Jalen Hurts: New season, same challenge

PHILADELPHIA — The ongoing quest by Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts for respect resumed in earnest Thursday as the Eagles and Dallas Cowboys kicked off the National Football League’s 106th season.

Hurts was Hurts — running, passing, doing whatever it took — to begin the Eagles’ title defense with a 24-20 victory over Dallas on an odd opening night.

The Eagles celebrated their Super Bowl victory with fireworks and a ceremony that featured owner Jeffrey Lurie walking down a red carpet holding the Lombardi Trophy,

Missing from the ceremony, however, were Eagles players..

Following the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory, head coach Nick Sirianni has responded to questions about defending a title by saying the team has already forgotten last season, that the Eagles are looking forward, not backward. He said the team would not participate in the championship celebration because it was focused on the present and the future, not the past. The Eagles took the field after the ceremony ended.

Then there was a bizarre spitting episode. Before the Cowboys’ first offensive series, Eagles second-year defensive tackle Jalen Carter, the anchor of a great defensive line, spat on Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott. Carter not only spat on Prescott in front of thousands of fans inside the stadium and millions of TV viewers, he also spat in front of referee Shawn Smith, who promptly tossed Carter out of the game. He was done before he began.

In an odd way, the referee was leveling the playing field. Carter was the Eagles’ best pass rusher, and the Cowboys were playing without their best pass rusher, Micah Parsons. In one of the most stunning trades in recent NFL history, Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones traded Parsons to the Green Bay Packers in August after failing to come to an agreement over an extension. The trade was comparable to the NBA transaction that sent Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic to the Lakers for Anthony Davis.

In any event, this was the backdrop to the Eagles-Cowboys season opener: the Parsons trade, the spitting episode, and a championship celebration boycotted by the players.

In the midst of the chaos and excitement, Hurts quieted the waters and steadied the ship.

Seven months ago, in Super Bowl LIX, the ever-poised Hurts turned in an MVP performance as the Eagles routed the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs 40-22. Hurts was at his understated best that evening, completing 30 of 39 passes, throwing two touchdown passes and running for a third.

On Thursday against Dallas, Hurts took up where he left off in that Super Bowl game, which he and the Eagles say they’ve already erased from their memory bank.

On opening night, Hurts completed 19 of his 23 passes for 152 yards. More significantly, he ran — no, he scrambled — for two touchdowns.

Hurts runs but he rarely scrambles. He executes designed runs, most famously the Brotherly Shove, but you won’t see him running around and improvising his way out of a collapsing pocket. On Thursday he did, scoring on a 4-yard run after the pocket collapsed and an 8-yard run. He carried 14 times for 52 yards.

Yet, despite Hurts’ overall body of work and his Super Bowl performance and two Super Bowl appearances, he begins this season yet again on a quest to earn stature as one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks.

Critics continue to frame Hurts as a gifted game manager, a talented but not spectacular quarterback who is surrounded by outstanding talent, a rock-solid offensive line and a world-class defense. In a poll of NFL executives, general managers and coaches, Hurts was placed in Tier 3, the lowest among Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks.

An ESPN poll ranked Hurts ninth among NFL quarterbacks. On more than one occasion, Sirianni has passionately come to Hurts’ defense.

During a recent interview on a Sirius NFL radio program, Sirianni said Hurts simply brings the victories.

“He won and he was big time. That’s what you love about him,” Sirianni said. “Just his desire to get better, his desire to win and do anything necessary to win. What I admire most about him is his selflessness.”

Sirianni added that when Philadelphia transitioned to more of a running attack because of the addition of Saquan Barkley, Hurts adjusted.

“Last year we handed the ball off a little bit more, but his job was to be efficient,” he said. “I know a lot of people will talk about passing yards or passing touchdowns, but the job of a quarterback is to be efficient with the football and win football games. I could go on all day about how much I think of Jalen Hurts.”

Yet Hurts’ name is frequently omitted during discussions of elite NFL quarterbacks: Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, even young Jayden Daniels. In fact, Hurts has the second-highest winning percentage among active NFL starting quarterbacks behind Mahomes.

Hurts does what it takes to win. He does not overflow with emotion when he does it. He does not win with the flair of Jackson, is not a swashbuckler like Allen, and not a completion machine like Burrow. He does, however, make winning plays. Where Jackson and Allen have come up short in the postseason, Hurts has made winning plays when winning plays needed to be made.

He’s also a mentor. When it comes to the legacy of Black quarterbacks, Hurts is a keeper of the flame. He understands the tradition and the legacy. In some ways, he’s driven by the legacy.

As a new NFL season begins and 37 years after Doug Williams made history as the first African American to start a Super Bowl game, a record 16 African American quarterbacks are expected to start in Week 1. Three years ago, Hurts and Mahomes made history when they became the first African American quarterbacks to face each other in a Super Bowl.

After Thursday night’s game, I asked Hurts about the significance of half the NFL’s starting quarterbacks being Black. Specifically, I wondered if the new generation of Black quarterbacks attached significance to such a statistic. Do they still see themselves as being part of a special fraternity?

“I can’t speak for everyone else. I can speak on what that means to me, and I know I’ve watched so many before me that have allowed me to be who I am,” he said. “They’ve had an influence on my game. I’ve learned from them, all of them, and I’ve been able to just pick and apply to myself.

“I know that times have changed; at one point we were labeled as incompetent and not able to do those things. I’ve experienced that myself personally, and so it’s something I do have pride in.”

So, Hurts begins a new season with a sense of mission. He will likely always play with a chip on his shoulder, will play on behalf of those who never had the opportunity to play quarterback and the early Black pioneers who were marginalized and underestimated.

He is part of an evolution that has led to 50% of starting quarterbacks being African American. This is not something he takes lightly; indeed, it is the source of his inspiration.

“It’s definitely something that you can’t take for granted, and you can’t forget nor lose sight of the journey of how you got there,” he said. “I know for me it was not an easy journey, getting to where I am and getting to this point. It’s something that’s always in the back of my mind when I go out there.”

New season, same challenge.