Today, Valentine’s Day, might be the only day of the year that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts sends flowers. The other 364 days he sends messages. The reigning Super Bowl MVP has put the NFL on notice that he is not to be messed with. You want to eff with QB1, you do so at your own peril. Just ask Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who I’ve always thought was a cross between Dracula and Michael Myers, because of his unparalleled survival rate, seemingly impossible to kill until last Sunday when the Birds finally drove a stake through his heart and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
I can’t recall how many times I’ve said this on and off a public platform but I would much rather have a locker room full of guys that hate to lose more than they like to win. There is a difference. Chasing a euphoric moment just doesn’t quite have the urgency or immediacy as trying to prevent a cataclysmic finality that, in the sports world, tends to mirror death. Having a locker room filled with players who are allergic to the anguish and mental pain of failure and will pretty much do whatever it takes to stave it off gives you the best chance of winning.
Tom Brady was one of those guys. Michael Jordan was one of those guys. Kobe Bryant was one of those guys. Wayne Gretzky was one of those guys. They were assassins. Ruthless hit men cloaked in colorful uniforms, loved by some, hated by others and surrounded by shiny metal artifacts that validated their greatness when it was time to go. Eagles’ quarterback Jalen Hurts appears to be one of those guys in the making.
The Walk-off Wounded
Exactly two years ago from this past Tuesday the Birds’ leading man walked off the field in Glendale, Arizona amidst a blizzard of red and yellow Lombardi trophy shaped confetti, dejected and despondent. His team had just lost a gut wrenching, heartbreaking game to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 57, 38-35. It was indeed the worst loss in the history of the franchise.
It wasn’t just the loss that left such a gaping wound in the quarterback’s side but it was the way the game was lost. The Eagles took a 10 point lead into the 3rd quarter after completely dominating the first half. As for Hurts, he silenced a lot of his critics even in a loss as he clearly stood out that day as the best player on the field. Hurts threw for 304 yards and a touchdown and he ran for three more and set a Super Bowl record at the time with 70 rushing yards. Unfortunately Hurts did turn the ball over early in the second quarter with an unforced fumble that was scooped up by Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton and returned for a score. It was Hurts’ only mistake of the game and it cost his team dearly.
Hurts is an eyes-downfield-don’t-look-back kind of athlete. You win or you learn as he likes to say. You learn from your mistakes and move on. And that’s exactly what he and his Eagle teammates did. Once the aftermath of that game died down I never heard him utter a word about that catastrophic loss that day again, until the past week.
But that’s the scary thing about sociopathic killers. You don’t know what they’re thinking or feeling until it’s too late. That’s why it’s easy to underestimate them. They lack a conscience and they lie in wait, just biding their time until the right opportunity arises. Then they pounce and strike faster than an Australian common death adder with the toxicity to make a bull elephant tap out in minutes.
The Slayer
Don’t believe me? Just ask the other five future Hall of Fame quarterbacks that Hurts took out this season on his road to redemption – Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Mathew Stafford (twice), Russell Wilson and Jayden Daniels.
I wrote a piece a few weeks ago denouncing “revenge games” as misnomers, mythical or hyperbolic in nature. But there are always exceptions and this past Sunday’s Super Bowl 59 was one of them.
For almost two years Hurts carried the pain of that loss around with him every day just waiting for his set, waiting for his chance, waiting for his shot at redemption. He even used that iconic picture of himself walking off the field with confetti abound as his phone screensaver, a constant reminder of the agony he knew he didn’t want to feel again. The tunnel was right below me and I watched Hurts numbingly and slowly leave the field, with that glazed thousand yard stare strapped to his face as I couldn’t help but wonder who was in more pain, him or me, or the other 33,000 Eagles fans who made the pilgrimage to the desert to witness the biggest calamity in Eagles’ history.
Two years can seem like a lifetime and a long shot especially when there are a lot of moving parts needed to fall into place to achieve proper closure to expedite the healing process. 728 days of praying for another shot at the Chiefs, a do-over that most of us are never lucky enough to get.
West Side Glory
The Buffalo Bills weren’t good enough and that was just fine with Hurts. If the Chiefs didn’t make it back to mountain top, then the two teams couldn’t have had a war counsel to decide where to meet to have at it in an all out winner-take-all rumble, without the jaded penalty flag in the back pocket of officer Krupke to deal with this time and Hurts might still be bleeding profusely. A win over the Bills would not have disappointed anyone who wears green, but a slaying of the biggest, baddest and most annoying dragon since Barney (yes, I know Barney was a dinosaur but do you know any annoying dragons?) grazed the earth, that’s caused and left so much havoc and destruction over the last three years in its wake, with history on the line, would be an ultimate act of revenge, and like it or not, would jettison Hurts and his Eagles teammates into the annals of football lore, finishing the final chapter of this season’s fact-is-stranger-than-fiction story worthy of a Hollywood ending that most wouldn’t believe unless they actually witnessed it.
Super Bowl 57 changed Hurts. The SodFather game has been percolating under the surface like a dormant volcano ready to blow. He’s been obsessed with exacting revenge for that loss and has been seeking justice for Eagles Nation ever since.
For the first time this past Thursday Hurts opened up to what was going on behind that face of blankness and the dark doll’s eyes that roll back into his head when he bites down on one of his victims. “I feel like I’m behind the other quarterbacks in the league who’ve already started getting ready for next season.”
Um, what?
It’s like listening to a loop sound bite from his former college coach at Alabama, the legendary Nick Saban, who won seven National Championships, six at Alabama and one with L.S.U. Saban used to complain about being behind in recruiting before he was even handed the National Championship trophy on the championship dais. Hurts is cut from the same cloth. If you asked him which championship of the several he’s acquired over the years is his favorite, he’d probably say “the next one.” It’s how he’s wired.
NFL Films released Mic’d up on Wednesday and you can hear an exchange between tight end Grant Calcaterra and his quarterback after the score was 40-6 late in the fourth quarter:
Calcaterra “You can crack a smile too.”
Hurts: “I can’t lie to you, bro — that last one changed my soul, man…that game..changed my soul…It ain’t over til the fat lady sings.”
The Best of Times
Well the fat lady sung and Eagles Nation rejoiced. The Birds took home their second Lombardi trophy in the last eight years with a 40-22 demolition of the Kansas City Chiefs, that wasn’t nearly that close, and Hurts was nearly perfect in his groundhog day moment earning him Super Bowl MVP honors and of course, the traditional trip to Disney World.
The whole two-year saga reminds me of the movie “The Best of Times” from 1986. It was a football movie that recalled a high school game between Taft and Bakersfield. Married banker Jack Dundee, played by Robin Williams, has lived his life regretting a botched play that cost Taft the game from his high school days. His best friend, Reno Hightower, played by Kurt Russell, was the quarterback of Taft who threw the perfect pass that Jack dropped in the final seconds of the game. Jack becomes the “goat” of the game and has to hear the constant ribbing from his father-in-law, the Colonel, Bakersfield’s biggest booster, for the next 14 years. But with some serious cajoling, Jack convinces Reno to hatch a plan to get the band back together from the old game and replay it, hoping this time he can make amends. When the game is played again Jack gets his moment and hauls in the game-winning touchdown pass from Reno on the last play of the game, earning his own personal redemption and finding the much needed closure he’d been agonizing over since his high school days.
Hurts got his last Sunday.
“All I think about truly is just the effort that was put in all the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears that that you invest into the game and hoping to be the last man standing and we were indeed the last man standing. It was something that we earned, nothing was given to us and all of the hard work… everything just just whole year has been more magnifying to me in terms of my desire to win because kind of like how I processed everything after the game and where my heart was, like the joy of winning it still had no comparison to the pain of losing it, and so those things are still gonna continue to motivate me and drive me internally.”
To a natural born “killer” like Hurts the only thing that matters is winning and when you lose, the fire just burns hotter and the controlled rage that consumes him gets elevated. That’s what drives him. It’s Mamba Mentality. “You work 364 days of the year just for one moment, until the mission has been accomplished. Hurts said.
He may have turned one of the lowest points in franchise history into a dynasty driven crusade for the next several years. He’s tasted blood, and much like Dracula, now has an insatiable desire for more. I think its probably safe to say that there’s more where that came from and much more to come.
