Sixty NFL quarterbacks were paid more to play – or watch – during the 2022 NFL season than Philadelphia Eagles QB Jalen Hurts was. Only one of them finished ahead of Hurts in the balloting for the AP NFL MVP Award – Patrick Mahomes, whose Kansas City Chiefs defeated Hurts and the Eagles 38-35 in Super Bowl LVII to cap the campaign on Feb. 12.

Getting a multi-year contract worked out with Hurts is a “priority” this offseason, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman said on Monday. That big-money deal will change the way that Roseman constructs Philadelphia’s roster. But the Eagles’ leaders don’t expect it to change Hurts.

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“He’s still in there working hard and still in there lifting and working like a maniac in the weight room, just getting after it,” Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni said on Tuesday while attending the NFL’s annual meeting in Phoenix. “Again, people have asked me: How good can Jalen Hurts be? No one knows what Jalen’s ceiling can be. But I know, God willing, he can reach it because of all the factors that he has. So he’s not all of a sudden different. He’s still putting in the work like you’ve seen him put in the work the last couple of years.”

Hurts joined the Eagles in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft and, with four games remaining in his rookie season, moved into the starting lineup. The former Alabama standout has a season remaining on his four-year, $6.025 million rookie contract, and Philadelphia doesn’t plan to let the quarterback reach free agency next offseason or get into a franchise-tag situation with him.

In 2023, Hurts’ base salary will jump to $4.204 million, and he’ll count $4.789 million against Philadelphia’s salary cap – 2.1 percent of the Eagles’ allotment. Mahomes will take up 20.8 percent of Kansas City’s salary-cap obligations for 2023.

“It’s no secret that sometime relatively soon, we want to extend our quarterback,” Roseman said, “so our whole kind of roster building is going to turn a little bit here from a quarterback on a rookie deal to where it’s a quarterback, hopefully, on a long-term deal. Not that we have anything done, but that’s obviously our goal — to keep Jalen here for a really long time.”

Although Hurts remains on his rookie contract for now, Roseman said he’s already making allowances to accommodate the coming contract while working in free agency this offseason.

“When we’re looking at this free-agency period, we know the dynamics of our cap are going to have to change at some point, so we can’t just do that at some point,” Roseman said. “We have to look into team building not only this year but into 2024 and 2025. …

“I think you have to navigate the offseason understanding that we’re not going to lose our franchise quarterback with one year left on his deal. So whatever that means, it’s going to mean that (2024′s) going to look different. We’re not going to have a quarterback under a rookie deal.”

Philadelphia had a similar situation with the quarterback that Hurts replaced – Carson Wentz.

In June 2019, the Eagles signed Wentz to a four-year, $128 million contract extension before his fourth NFL season. He started 28 more games for Philadelphia and led the league in interceptions when he was benched for Hurts in 2020.

But on Tuesday, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said: “We’ll be working, I’m sure, with Jalen for a long time.”

“Seeing him virtually every day, he’s got an incredible passion for being phenomenal, and you see that in the great ones,” Lurie said. “We all know in other sports and with certain quarterbacks in this league, you can define them by their obsession with detail and work ethic. We always knew Jalen was talented and had a very live arm that we thought was discounted in college because he was such a great runner. And his character was always considered great. Maybe the advantage we had was we really respected his ability to throw the football and that that would improve based on tremendous work ethic.

“I think the future is so great for him. He’s 24 years old. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve met anybody that mature at 24.”

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Lurie said the most important aspect to paying a franchise quarterback and assembling a Super Bowl-caliber roster around him was having “the right quarterback.”

“The hardest part, for sure, is the scarcity of really good quarterbacks,” Lurie said, “and we’ve got one, and we’ve got a very special player and individual in that position.”

In addition to passing for 6,845 yards and 38 touchdowns over the past two regular seasons, Hurts has run for 1,544 yards and 23 touchdowns. Only one NFL player has more rushing touchdowns since the start of the 2021 season than Hurts.

After Hurts signs his next contract with the Eagles, Sirianni doesn’t plan to use the high-dollar quarterback any differently than he has the rookie-contract QB.

“Part of what makes Jalen special is everything that he can do,” Sirianni said, “so we’ll do what we have to do to win football games no matter what that is. And Jalen does a lot of things special, and we’ll try to showcase all the things that he does special. Try to recap the things we did last year with him, and then try to add some new wrinkles with different things that we do. We’ll do what we need to do to win games. We have a special quarterback, and we’ll use his special abilities.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.