN, Yahoo, PFF and NFL.com drop their player rankings, and that’s usually enough to have rival fanbases lobbing salvos over the slightest whiff of disrespect.
Week One of 2026 training camp has been no different. Eagles and Patriots fans have been at war since AJ Brown — arguably the greatest receiver in Eagles history — got his trade demand granted. Brown openly celebrating his exit from Philadelphia and his arrival in New England has produced a level of jealousy and pettiness that would make the Real Housewives of New Jersey take notes.
Eagles fans spent the week hate-watching every pass Drake Maye threw, and across a week of Patriots practices they came up with one clip. The Boston Herald’s Zach Cox charted Maye missing his opening 11-on-11 throw one day, a miss to Brown with Christian Gonzalez draped on him. The Eagles Twitter community pounced.
He completed his final eight throws that afternoon, three of them touchdowns to Brown. At a red-zone-heavy session, Pats Pulpit had him 4-of-5 targeting Brown in team drills with two scores on slants. On another day he went 12-of-13 in full-team work with six touchdown passes — a 50-yard bomb to Brown on the first snap, and scores to Mack Hollins and DeMario Douglas to close it out.
That is the entire Philadelphia case against Drake Maye. One incompletion, from a week in which he has thrown more touchdowns in a single practice than Jalen Hurts has thrown all camp.
Worth remembering what New England gave up. A 2028 first and a 2027 fifth for a receiver coming off 78 catches for 1,003 yards — his sixth 1,000-yard season in seven years — attached to a quarterback who threw for 4,394 yards and 31 touchdowns last season and finished second in MVP voting. On paper it was obvious. In camp it took about a week.
Hurts has not kept pace. Eliot Shorr-Parks of 94.1 WIP has been charting every rep, and through three days Hurts sits at 40 of 56 with zero touchdowns and zero interceptions. Graded him a C on Day 2, a D+ on Day 3.
Read that line again. Seventy-one percent completions. Fifty-six throws. Not one of them has reached the end zone.
Day 3 was the worst of it, and Shorr-Parks put more of the blame on Hurts than on the line — he was “sacked” on 8 of 24 dropbacks, holding the ball longer than he had all week. The Eagles ran six plays inside the 20 in their first red zone session of the summer and scored nothing, with Hurts going 1 for 3. Jeremiah Trotter Jr. read a swing pass to Saquon Barkley and batted it down. Jalen Carter spent the morning in the backfield, beating Tyler Steen for a sack and blowing up a screen.
Hurts got in the end zone once all day, on his legs — an 8-yard zone-read keeper past Nolan Smith.
The Day 2 throw that stuck was the one that got away. DeVonta Smith beat two defenders and streaked open 40 yards downfield. Shorr-Parks’ read: an average throw is a touchdown. Hurts left it five yards short, and was fortunate it wasn’t picked off.
A caveat, since nobody arguing about this online will offer one: camp numbers are noisy. Install schedules differ, emphasis differs, and a quarterback’s line on a given morning reflects what his staff decided to work on that day. New England is also several practices ahead of Philadelphia on the calendar. Anyone comparing raw totals across two camps is comparing two different scripts.
Which is why the red zone is the tell. Both teams ran red-zone-heavy sessions this week — the one period where touchdowns are the stated point of the exercise. Maye threw two on slants. Hurts went 1 for 3 and his offense left empty.
New England’s fanbase, drunk on their quarterback and their shiny new WR1, has moved on to running welfare checks on Eagles fans, who have gone conspicuously quiet. It’s straight Amber Heard energy out of Philadelphia — the ex who can’t stop watching, narrating every stumble, and going quiet the second things go well.
Some of this is roster math. The Patriots have the deepest receiver room in the NFL. The Eagles have one bonafide stud and five guys who look like they were recruited at a karaoke bar.
But that excuse only stretches so far. Smith got himself 40 yards open. Dontayvion Wicks has been winning contested balls all week. Somebody has to throw it to them.
Then there’s the $5.
Hurts makes $51 million a year, the richest annual salary in NFL history. Jalen Carter just reset the defensive tackle market at $38 million a year, $152 million total. To commemorate it, Hurts smacked a $5 bill on his chest and told him to put five on top of that — a bill his wife had slipped into his bag that morning, so it didn’t even cost him the five. Then he brought the story to reporters after practice, unprompted.
Run the ratio. Five dollars out of $51 million is the exact same slice of a paycheck as one penny out of $100,000. That’s the tribute. A penny, and a podium appearance to make sure the room knew about it.
Carter, for his part, joked the bill would’ve been worth $500 if Hurts had bothered to sign it. Do the second piece of math on that one. Philadelphia’s franchise quarterback got publicly appraised at a hundred times what he actually handed over — and the appraisal came from the guy he was congratulating.
Jalen Carter has been wrecking the backfield in camp, and I’m sure he is motivated to put $5 on Jalen Hurts chest with each sack!
Meanwhile, offensive coordinator Sean Mannion spent Saturday talking up what Hurts does as an athlete in the running game, calling it something the Eagles can lean into.
Lean into the running game. That’s the plan for the man who had the richest salary in league history — on a day when, by NBC Sports Philadelphia’s count, his offense lost the situational period 7-3, and his only trip to the end zone came on foot.
