NFL Breakout Candidates 2024: Eagles IOL Cam Jurgens

A name who saw a pretty meteoric rise during the draft process a couple of years ago was Nebraska’s Cam Jurgens. The three-year starter did earn third-team All-Big Ten accolades and was liked by people across the industry, but it wasn’t until the combine that he was considered a likely day-two prospect.

With elite numbers in the 40, both the jumps and agility drills, he catapulted himself into the conversation for the top true center outside of Iowa’s Tyler Linderbaum (who the Ravens selected in the first round).

The Eagles ultimately selected Cam Jurgens 51st overall as the eventual hand-picked replacement of perennial All-Pro Jason Kelce, who was heavily involved in that process. After only logging 35 snaps in mop-up duty as a rookie, Jurgens started all 11 games he was available for this past season at right guard, with a six-week stint on injured reserve with a foot injury in the middle of the year.

Why Eagles IOL Cam Jurgens could break out in the 2024 NFL season

Cam Jurgens didn’t allow a single sack and just two hits on the quarterback, along with another 20 hurries. Yet, I would argue those numbers look worse than they are, as Jalen Hurts finished with a time-to-throw mark of 3.03 seconds.

Jurgens has only been flagged three total times so far in his career – once on a holding penalty that was offset and on a couple of ineligible down passes, as he was too far past the line of scrimmage before the quarterback released the ball.

Now, leading up to 2024, he is supposed to fulfill his destiny and take on the seemingly impossible task of replacing a Philadelphia legend and to me a first-ballot Hall of Famer at the pivot. Still, he will have the benefit of being part of what arguably still is the best front-five across the NFC and being guided by pretty definitely the top O-line coach on the planet in Jeff Stoutland.

Also read: NFL Breakout Candidates 2024: Bengals RB Chase Brown, Raiders RB Zamir White

Watching Jurgens, the right guard was responsible for scanning the front and looking back at Jalen Hurts, so he could tap Jason Kelce once the QB was ready for the snap on silent counts during road games.

I don’t know what his exact responsibilities might have been, with the veteran center still being the main line of communication. That said, I’m sure sitting in meetings together and starting to get the second-year player involved with the pre-snap process will pay dividends as he now becomes the physical connection between the front-line and the QB.

This past year, Philadelphia reverted to a more simplistic offensive attack after losing offensive coordinator Shane Steichen to the Colts as their new head-man, and Brian Johnson taking over play-calling duties. With Kellen Moore bringing in a more practicable dropback game and them working out a functioning marriage between him and Stoutland, I’d expect them to diversify their run game portfolio.

Cam Jurgens provides good lateral mobility, but running inside zone on more than half of their rushing plays isn’t giving them any advantage. It doesn’t benefit their young interior lineman, since you optimally want to move bodies diagonally rather than flat down the line.

He does a nice job on back-blocks and generally uses angles to wall off defensive linemen, who want to chase after the ball, such as on power or counter concepts. Freeing up his fellow big men to pull has been one of the main advantages Kelce provided for so many years, when other centers would log missed assignments trying to secure a 2- or 3-technique from ruining the play.

I’d also love to see Philly weaponize Cam as an on-the-move blocker. He can kick out or wrap from the backside, but keeping him out to the corner on toss plays and such could open up the run game more again, as we’ve seen in previous iterations of the coaching staff.

Looking at the dropback game, I thought their protection schemes were also pretty simplified in 2023. With some rotation at that second guard spot, as Sua Opeta also logged 46% of offensive snaps, that may have contributed. But this coaching staff failed to give the quarterback options and clarity for how to defeat the blitz and as a result, opponents did so at the highest rate in the league (40.5%), which coincided with his numbers dropping off on those plays.

It’s tough to judge what exactly Moore will offer in that regard, considering he had a top-tier O-line in Dallas, as well as two supercomputers with the ball in their hands in Dak Prescott and Justin Herbert. So I’d expect them to have better solutions for when opponents are sending heat, and with their new center, I don’t see any limitations in terms of mirroring guys rushing from the second level.

In general, Cam Jurgens is a highly patient pass-protector. He’ll quickly close the space to his fellow linemen when asked to slide but keeps his feet pretty much in line with his shoulders and doesn’t load up his punch excessively, which would allow pass-rushers to make him whiff.

I don’t think he has the firmest anchor, where if rushers have a bit of a runway in designated dropback situations, they can take him backward with the bull rush at times. But considering how they were able to make Kelce’s lack of size not become a factor in that capacity, I’m not overly worried.

This guy’s eyes are always busy and you constantly see him deliver rib shots on rushers bubbling over to either gap next to him. Cam Jurgens also covers a ton of ground in the screen game, which is something that made me fall in love with him at Nebraska, de-cleating a safety 20+ yards down the field.

We didn’t see that nearly enough, as the Eagles were close to the bottom in terms of their percentage of RB screens. Moore’s offenses have generally been pretty average in terms of the rate he’s called them, but they were very effective in Dallas and to a slightly lesser degree even in L.A. last year. With the organization finally prioritizing a superstar running back like Saquon Barkley, you’d expect that to be an even bigger factor.

Now, looking at the individual metrics for Cam Jurgens as a first-time starter, Pro Football Focus awarded him run- and pass-blocking grades of only 62.9 and 55.0 respectively last season – not great.

However, we have to pretty much count that as his rookie year, which then makes those marks look more in line with what you’d expect. Also, he did play slightly out of position, as Philly has typically had fairly big guards, who completed well what Kelce was able to do at the pivot, folding under blocks on lateral concepts and setting them up to use their power more advantageously.

Even with how simplistic and predictable they were in the run game this past season, they still finished fourth in rushing success rate and EPA per rush. They just didn’t get many explosives, which hopefully should change with Saquon.

In no way would I ever argue Cam Jurgens will be an upgrade over a walking Hall of Famer and of course now someone else – likely Tyler Steen – has to plug in at right guard. But I believe being back at his more natural spot and the changes we’ll see structurally from this offense will lead us to view the third-year player as an above-average starter by the end of 2024.