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PHILADELPHIA – You can thank the NFL’s greed for no official midpoint of the season any longer unless you consider halftime of Game No. 9 for each club a proper demarcation line.

That said, the Philadelphia Eagles bye week coming on Week 10 after an 8-1 start is a pretty solid dividing point for the Delaware Valley’s football fans and that means it’s time for SI.com’s Eagles Today annual midseason awards:

FIRST HALF MVP – QB Jalen Hurts – The modern game has virtually rigged this kind of award for quarterbacks if you happen to have a good one and the Eagles officially have a great one in Hurts.

The runner-up for last year’s NFL MVP honors to Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, Hurts is again on the shortlist for this season’s award despite playing through a painful bone bruise to his left knee suffered on Oct. 8 against the Los Angeles Rams.

With his mobility curtailed Hurts is dominating as a pocket passer, amassing a gaudy 125.5 passer rating over his past three games against Miami, Washington, and Dallas while completing 75.0 percent of his passes, averaging 8.7 yards per attempt and throwing eight touchdown passes against just one interception over that span.

Through nine games, Hurts is 10th in the NFL in passer rating (97.0), tied for fourth with fellow MVP hopeful Lamar Jackson of Baltimore in yards per attempt (7.7), fifth in passing yards (2,347), sixth in completion percentage (68.9), sixth in touchdown passes (15), sixth in completions of 20-plus yards (32) and second in total touchdowns by a quarterback (22).

Perhaps most importantly the Eagles are 25-2 (.926) in the last 27 regular-season games started by Hurts dating back to Week 15 of the 2021 season.

Sources say that’s pretty valuable.

BEST PLAYER AND OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE FIRST HALF – WR A.J. Brown – The best pure football player on the Eagles over the season’s first nine games has been Brown, who already has 67 receptions for 1,005 yards and six touchdowns.

Any time you can accomplish something that’s never been done before in the NFL confirms a ridiculous level of performance. Brown did exactly that by putting up six consecutive games with 125 or more receiving yards, numbers even players like Jerry Rice, Randy Moss, and Calvin Johnson never mustered.

FIRST HALF DEFENSIVE MVP – CB Darius Slay – Slay’s willingness to move inside to shadow CeeDee Lamb late in the Week 9 win over Dallas, along with how much he’s on the field, highlights why the veteran cornerback gets this award over the better players Philadelphia has on the defensive line.

Slay has played 513 defensive snaps this season and his leadership has helped an injury-ravaged secondary find ways to hang in week in and week out.