Jalen Hurts had lost control.
Too caught up in the excitement, too blinded by the moment, he thrust his hands in the air, let out a scream, and went streaking down the sidelines to celebrate in the end zone.
There was just one problem. He wasn’t a player. He was the ball boy for a high school football team coached by his father and quarterbacked by his brother. He was working, and he forgot to do his job.
“You’re not there to be a fan,” Byron Henderson, Channelview High School’s offensive coordinator, remembers telling him. “You’re not there to watch the game. The referee calls for a ball, you need to give him a ball.
“So, his very first game he was a little excited. And after the game, we told him, ‘Hey, we need you to calm down.’”
It was understandable, though. Averion Hurts Jr., Jalen’s brother, had just thrown a 50-yard touchdown pass. And Jalen was about 10 years old.
That might actually be the last time anyone has had to tell the now-27-year-old Hurts that he needed to calm down and keep his emotions in check. In the years since, he has methodically turned himself into one of the most stoic, unbothered, unflappable athletes in the world. The quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles has become remarkable not just for all he’s achieved, but for the stone-faced, even-keeled way he’s handled all of it — the good and the bad.
Jalen Hurts has been on every major stage in football, and he’s maintained the same temperament every time. (Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)
And that includes the highest of highs — the Super Bowl championship he helped the Eagles win just 11 months ago. And it includes the lowest of lows — when he was famously benched at halftime of the 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship as a sophomore. Throughout it all, and as he leads the Eagles on their quest to repeat as champs — which begins in earnest Sunday when they host the San Francisco 49ers in the wild-card round (FOX, 4:30 p.m. ET) — Hurts’ expression has remained steely, his voice has stayed near a whisper, and his words have purposely never given the world more than a hint of what might be bubbling underneath.
His teammates call that consistency “very reassuring,” as Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata said. His personal trainer, Taylor Kelly, told me it’s the kind of intense focus and “competitor’s eye” that only the greatest athletes — such as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant — seem to have. Henderson, his former high school offensive coordinator, told me, “honestly and truly, he gets it from his dad,” who was also his head coach at Channelview High School in the suburbs of Houston, Texas.
Hurts’ dad, though, admitted he himself can’t quite figure his son out.
“I tell people that he’s different,” Averion Hurts Sr. told me. “Going to visit colleges, I’d tell coaches, ‘He’s a different cat.’ Their question would be, ‘So, what do you mean?’ I’d just say, ‘I can’t explain it. You’ll just have to see. He’s different.
“He’s always been locked in. I don’t know how or why. He just is, man.”
First flight
The knock at the door came every day around 5:30 p.m. School was over and so was football practice, and Henderson would be ready to head home for dinner or to see his family. But like clockwork, his sophomore quarterback, just 15 years old, would be at his door asking, “Where you going? I thought we could watch some more film.”
Henderson told me that he honestly found it “exhausting.” But “you don’t want to tell a kid ‘No.’ If a kid wants to get to work. You want to give the kid the work.”
And if there was one thing he knew about young Jalen Hurts, it was that the kid wanted to work. Hurts had been doing drills on the field at Channelview from the time he was 7 years old — dreaming, it turns out, of being a receiver, not a quarterback like his older brother. Once the coaches convinced him to play quarterback — “‘Well, who’s going to throw you the ball?'” Henderson remembers asking him — the work only intensified. He showed up at their summer camp as a freshman, not even officially on the varsity team yet, and he caught the eye of both the staff and the upperclassmen with his never-ending drive.
“All summer long he’s there, and he’s leading the group,” Henderson said. “He’s not getting in line. He’s in front of the line.”
“It’s real easy for people to say ‘Well, his dad is the coach.’ Unfortunately, I know whole lot of coaches’ sons who don’t want to lead, don’t want to be first in line, don’t want to be the first in the building, don’t want to be the last to leave.”
His teammates noticed, which is why they didn’t blink when Hurts played a little as a freshman — a “big deal,” Henderson said, even for a struggling 6A program in Texas. By the time he was a sophomore starter, his teammates were ready to follow him anywhere, do anything he wanted to do. And so when he knocked at Henderson’s door looking to watch more film, Hurts didn’t mean right away. First, he wanted to get in some extra practice on the field with his teammates — and all those kids were ready to extend their day to put in the extra work, too.
“Once he became a sophomore, my life changed,” Henderson said. “I played quarterback for Texas Southern and I thought that was an achievement for me. But my dad used to always say, ‘You don’t work hard enough.’ And I never understood what it meant, because I never missed practice, I always did what the coach told me to do, I was at every workout.
“But I never did the extra things. Jalen showed me what ‘work hard enough’ means.”
The Hurts we see today is the product of the one who grew up in Houston playing for his father. (Photo by Ken Murray/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The work paid off when Hurts did something that no other Channelview quarterback had done in 22 years — not even his older brother. He led the Falcons to the Texas high school playoffs. It was a huge accomplishment considering they went 1-9 when Hurts started as a sophomore, and were a program that Henderson noted was “not very prominent if you think about Texas high school football.”
Hurts was the catalyst for the turnaround, tallying 1,391 rushing yards and 2,384 passing yards with a combined 51 touchdowns while playing behind a dramatically undersized and overmatched offensive line. He was a force of nature and had established himself as one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks in the country.
But despite the success and attention from college coaches, his dad was always right there to make sure to keep his ego in check.
“You go through things and you can be sitting on top and you start smelling yourself, as they say, then all of a sudden it’s gone,” Hurts’ father told me. “So if you just don’t get too, too excited, if you do hit some bumps in the road, then it’s not something that’s going to totally derail you.”
Built by a benching
The moment that could have derailed him — maybe should have derailed him — came on the biggest stage. Jalen Hurts had forced his way onto the field in the season opener of his freshman year, and led the Crimson Tide all the way to the national championship game, where they lost a thriller to Clemson. But the real hardship came exactly 12 months later.
“His freshman year had been so easy for him,” Henderson told me. “So in his mind, he’s like, ‘Shoot, what’s next? Heisman? Going to win the national championship this year?’ That’s where his mind was.
“Well, he didn’t have a very good [sophomore] 12 months. All of it led to the benching. And it humbled him. Not simply outlined him. It harm him.”
The benching got here at halftime of his second nationwide championship sport, along with his workforce trailing 13-0. And, with cameras specializing in him on the sidelines, he needed to simply stand there and watch as Tua Tagovailoa, a real freshman, took his job and rallied Alabama to an additional time victory over Georgia. It was a public humiliation in what ought to have been his second of triumph.
On the time, he was solely 19 years outdated. And there was nowhere for him to cover.
Hurts led Alabama to consecutive nationwide title appearances however was benched within the latter contest and didn’t begin for the Crimson Tide once more. (Photograph by Simon Bruty/Sports activities Illustrated by way of Getty Photographs)
“That was the primary set of adversity that would’ve killed him,” Eagles defensive finish Brandon Graham instructed me. “So I at all times really feel like for him, he is aware of he’s been there earlier than. It don’t at all times really feel good when you need to return to that. However you understand you’ve been constructed for it.
“I feel that he was constructed for it.”
And, in some ways, he was constructed by it.
“I keep in mind watching that for myself, pondering, ‘This might go one or two methods,” Kelly, who wasn’t but Hurts’ private coach, instructed me. “How are you going to reply? And if you get the chance to get again in, what are you going to do with it?”
“I used to be very frightened. Extraordinarily,” Henderson instructed me. “As a result of I understand how exhausting the child labored and I do know the conversations we had earlier than that. In order that benching … I used to be afraid was going to interrupt him.
“However he had his dad.”
There have been tears shed after the benching, however Father and Son don’t prefer to dwell on these. Averion Hurts Sr. simply needed to be there for Jalen, each as a father and as a coach. And as each, he needed to ensure his son, and his former participant, realized from this harsh lesson in actuality.
So he did no matter he may to ensure Jalen would emerge even stronger on the opposite aspect.
“In fact it harm,” Averion Hurts instructed me. “However you’ll be able to’t simply sit there. Worrying’s not going to repair it. You simply obtained to determine what you’re going to do subsequent and transfer ahead.”
By the point Jalen was prepared to maneuver ahead, his dad was prepared, too. He had a folder crammed with analysis and details about coaches, schemes and packages so he may assist work out what was the following finest transfer for his son. He helped persuade Jalen to spend another 12 months at Alabama, even when he needed to again up Tagovailoa, to study underneath head coach Nick Saban earlier than he moved on.
“Him staying at Alabama, that wasn’t by probability,” Henderson recalled. “That was calculated as a result of, on the time, it was the very best factor for him. Everybody’s telling him to depart. Everyone. Even my very first thing was, ‘S—, the place are we going?’ And his dad was like, ‘Not so quick.'”
To his dad, the lesson was a very powerful factor — the concept some belongings you simply “[have] to undergo.” He insisted to his son that “perseverance” is what would matter most ultimately. It’s the embodiment of a motto Jalen obtained from a buddy: “So what? Now what?”
Or, as his dad explains, “Mainly, when adversity occurs, now what are you going to do?”
“They are saying he obtained benched as a result of he wasn’t throwing the ball effectively. Properly, he wasn’t,” Hurts’ father instructed me. “And so it occurred. However the consequence on the finish, it’s not the place you began, it’s the place you end. And I didn’t assume he was completed but.”
Regardless of the benching, Hurts remained at Alabama for one more 12 months and nobly backed up Tua Tagovailoa. (Photograph by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Photographs)
Hurts ended up staying another 12 months at Alabama. He performed sparingly, however he did have a second the place he changed an injured Tagovailoa to, fittingly, lead a comeback win over Georgia within the SEC Championship Recreation. Hurts then transferred to Oklahoma, the place he threw for 3,851 yards, ran for 1,298 and led the Sooners to the Huge 12 championship and the School Soccer Playoff and emerged as a second-round decide within the 2020 NFL Draft.
He had been humbled, and he survived. He even thrived. And he realized what big-time sports activities had been actually about alongside the way in which.
“It’s a case the place that state of affairs was self-inflicted,” his dad instructed me. “Sports activities is a performance-based enterprise. You carry out, you play. You don’t, you don’t. That’s simply the way it goes. Everybody has to carry up their finish of the discount. I feel it’s one thing that helped proceed his maturation course of.
“The tears had been there. However that’s not going to repair it. So that you do away with that and work out the following step. What are you going to do now?”
Heavy is the pinnacle that wears the crown
Kelly at all times is aware of what Hurts goes to do subsequent, whether or not he’s knocked down by a efficiency or questioned by outsiders. The previous Arizona State quarterback can see the look in Hurts’ eyes when he trains him in the course of the offseason at 3DQB in Huntington Seaside, Calif. He’s seen it at press conferences, in pictures, and when cameras zoom in on his star pupil throughout video games on TV.
Hurts would by no means admit to being affected by circumstances or doubters. However Kelly is aware of.
“Everytime you doubt him, I don’t even know tips on how to say it: He simply proves you fallacious,” Kelly instructed me. “He’s not essentially utilizing it as gasoline. It is not like he’s pondering, ‘Man they stated I can’t throw the ball.’ You by no means hear him say any of that. He simply will get this look in his eye and also you’re like, ‘Oh, alright. It’s on. Good luck, everyone.’
“While you see that in a competitor’s eye … There’s only a few. Steph Curry’s obtained it. LeBron has it. Jordan had it. Kobe. While you see that look in any person’s eyes, it’s like, ‘OK, it’s about to be an extended night time for any person.’”
It’s the strategy Hurts takes to coaching with Kelly — 2-3 instances per week within the offseason, beginning only a few weeks after the Eagles’ season ends. Kelly stated it’s “difficult” to coach a pushed participant like Hurts, who pushes the coach to drill him on small issues that others would possibly overlook. Generally, he stated, they may work on how Hurts strikes his hips as he runs to his left, or the quantity of motion in his neck when he throws on the run to his proper.
He finds his personal flaws, nonetheless small they is likely to be, and insists they discover a solution to repair them.
“When these guys get to that time, they’re on the lookout for that one % in an offseason,” Kelly stated. “What’s that one % that I can get higher at?”
However that want comes from inside, not from the doubters on the surface. And that’s good, as a result of the doubters are at all times in all places round Hurts. He was the MVP of Tremendous Bowl LIX not even a 12 months in the past, however when he threw 4 interceptions throughout a 22-19 loss on Monday Evening Soccer to the Los Angeles Chargers in early December, it was like he was immediately deleted from each listing of elite NFL quarterbacks. Followers had been booing him. Your complete metropolis of Philadelphia gave the impression to be questioning what was fallacious with him.
There have been even public cries for him to be benched.
“I feel that taking part in quarterback within the NFL, you are going to get a number of consideration — optimistic, destructive, all consideration,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni stated. “When that occurs, any little factor [that can] distract you, it’s worthwhile to block out. I feel that is why Jalen can deal with it so effectively is as a result of he’s so locked in and targeted and never distracted by issues to have the ability to lock in onto what he must do to get himself able to play.”
Linebacker Nakobe Dean added: “Since he is been within the league, it looks like he is on prime of the mountain sooner or later within the public eye, and within the subsequent they’re attempting to bury him. And also you simply see a man that is available in with the identical resolve, the identical mindset every week to work and get higher.”
Hurts’ play has typically drawn its fair proportion of criticism. However by no means his work ethic. (Photograph by Terence Lewis/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Photographs)
His longtime teammates have realized to have the ability to inform when issues are actually bothering their quarterback. However additionally they know he prefers to deal with it privately. And often he handles it by simply going again to work.
“Generally he beats himself up,” Graham instructed me. “However I feel that for probably the most half, who doesn’t? You might have folks which you can go to in these instances. However the largest factor is, if you don’t take heed to the noise, you’ll be able to actually focus as a result of that’s only a distraction. I feel he does a fantastic job of not worrying about that half, however typically it’s extra [about] your self as a critic than everyone else.”
Or, as Graham additionally put it, “It’s heavy to put on that crown, man. Lots of people assume they need that crown till they see how heavy it’s.”
It may possibly really feel heaviest in a metropolis like Philadelphia, particularly taking part in for a franchise the place the expectations have turn into extremely excessive.
‘A special cat’
Hurts, by any measure, is likely one of the winningest quarterbacks in NFL historical past. He’s obtained a 57-25 common season report as a starter since he succeeded veteran Carson Wentz as a rookie in 2020, for a sturdy profitable proportion of .695. He’s led the Eagles to double-digit wins in every of the previous 4 seasons and brought them to the playoffs in every of his 5 full seasons as a starter. He’s obtained a playoff report of 6-3, too, and has taken them to the Tremendous Bowl twice. And each instances he was excellent, together with when he threw for 221 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 72 yards and a landing of their 40-22 rout of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs in Tremendous Bowl LIX final 12 months.
He is a harmful, dual-threat quarterback, and is usually hailed as a exceptional chief inside a star-studded locker room. However the doubters are clearly there. Generally it is simply a part of taking part in for a demanding and skeptical fan base in Philadelphia. However typically the skeptics have been on his personal workforce, like when No. 1 receiver A.J. Brown singled out “passing” as what the Eagles wanted to enhance on most late final 12 months. And nationally, he not often will get recognition as an elite participant. He’s been an All-Professional simply as soon as (2022, on the second workforce) and has gone to the Professional Bowl solely twice (2022, 2023).
The main target with him is usually on what he would not do, perhaps extra so this season than ever. However the offense as an entire has struggled underneath the path of Kevin Patullo, the Eagles’ fourth offensive coordinator up to now 4 seasons. The membership ranked nineteenth in scoring (22.3) within the common season and failed to attain 20 factors in eight video games.
Whereas Hurts threw for a career-high 25 touchdowns with solely six interceptions, his speeding totals (421 yards, eight touchdowns) had been his lowest ever as a starter. And there have been two video games this season when he didn’t full a single go within the second half. Philly, apparently, went 9-0 when Hurts threw for lower than 200 yards.
That’s why, heading into the postseason, there’s a feeling that the Eagles will solely go so far as their protection carries them, that their Hurts-led offense has turn into a legal responsibility to their title protection. And that may very well be an issue in an NFC subject loaded with the Seahawks, Rams, Bears and 49ers—4 of the ten highest-scoring groups within the league.
Hurts will be the reigning Tremendous Bowl MVP and simply 11 months faraway from a parade down Broad Avenue, however the religion in him coming into the playoffs feels unusually low.
“Society is blinded by aesthetics,” Henderson instructed me. “We wish it to look a sure manner. We don’t wish to hear about you throwing 135 yards and two touchdowns. You all are profitable, however that ain’t what we wish to see. We wish to see Patrick Mahomes go on the market and run round for 2 minutes after which launch a ball, or Lamar Jackson shake two or three folks and take off working. That’s aesthetics for folks.
“Whereas true soccer folks, we don’t care. We wish the win.”
And that, ultimately, is all Hurts desires, too. Kelly remembered watching on tv final February as a digicam adopted Hurts down a hallway earlier than the Tremendous Bowl. Hurts stopped to take a look at the pregame present that was airing, the place each analyst had simply picked the two-time defending champion Chiefs to win.
“The cameras caught him shrugging a little bit bit and looking out on the display screen,” Kelly instructed me. “I knew precisely what was in his thoughts. ‘OK, they’re doubting us.’ That’s most likely the worst factor you are able to do, as a result of it’s simply including motivation to him.”
That was a uncommon second the place the world caught a glimpse of what was actually on Hurts’ thoughts. There was one other just a few weeks in the past, in a 31-0 rout of the Raiders, when Hurts celebrated his third landing go of the day — a 27-yard strike to Brown — with a primal display screen and a number of other pumps of his fists and arms.
That the bizarre outburst got here one week after his four-interception nightmare, simply days after some known as for his benching, wasn’t misplaced on anybody in any respect.
“It’s not that he wants (the doubts),” Kelly instructed me. “It’s identical to, ‘Alright. If that’s what you wish to do, OK. Right here we go.’ That may be a trait that you simply both have or don’t. Some folks, they know tips on how to deal with that kind of criticism or these moments and it’s simply an innate habits to go and show everybody fallacious.”
With Hurts, it appears each innate and purchased. It comes from his expertise. It comes from who he’s. And it comes from the data of what his father instructed me he as soon as instructed his son: “With extra accountability comes extra expectations.”
In different phrases, the world is at all times watching — perhaps now greater than ever. And Hurts is aware of it, too.
“Everyone’s watching. It simply comes with it and it hasn’t modified,” he stated. “I feel everyone wants to recollect the place I come from and the way I am constructed. I simply wish to lead in the appropriate manner, set the appropriate instance. I’ve completed the identical factor since I went to College of Alabama and all the things that has been in entrance of me, so it is no totally different now.”
That’s, in spite of everything, the way in which he was coached and raised. It is as if he spent a lifetime particularly getting ready to be the quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, studying tips on how to shrug off the doubts so he may make one other Tremendous Bowl run.
“It truthfully doesn’t faze him,” Henderson instructed me. “It’s not an act. Every thing he went by makes him the right quarterback for Philadelphia. As a result of that’s one harsh city in terms of sports activities.
“The child is simply bred otherwise.”
He can thank his dad for many of that. Hurts clearly took each lesson he was taught to coronary heart.
“I coach that manner,” his father instructed me. “Now the emotion will come out for the dangerous, and also you’re going to at all times cheer for achievement. However as for simply being overly emotional, it’s at all times been, ‘Don’t get too excited with the highs or too down with the lows. Keep even-keeled, so that you don’t have too far to come back down or too far to go up.”
“He simply type of takes it to a different degree. Yeah, he’s a unique cat.”
Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports activities. He spent six years overlaying the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and earlier than that, 16 years overlaying the Giants and the NFL for the New York Every day Information. Observe him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.
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