PHILADELPHIA — On Monday, after spending the better part of the week bumping heads with the Eagles, the Cleveland Browns named Joe Flacco their starting quarterback.

This is particularly rich, because four years ago Joe Flacco believed that he was in a quarterback competition with Jalen Hurts, but that was never a true competition; for whatever reason, the Eagles felt compelled to insult Hurts with the possibility of having Flacco start over him in the immediate aftermath of the Carson Wentz saga, after Hurts took Wentz’s job in 2020, leading to the premature meltdown that ruined Wentz’s career.

It also is deliciously rich because Flacco now is the starting quarterback of the franchise that not only traded a king’s ransom for Deshaun Watson (something the Eagles also considered) but also that Flacco, at the age of 40 and with a passer rating of 85.9 over the past three seasons, somehow remains a viable NFL option.

Finally, it is incredibly rich because the state of the NFL quarterback, and the evaluation of NFL quarterbacks, has been degraded to the degree that a player like Hurts — who shows continuous improvement, goes to two Super Bowls, goes to two Pro Bowls, and wins the MVP in the latest Super Bowl, a game that he also won over a franchise with a Hall of Fame coach and possibly the best quarterback in the history of the NFL — still suffers the slings and arrows of anonymous NFL coaches who, when polled by The Athletic, clearly don’t know a “Tier 1″ quarterback from the part of their body covered by their underpants.

It is at once hilarious and maddening and ridiculous and infuriating that Hurts generally is, somehow, considered simply above average. It is all of those things, as well, that Donovan McNabb suffered the same, constant diminishment despite playing alongside supporting casts nowhere near as supportive as Hurts’.

Maybe it’s because both are Black, or maybe it’s because both are excellent and willing runners, or maybe it’s because it’s another manifestation of the well-documented, anti-Philadelphia bias. Most likely, it’s all three, to some degree. Whatever it is, it’s obviously never going to change for Hurts.

The job of every quarterback at every level, from Pop Warner to the NFL, is to win games. More directly, it is their job to not lose games. Hurts is a winner. He’s a winner the way that Curt Schilling, warts and all, was. The way that Terry Bradshaw was a winner.

Hurts doesn’t process the game the way Peyton Manning did, but he calls Manning for tips.

Hurts doesn’t throw it like Aaron Rodgers or Brett Favre. He doesn’t run it like Michael Vick or Lamar Jackson. But he has just as many Super Bowl rings as Rodgers and Favre, and more than Josh Allen and Joe Burrow, not to mention Jayden Daniels.

And yes, Hurts is the biggest reason his teams got to the two Super Bowls. And yes, he played well enough for his team to win both of them. Not perfectly, but well enough.

Playing in the NFL is not an exercise in NFL combine measurements. It is not a quarterback skills competition. It is not a beauty pageant. It’s about winning. Three times in his four years as a starter, Hurts has altered his game to accommodate the team built around him.

You can call that an “intangible” skill if you’d like. I call a 46-20 regular-season record and a 6-3 postseason mark very tangible.

We’ve seen Jackson, Burrow and Allen fail to do what Hurts has done. Does this mean any of them are less talented, to any degree, than Hurts? Perhaps in some aspects, but not in others.

Does this mean the others would win if they were in Hurts’ position? Perhaps; maybe even “probably.” But not “certainly.” And, frankly, we don’t know that Hurts wouldn’t win in their positions.

Constantly subjecting a young man who is a good teammate (but not perfect), a good passer (but not perfect), and apparently a splendid human being (but not perfect) to arbitrary, contrived, clickbait judgments designed to fill airtime and column inches during an evermore boring but demanding NFL offseason is as foolish as it is petty.

Worse yet: The constant “grading“ of his performances during training camp practices. If you’ve ever been to an NFL training camp, the practice — even the semi-live practices against opposing teams — have more in common with theater rehearsals than they have in common with actual NFL games.

That’s why I, unlike Eagles coach Nick Sirianni, believe every quarterback, and every player, for that matter, should play in at least two preseason games. So does the aforementioned Hall of Fame coach, Andy Reid. So I’ve got that going for me.

Hurts is an excellent quarterback. He’s better than I ever thought he would be. He’s better than you ever thought he would be. And he should be recognized as such.

Look around the league. Look at the Browns, with Flacco, the Pittsburgh Steelers with Rodgers, the New York Jets with Justin Fields. At some point in the last four seasons all of these quarterbacks would have been rated as highly, or higher, than Hurts.

To his credit, Hurts either ignores these assessments or is motivated by them. He knows that he is excellent, that he is improving, and that he is a known entity who, for the Philadelphia Eagles, as much “Tier 1″ as they have ever had.

If Hurts keeps getting better, he’s going to be as much Tier 1 as they will ever have.

In fact, he might already be there.

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