Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts scored three total touchdowns to lead his side to a 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday night, a performance that earned him the Super Bowl MVP award.
Hurts opened the scoring with a rushing touchdown via the Eagles’ signature ‘tush push’ play and threw two passing touchdowns to AJ Brown and Devonta Smith in a dominant victory for Nick Sirianni’s Birds.
Philadelphia came into the game as slight underdogs, but blew the reigning back-to-back champions out of the water, getting to a 24-0 lead at the break, before spoiling their quest to become the first team to win three straight Vince Lombardi trophies.
Despite not being considered an ‘elite’ quarterback in the same conversation as the likes of the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, 2024 MVP Josh Allen, two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, and fellow 2020 draftee Joe Burrow, Hurts is developing a reputation for saving his best for big games.
Jalen Hurts during the playoffs:
— PFF (@PFF) February 10, 2025
🦅 81.9% adjusted completion rate
🦅 920 total yards
🦅 10 total TDs
🦅 1 INT
🏆 Super Bowl MVP pic.twitter.com/aquxQlgKrb
British NFL writer and broadcaster Ben Isaacs, author of ‘The American Football Revolution: How Britain Fell in Love with the NFL‘, believes that comes down to his mentality.
Hurts suffered big game heartache in college with Alabama, being benched midway through the 2018 National Championship game in favour of now Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagavailoa, who spearheaded a turnaround from a 13-point deficit to win the title in overtime.
Isaacs pinpoints the experience of adversity in the benching by legendary head coach Nick Saban (in front of 77,000 spectators and students in Atlanta, and 28.4 million television viewers) as a factor in Hurts’ ability to deal with the pressure when the lights shine the brightest.
“He’s got the right mentality, and I do wonder how much of it came from that game. He’d been great all season, but it was clear he was not getting it done against Georgia.
“Tua came in, and won the game in a fantastic comeback, and kept the job. Imagine how devastating that must be,” said Isaacs.
Since coming into the league in 2020, Hurts has constantly had to prove his worth. After a year on the sidelines backing up Tagovailoa, he transferred to Oklahoma, where his good play resulted in him coming second to Burrow in the 2020 Heisman Trophy race, and raised his draft stock to a second-round grade.
But many talent evaluators believed that he would be an average quarterback, and that his athletic profile would be better suited at another position such as running back.
He was selected by the Eagles in the second round of the 2020 draft, a team that at the time already had a ‘franchise’ quarterback in Carson Wentz, and wanted to use Hurts creatively.
Hurts took every opportunity to touch the ball for granted, and earned the job as Philadelphia’s starter by the end of his rookie year, outplaying Wentz who just a year prior became the quarterback with the highest guaranteed contract, sitting at $107.9 million over four years.
“It’s crazy that a now Super Bowl MVP quarterback came into the NFL with people saying he shouldn’t play quarterback. Hurts really impressed me last night,” he said.
“One of the things he did well last night were those medium to deep balls. I thought that if they forced him into having to do things like that, then the Chiefs would win.
“They didn’t really force him into it, they just decided to do that because they liked the matchups that they had. It was never done out of desperation, it was the game plan.”
Hurts’ late third quarter 46-yard touchdown pass to launch the Eagles to an insurmountable 34-0 lead was caught by the same player that caught the winning touchdown in the college title game, Devonta Smith. A full circle moment for the quarterback who epitomises the saying, ‘never give up’.
