‘He has the clutch gene’: Eagles had no doubt in QB Jalen Hurts

PHILADELPHIA — Jalen Hurts’ father, Averion, was waiting by the field entrance inside the Superdome as the final minutes of Super Bowl LIX ticked off the clock on Sunday.

Occasional roars, whistles and E-A-G-L-E-S chants echoed through the tunnel as Philadelphia put the finishing touches on a resounding 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs, and Averion’s son was about to be named MVP. Hurts, who had 293 yards and three touchdowns, definitively outdueled Patrick Mahomes. Soon, Averion would make his way onto the field and share a long embrace with his son, green and white confetti under foot.

“I am just so humbly happy for him. That’s first and foremost and that’s all I care about as a daddy,” Averion said, talking with a cadence and exuding a command that sounded and felt like Jalen’s.

“I cried a little bit earlier. And I haven’t cried since USC-Alabama. I hadn’t shed a tear since then. But for whatever reason, it came out. So I guess it was the right time: They won that game and they won this game so evidently, the tears brought joy and victory.”

USC-Alabama was Hurts’ first collegiate game. He had recently graduated from Channelview High School, where Averion coached him, and joined the Tide. Jalen came off the bench and scored four touchdowns to lead a 52-6 rout.

Much has transpired between then and now. From becoming the first true freshman to start for Nick Saban and lead Alabama to the national title game in each of his first two seasons, to being benched at halftime in the 2018 championship game against Georgia and subsequently losing the starting gig to Tua Tagovailoa.

There was the rebound after transferring to Oklahoma, where Hurts finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting before being selected by the Eagles in the second round of the 2020 NFL draft. He beat out Carson Wentz for the starting job, had an MVP-caliber season in Year 2 and the game of his life against the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, but fell just short in a 38-35 heartbreaker. The promise of a return to that stage in 2023 was rocked by a historic collapse.

There was a catch in Hurts’ typically steady voice as he reflected on some of those moments at the podium after the Super Bowl victory.

“It’s not normal,” Hurts said, wearing a gray championship T-shirt with the matching hat turned backwards, a smile briefly creeping across his face. “It’s been a very unprecedented journey. It’s always the beginning until it’s the end.

“It means a lot: Quantifying all that work over the years, embracing everything, taking every challenge head-on and taking every joy and moment of achievement and success head-on as well and processing them all as one.”

It was a different kind of year for Hurts. The offensive coaching staff decided to become more centered around running back Saquon Barkley following a 2-2 start plagued by turnovers, seven of which were charged to Hurts.

He had just three giveaways the rest of the way and ended up tied for the fewest among quarterbacks on the season, helping Philadelphia rattle off 10 straight wins. But with one passing performance of 200-plus yards over the final seven regular-season games, there were questions about whether Hurts could turn on the aerial attack.

Hurts answered that emphatically in the NFC Championship Game against the Washington Commanders (20-of-28, 246 yards, TD) and in the Super Bowl versus the Chiefs (17-of-22, 221 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT). He punctuated it with a 46-yard knockout-punch touchdown throw to DeVonta Smith late in the third quarter that extended Philly’s lead to 34-0.

“Going into this game, he was the least of my worries,” said Eagles chairman and CEO Jeffrey Lurie, his voice barely rising over the postgame celebration in the Eagles locker room a stone’s throw away. “I knew he would play great, just as he did two years ago. You have to worry about almost everything; that’s one thing I didn’t even think about. I just said, ‘We’ve got the quarterback.’

“He’s 26, incredibly clutch, he knows what correlates with winning. Sometimes it’s through the ground game, sometimes it’s through the passing game. You’ve got to be able to do both. They really did a great job against Saquon today, but Jalen is a great thrower of the football, a quick decision-maker when he needs to be. He has the clutch gene.”

Always grinding, one of the challenges for Hurts coming into this season was to step into more of a vocal, forward-facing role. According to teammates, that happened.

An example of Hurts stirring his teammates with his words came on the eve of Super Bowl Sunday. As he had in the first championship matchup with the Chiefs, coach Nick Sirianni opened the floor for the players to speak during the team meeting at the hotel on Saturday night.

“I’ll tell you right now, I knew we were winning that football game after all the players talked in front of that room,” defensive back Sydney Brown told ESPN.

Brown cited two people specifically after making that statement: safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Hurts.

“I don’t know how to explain the emotion that Jalen had in his speech,” Brown said. “It was unbelievable. There’s a reason why he won Super Bowl MVP. He’s the best in the world.”

Players from that 2022 squad haven’t been shy about the lasting sting of the Super Bowl LVII loss to Kansas City and how it continued to fuel them two years later. Early the following season, a teammate’s livestream during a team function inadvertently showed that Hurts had changed the lock screen on his phone to a picture of him walking off the field following that defeat with the red and gold confetti falling from the sky. It remains his lock screen to this day.

Asked whether he’ll change it now that he has a number of celebratory photos to replace it with, Hurts said he may keep it as continued motivation to get back to another Super Bowl. After all, the story of Hurts’ triumphs can’t be told without prefacing them with the setbacks he has bounced back from.

“I watched him walk off the field under that confetti and felt his pain,” Averion said. “I just didn’t want to feel that pain again.

“And I’m so happy — I don’t feel it because he doesn’t. I’m just happy for him. It’s a blessing because of how hard he works.”