July 14, 2025
Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images
Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni celebrate the Eagles' Super Bowl win.
Normally, when a quarterback wins a Super Bowl and brings MVP hardware home with him, he's widely celebrated. However, in the wake of Jalen Hurts' ultimate NFL accomplishment, praise is almost always accompanied by the caveat that he didn't win the Super Bowl all by himself.
It's certainly true that Hurts had as good a situation as any quarterback could ask for during the 2024 season. He played behind the best offensive line in the NFL, he handed off to the best running back in the NFL in Saquon Barkley, he threw to one of the best trios of pass catchers in A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert, and on the other side of the ball the defense consistently created takeaways, putting Hurts and the offense in favorable positions.
Interestingly, in the scope of the 2024 Eagles as a team, that caveat only applies to Hurts. It does not apply to his star teammates, who also benefit from the players around them.
Take Barkley, for example, the NFL Offensive Player of the Year in 2024, and arguably the best player in the NFL. Barkley benefited from the same elite offensive line. He also did not often face packed boxes from opposing defenses, who had to respect the threat of Brown, Smith, and Goedert torching them down the field in the passing game. He even benefited as a runner from Hurts, an athletic quarterback who was a threat to keep the ball on read option plays, often taking away an extra defender and giving Barkley fewer tacklers to elude. Barkley quite clearly had the best running back situation in the NFL, just as Hurts had the best quarterback situation.
The previous year, while playing for a Giants team with an impotent passing attack and a trash offensive line, Barkley was far from the player that he was with the Eagles in 2024:
| Saquon Barkley | 2023 (Giants) | 2024 (Eagles) |
| Rush yards per carry | 3.9 | 5.8 |
| Rush yards per game | 68.7 | 125.3 |
| Success rate | 40.1 | 52.5 |
| 20+ yard runs | 7 | 17 |
| 40+ yard runs | 0 | 7 |
You'll never hear anyone say, "Well, actually, Chuba Hubbard is better, because he was pretty good on a bad Panthers team, and Barkley had all these major advantages with the Eagles." You know why you'll never hear that? BECAUSE IF ANYONE SAID THAT THEY WOULD SOUND LIKE A F****** IDIOT.
And yet, within the context of quarterback evaluations, you'll often see analysts with their chest out proudly proclaiming that guys like Trevor Lawrence (22-38 career record, 5 INTs in two career playoff games) or Geno Smith (12 years in league, losing record, zero playoff wins) are better than Hurts, often going as far as to say that Hurts was carried to a Super Bowl.
"I think that's bullshit," Nick Sirianni said of the notion that Hurts was along for the ride during the Eagles' Super Bowl run. "I mean, he plays the most important position in all of sports. And it's the most ultimate team game there is. And what I admire about him is his selflessness of doing anything we need to do to win, whether that's throw – I mean, obviously, anybody who plays quarterback is going to want to throw it 50 times a game — but he will do anything. If he has to throw it 50 times a game, he’s ready to do that. If he has to hand it off 50 times a game, he's ready to do that.
"And anytime I hear that, I just... It's like a nice debate thing that people like to have, and I get it. There's a lot of hours that TV shows and radio stations have to fill to be able to fill that debate. I understand that, but we're talking about the most ultimate team game there is, and he does whatever he needs to do to win each and every game. And so you name me a team that wins and wins consistently, that doesn't have good players around. You name me a – and speak on my end – like you name me a coach that doesn't have good players around him that wins.
"Like, you don't win with bad players. And it's the same thing, you don't win with bad players if you're a quarterback either. It's a team game. That always bothers me, to be honest with you, when it's talked about that, because it's football.
"One of the reasons I love football so much is that it takes everybody to accomplish your goals. You name great quarterbacks, you can go ahead and start naming great quarterbacks, I'll tell you their great receivers and their great defenses. You know, whether it's [Tom] Brady with [Rob] Gronkowski or Brady's defenses early on [Patrick] Mahomes with [Travis] Kelce, Steve Young with Jerry Rice, the list goes on and on and on. I just think sometimes that's good debate, I guess. I wouldn't even say it's good debate, but it's debate that people are able to have. But yeah, I guess, my first initial thing was it's bullshit."
But also, while he may have been up and down a bit during the regular season, Hurts was legitimately stellar during the playoffs. He completed 71.4% of his passes, he threw 5 TDs vs. 1 INT, he averaged 8.0 yards per pass attempt, and he ran for 194 yards on 5.7 yards per carry and 5 TDs. (Side note: Some will minimize Hurts' TD runs because a lot of them come via the Tush Push, even though Hurts is probably the biggest reason the Tush Push is the cheat code play that it is).
He was the MVP runner-up in 2022 and the best player on the field during Eagles-Chiefs I. And, of course, as noted already, he was the MVP of Eagles-Chiefs II. He's an already good quarterback who has raised his level of play in the biggest games.
But Geno Smith is better? Really? REEEEAAAAALLLLLLY?
And sure, we can all imagine what some other quarterbacks might do if we replaced Hurts with them on the Eagles' roster. With Hurts, you don't have to imagine. You can just refer to the photo at the top of this article.
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