MVP Jalen Hurts and his Philadelphia Eagles find multiple ways to Super Bowl success

NEW ORLEANS – Jalen Hurts was comfortable sharing the spotlight from September through January.

But on Feb 9, the Eagles’ quarterback stepped to the forefront and earned the Most Valuable Player Award in Philadelphia’s 40-22 victory against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX at the Caesars Superdome.

“Jalen just knows how to win,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “He does a great job of blocking out the noise. He’s special.”

Hurts denied Kansas City what would have been the first three-peat in Super Bowl history. He completed 17 of 22 passes for 221 yards and two touchdowns and rushed for 72 yards and a touchdown, becoming the fifth player with multiple touchdown passes and a rushing touchdown in a Super Bowl.

The five-year veteran was characteristically humble in sharing the credit, saying: “It took a total team effort. The defence played the way they have all year.

“Defences win championships, and you saw how they were the difference in the game. They gave us opportunities with short fields, and we made the plays we had to make in order to put points on the board.”

Saquon Barkley joined the Eagles as a free agent from the New York Giants last off-season and greatly enhanced the team’s rushing game by gaining more than 2,000 yards.

Barkley and the Eagles’ top-rated defence also excelled in three play-off games, while the passing game was inconsistent and Hurts was hobbled by a knee injury suffered in the divisional game against the Los Angeles Rams.

“We’ve been able to find multiple ways to win,” Hurts said.

On Feb 9, he led an efficient offence that accumulated 21 first downs and had the ball for nearly 37 minutes by making big plays that staggered the Chiefs.

On Philadelphia’s second possession, he threw completions of 20 yards to Dallas Goedert and 27 yards to Jahan Dotson, leading to Hurts’ one-yard sneak for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead.

After throwing an interception with his team in field-goal range on the team’s next possession, he bounced right back by throwing a 22-yard completion to A.J. Brown to set up Jake Elliott’s 48-yard field goal and a 10-0 lead.

“I try to embrace every situation,” Hurts said. “I try to turn every negative into a positive, every weakness into a strength.”

The Eagles also led the Chiefs by 10 points at half-time in the Super Bowl in 2023 and wound up losing 38-35. This time, the team kept extending the lead.

The defence chipped in a 38-yard interception return for a touchdown by rookie Cooper DeJean and a Zack Baun interception at the Kansas City 14-yard line, leading to Hurts’ 12-yard touchdown pass to Brown and a 24-0 half-time lead.

On the Eagles’ first possession of the third quarter, Hurts had scrambles for 16 yards and 14 yards and threw a 22-yard completion to Barkley, leading to Elliott’s 29-yard field goal.

Then late in the third quarter, on the first play after the Chiefs turned the ball over on downs at their 46, Hurts launched a touchdown pass to DaVonta Smith for a 34-0 lead.

From there, Hurts managed the game well enough to get two more field goals from Elliott amid Kansas City scores that never threatened the lead.

Hurts’ performance ended a series of disappointments in championship opportunities. In the 2023 Super Bowl loss, he passed for 304 yards and a touchdown and rushed for 70 yards and three scores.

“As good as it was,” Hurts said on Feb 9, “It wasn’t enough to win. Sometimes you have to accept that you have to wait your turn.”

“It’s been an unprecedented journey,” he added. “There have been ups and downs, highs and lows. But it’s been a fun ride.”

The ride may be just beginning for the 26-year-old.

“It’s always the beginning until it’s the end. And I’m a long way from the end,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes described the loss as the “worst feeling in the world” but vowed he and the team would bounce back.

The 29-year-old has three Super Bowl rings but now has two defeats after the 2020-2021 loss to Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“Any time you lose a Super Bowl, it’s the worst feeling in the world. It will stick with you the rest of your career,” said Mahomes.

“Those have been two losses that will motivate me to be even better for the rest of my career because you only get a few of these and you have to capitalise on them,” he said.

He said he had not played to the standards he had set himself this season and suggested that defences had found ways to frustrate him.

“I’m about to find a way this off-season to combat what defences are doing to me as far as rush lanes and the different coverages they are playing,” he added.

“The beauty of football is that you can’t be satisfied with just playing and thinking you will have success year in, year out. These defences are going to continue to get better and better and so I have to get better too.”

Tight-end Travis Kelce said Philadelphia deserved credit, adding that the Chiefs had delivered their worst performance of the season in the biggest game.

“Hats off to the Eagles, man. They got after us in all three phases,” he said.

“We couldn’t get it going offensively, they got after us, and then on top of that we had turnovers, penalties, dropped passes.

“We just couldn’t find that spark. Couldn’t find that momentum going through the game.” REUTERS, AFP