The night before Super Bowl LIX, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts had two other games on his mind besides the looming showdown with the Kansas City Chiefs for the 2024 NFL championship – the CFP national-championship game for the 2017 season and Super Bowl LVII.
Hurts alluded to both games in his remarks to his teammates on the night of Feb. 8, less than 24 hours before the Eagles would face the Chiefs again in Super Bowl LIX.
“Last time being here, that (expletive) changed my life,” Hurts said in a video released by the Eagles on Sunday. “It changed my life and it changed my mentality and it changed everything because for so long I was seeking. What would I do when I got this moment again? What would I do when this opportunity met me again on the biggest stage with everybody watching? I didn’t get benched. I put on a good show. And I couldn’t have done that without you guys.
“But I left that (expletive) so empty. Don’t (expletive) matter but winning. And when you talk about team sports, when you talk about everything we’ve gone through, that’s been the mission this whole (expletive) time. For all the hard work and now everything we’ve been able to do to this point, take it one play at a time, let it come to you and ask yourself how you want to be remembered.”
Hurts led Alabama back to the CFP national-championship game in 2017. As a freshman the previous year, Hurts had won the SEC Offensive Player of the Year Award, but the Crimson Tide lost in the national-title game when Clemson scored a touchdown with one second to play for a 35-31 victory that broke Alabama’s 26-game winning streak.
The Tide beat Clemson 24-6 in the Sugar Bowl in their next meeting to advance to play Georgia for the 2017 championship. But with Alabama trailing 13-0 at halftime, Hurts got pulled, and Tua Tagovailoa rallied the Tide to a 26-23 overtime victory.
Hurts spent the next season as Tagovailoa’s backup, so even though Alabama returned to the CFP title game again for 2018, Hurts didn’t get another opportunity to be a championship quarterback until Super Bowl LVII.
In the title game for the NFL’s 2022 season, Hurts completed 27-of-38 passes for 304 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions and ran for 70 yards and three touchdowns on 15 carries. It was a set of statistics that had never been compiled by one player in any previous NFL game, let alone the Super Bowl. But the Eagles lost to Kansas City 38-35.
Two years later in Super Bowl LIX, Hurts won the Pete Rozelle Trophy as the game’s Most Valuable Player as Philadelphia defeated the Chiefs 40-22 on Feb. 9. Hurts completed 17-of-22 passes for 221 yards with two touchdowns and one interception and ran for 72 yards and one touchdown on 11 carries.
