The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback has a lot to live up to this season. No matter the obstacle – offseason talk, a rocky 2023 season – his discipline, purpose remain
Jalen Hurts looks disgusted.
The star Philadelphia Eagles quarterback hadn’t just thrown a game-ending interception nor was he stuffed on a fourth-and-short rush. He wasn’t sacked and his team hadn’t just been eliminated from the playoffs one year after a Super Bowl run.
It’s late June, and we’re standing in the middle of a kitchen inside of a cavernous warehouse on the north side of Philadelphia. The production crew for the visual shoot that accompanies this story has set up a feast for the two of us. A beige cloth place mat sits under a large wooden cutting board equipped with wooden cooking paddles. Atop that board is a gray ceramic serving skillet, which holds the meal we’ll be discussing: crawfish.
Hurts, 26, is a crawfish connoisseur. He has a recipe that he inherited from his father. At the Super Bowl, he was asked what his profession would be if he weren’t an NFL quarterback. His answer: “Professional crawfish cooker.” His teammates know: Hurts trash-talked about receiver DeVonta Smith’s recipe, running back Boston Scott asked him “how the crawfish and all that?” before a game last season, and Hurts invites teammates over — even the undrafted rookies — for crawfish boils.
But most importantly, Hurts is a stickler about his crawfish. He only eats crawfish made by him or his father. Do not try to make it for him. Do not ask him to try your recipe. He will not do it.
Which presents a problem seeing as we’re shooting a video about crawfish consumption at the end of an eight-hour-plus day. As he stands in the kitchen — decked out in his fifth outfit of the day, a checkered blue polo with loose-fitting black trousers — Hurts has a stern and sad expression, one hand on the countertop.
“I knew walking into the room we had an immediate problem,” he said, “because I don’t have to look at these crawfish to see that there’s an issue.”
I ask Hurts what’s missing from this boil that doesn’t live up to his expectations. He rubs his nose, lets out a deep sigh, and pauses for what feels like an eternity. He then reaches into the serving dish that contains the crawfish, and picks up a single piece of broccoli as if he were removing a bug from a salad. “No. 1 problem,” he said.
“Maybe one day I’ll open up a little crawfish restaurant or something like that to give everyone an experience. “
— Jalen Hurts on his love of crawfish
Aside from the broccoli, which for the uninitiated is apparently comparable to putting raisins in potato salad, Hurts hasn’t watched these crawfish be cleaned or purged, the latter essentially meaning get all the poop out.
“So, I won’t be eating these,” Hurts said matter-of-factly, with a slight grin, when I ask for a tutorial on how to eat crawfish.
That is Hurts in a nutshell: He doesn’t settle for things that don’t match his standards. When it comes to crawfish, he has certain expectations for how they are cooked and prepared, and he will not compromise a single ingredient. Perfection is his starting point, and he rarely ever wavers from it.
Seasoning should be so strong you smell it from another room
Must be cleaned and purged
Can include:
– Shrimp
– Potatoes
– Corn
– Chicken wings
Can’t include:
– Broccoli, ever
Seasoning should be so strong you smell it from another room
Must be cleaned and purged
Can include:
– Shrimp
– Potatoes
– Corn
– Chicken wings
Can’t include:
– Broccoli, ever
That doesn’t just apply to his food. Entering his fifth season with the Eagles after they selected him in the second round of the 2020 NFL draft, Hurts has a lot to live up to. That’s what happens when you score four touchdowns in the Super Bowl, sign what was then then richest deal in NFL history in average annual value in April 2023, and in two years your team acquires receiver A.J. Brown and running back Saquon Barkley. After the Eagles were knocked out of the first round of the playoffs in 2023, a year after that Super Bowl run in 2022, Hurts needs to raise his level of play once again to get that championship he so desperately desires.
But for a man consumed with perfection in how he prepares, practices and plays — not to mention in how he comports himself outside of football — is that a fruitless pursuit? Can he find value in good being good enough if that leads to the results (read: the Lombardi Trophy) he seeks?
Perfection and success can be mutually exclusive in football. You could record a perfect passer rating and your team still loses. You could throw three interceptions in the most important game of the season and your team still wins. For Hurts – forever the stickler, whether it be football or broccoli in the crawfish boil – it could be about his ability to achieve the latter without accomplishing the former.
After the Eagles’ late-season collapse ended in being knocked out of the first round of the 2024 playoffs, Hurts said a new version of leadership and the organization’s standards were needed for the team to get back to the successes it reached in 2022. For Hurts, every season — every game, every practice — is about evolution and growth. He doesn’t want to be as good as the times he appeared in the national championship or Super Bowl or his runner-up as NFL MVP in 2022, he wants to be better.
Hurts believes execution is the root of everything in football. There’s the standard, and then there’s Hurts’ standard. Enough is never enough. Good is never great. You can win by double digits, but if you do it in a way — mistakes, turnovers — that doesn’t meet your expectations, then that’s partial success, not the whole thing. Instruction and practice are the way to the starting blocks, but execution is needed to make it across the finish line first.
“It’s a mentality,” Hurts said. “You definitely want to push for that, and I think in the ways you do that, you do it by how you prepare and what you prepare on.”
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has been a lifelong sports fan. His father, Averion, was a college shot-putter and his older brother, Averion Jr., was the starting quarterback for Texas Southern University. (Jalen Hurts)
Constantly seeking perfection can be somewhat of a fool’s errand. Making mistakes is a way of life, a learning experience in and of itself. Hurts likes to say that “you either win or you learn.” No quarterback has ever finished a season with a 100% completion percentage or perfect passer rating. Only the 1972 Miami Dolphins finished a season undefeated — and that was back when the NFL played a 14-game regular season.
I ask Hurts if there are drawbacks to always striving for this perfect standard he sets for himself and the team. He said he straddles the line of seeking perfection and seeking victory. That’s what competitive sports is about, after all: winning or losing. He won’t relent on his assertion that execution takes precedence above everything, but he acknowledges that sometimes not being at your best is still enough to succeed.
“I’ve seen a lot of people win and not play to their standard,” Hurts said, “but no one’s complaining.”
Dustin Woods is the Eagles’ associate strength and conditioning coach and their interpersonal performance director, a title Hurts helped come up with due to Woods’ unique ability to work through players’ mental and emotional matters.
Woods said Hurts’ strive for perfection stems from the confidence he has from all the hard work Hurts puts in. The quarterback’s favorite Bible verse, John 13:7, is: “Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ” That, Woods said, is the foundation of who Hurts is as a person: working now for the results you will see later.
But, he added, Hurts understands that everything can’t go right all the time.
“Perfection is the goal for him. It’s not even the goal, it is the standard,” Woods said. “He does realize perfection is not attainable. But that allows him to have the drive.
“I truly believe that perfection for him will truly be – because he had the taste of the Super Bowl – a Super Bowl win. He wants that championship, he wants to win.”
Hurts has famously had the same playcaller/offensive coordinator for consecutive seasons only once (2021 and 2022) since he first arrived at Alabama in 2016. After helping lead the Eagles to the Super Bowl in 2022, offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, who had held the position since 2021, took the head coaching job with the Indianapolis Colts in 2023. Last year’s offensive coordinator, Brian Johnson, was fired in January after one season. Hurts prefers less turnover at the position. He’s said as much over the years. But he can only control what he can, so he puts his head down and gets to work learning from his new coordinator. In early June, on the final day of mandatory minicamp, Hurts told reporters that new coordinator Kellen Moore’s offense is “probably 95%” new, which set off a firestorm in the media. Is Jalen Hurts on board with Eagles’ ‘95 percent’ new offense?” wrote Pro Football Talk, and debate shows pounced: “Changing up the playbook by 95% is an asinine amount,” former NFL player Emmanuel Acho said on FS1.
Hurts said his comment was a bit overblown. Every system has similar plays and strategies to manipulate defenses. But what makes an offensive system unique — aside from what the plays are named — is how the coach teaches the playbook and how he prepares his players for each game.
“That is what changes the learning curve a little bit from a quarterback standpoint, especially a guy like myself who’s not really had that continuity there but [has]been able to find success and all those different changes,” Hurts said.
Hurts praised Moore and new quarterbacks coach Doug Nussmeier for the amount of preparation and healthy dialogue they’ve brought to the offense so far this offseason. He added that the goal is always to have everyone on the same page and to have the proper understanding, foundation and vision for what’s trying to be done, and he sees that in his new coaches.
“There’s a united mindset. There’s a great understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish, and then there is also an understanding of what that takes and the work,” Hurts said. “I pride myself on putting in the work and doing those things so we can be where we’re trying to be. So it’s a step we have to take together.
“It’s really important for us three to attack that process together and just continue to take it one day at a time.”
I asked him to describe the balance between his preferred continuity at the coordinator position and how that lack of continuity over the years has essentially made him a better player.
“There’s always going to be value in hard work. And I think the more continuity you do have, the more you have to be able to evolve and adjust and grow in that way,” he said. “And so we’ll see what time brings … but right now we’re focused on this season and being the best that we can be.”
Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts clears a defender during a game at Ole Miss in 2016. Hurts spent three seasons (2016-18) at Alabama, appearing in two national championship games and winning SEC offensive player of the year (2016). He transferred to Oklahoma for the 2019 season, leading the Sooners to the College Football Playoff and finishing second in Heisman voting. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
The upcoming season is monumental for the Eagles. After two uneven seasons to start his career, Hurts exploded in 2022, throwing for 3,701 yards, running for an additional 760 yards, and scoring 35 touchdowns (22 passing, 13 rushing) as he helped lead the Eagles to a 14-3 record and a date with quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. In that game Hurts completed 71% of his passes and scored four total touchdowns. (The Chiefs won 38-35.) That offseason, Hurts agreed to a five-year, $255 million contract, which at the time made him the highest paid quarterback in league history.
But that all came undone in 2023. After a 10-1 start, the Eagles lost five of their final six games of the regular season and were bounced out of the playoffs in the first round by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Many factors contributed to the team’s dropoff. Steichen departed shortly after the Super Bowl, defensive coordinator Sean Desai was demoted midseason, Johnson’s offensive unit couldn’t reproduce the production from 2022 and overall the team’s vibes were off. There were tense conversations between Hurts and receivers Smith and Brown. Head coach Nick Sirianni seemingly lost control of his team.
This all spilled out into the open Aug. 7 when ESPN published a report detailing the strained relationship between Sirianni and Hurts, including: Hurts having a lack of full respect for Sirianni’s coaching abilities, Sirianni not wanting to evolve the offense to Hurts’ liking, that there were tense moments between the pair, and Hurts being accused of both playing “hero ball” and “trying to prove he was worth $250 million every throw.” Sirianni and Hurts declined requests from ESPN to be interviewed for its story via a team spokesperson.
A few days after the story was published, I spoke with Hurts again over the phone. When asked how the story’s characterization of him makes him feel, Hurts said it’s not worth him even acknowledging.
“I don’t think that’s anything that I’m ever going to try and prove to anyone; [I’m] just going to take it one day at a time and continue to walk my journey,” Hurts said. “But I’ve always valued eliminating external factors and redirecting my focus on keeping the main thing the main thing, that’ll never change.”
He continued: “People don’t know that they don’t know. People don’t know what they don’t know.”
As far as his relationship with Sirianni, while Hurts doesn’t go into specifics, he echoed what he’s said publicly over the summer about his coach. “As we go into this season, Nick and I have a great understanding, we have mutual respect for one another, and we’re in a great space, and we’re excited for the journey that’s ahead,” he told me.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (right) and Eagles coach Nick Sirianni (left) during warmups for a regular season game in October 2023. Despite the shared success of appearing in a Super Bowl together, an Aug. 7 ESPN report described the relationship between Hurts and Sirianni as “fractured.” Hurts said the two are “in a great space.” (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
“I think it’s an elephant in the room for everybody else, but not me. I’m in a great space. We’re both in a great space.”
What seemed to annoy Hurts the most from the story was the insinuation that he’s trying to justify the contract he signed.
“I think it’s easy for someone to project that on someone because they don’t have it, they don’t have what I have,” he said. “But I think in terms of my energy, my focus and where it’s always been directed towards, it’s been focused on getting better every day, impacting people around me in the best way I can, and winning, ultimately winning. It’s hard to project that on me when I’ve had to deal with worse.”
He said there were some “unfortunate circumstances that happened” last season that led to a down year, but he’s his own worst critic and is always willing to reflect internally about his mistakes and how to grow from them. Not to mention, he said, he was voted the 15th-best player, and fourth-best quarterback in NFL Media’s Top 100 player rankings for 2024, a list that is voted on by him and his peers.
When I point out that it seems he doesn’t like these elements of the job — insider stories, attacks on his abilities, etc. — Hurts clarifies.
“I never said I didn’t like it, I said I don’t care. I think not liking it is having an opinion or a negative feeling towards it. But, I don’t care, all around,” he said. “It doesn’t impact anything that I do, and I know where I put my energy towards, and where I put my focus towards in terms of executing and going out there and trying to do my job.
“And I think in the end, I’m going to always honestly self-assess if I did that [his job]the correct way, I’m always going to look to those that are doing it with me in that too. That is something that you have to be able to do before you look anywhere else, you have to be able to check yourself. And no one’s going to check themselves more than me. And honestly, I think that’s how you continue to grow, you grow by checking yourself, assessing yourself and being willing to work on the things you need to work on.”
Hurts is the quintessential football player, molded by the worshipful Friday Night Lights aura of Texas high school football. Hurts lives and breathes the sport, and there are minimal distractions. He doesn’t watch much television. His mother, Pamela, recently turned him on to a show he couldn’t remember the name of (it was Netflix’s Supacell), but other than that he might catch some boxing matches.
Hurts can be prone to what’s affectionately known as “coach speak.” It’s the affirmations and quotes that players and coaches lean on to motivate one another. Hurts has his go-to’s that he normally tosses out in his weekly news conferences: “Keep the main thing the main thing,” “Reach one, teach one,” and “Never get too high, never get too low.”
When Hurts showed up to Alabama in 2016 as a 17-year-old, nearly everyone was taken aback by his maturity, confidence and desire to be his best. Then-Alabama offensive analyst Mike Locksley told The Ringer in 2023 that, after a spring practice, Hurts told him he’d “make every one of them transfer,” referring to the other quarterbacks on the roster. Even at that young age, Hurts was the prototypical first-one-in-last-one-out sort of player who set the tone for the rest of the roster.
“Obviously we’ve got a lot of good players that come through here, a lot of great leaders and such, but there was nobody like him, in my opinion,” Ellis Ponder, director of football operations at the University of Alabama, said.
Ponder joined the program around the same time Hurts did in 2015 and the two have been close ever since. Ponder described Hurts as being someone who was never rattled and who tackled adversity head-on, even as a teenager. Hurts stuck to his nutritional and physical routines while maintaining his grades and won the team’s Commitment to Academic Excellence Award in 2018. Ponder said Hurts just had an “aura” about him that was infectious.
“He was just so mature, and the mental toughness that he had throughout everything that happened here, and the mental toughness and maturity that you have to have to start as a true freshman at quarterback for Nick Saban,” Ponder said. “For Nick Saban to trust a true freshman quarterback to play, to play in games, I think tells you all you need to know about Jalen.”
As quarterback for the Eagles, Hurts is not only chasing the franchise’s second Super Bowl (they won in 2017), but doing so while standing on the shoulders of the Black Eagles quarterbacks who came before him. Arguably no other NFL team has had as many impactful Black quarterbacks as Philadelphia.
Randall Cunningham. Rodney Peete. Donovan McNabb. Michael Vick.
Hurts used to watch them every Sunday on TV, studying the highlights of the three mobile ones (Cunningham, McNabb, Vick) as inspiration for his play. When it came to the Madden video games, McNabb and Vick, of course, were in the rotation of quarterbacks he played as. And now during the photo shoot for this story, the posters of McNabb and Vick are plastered on the wall of a makeshift gym constructed in the warehouse, right over the exposed right shoulder of Hurts as he poses in a squat rack.
In a discussion Hurts had with McNabb and Vick for ESPN two years ago, Hurts expressed how he understands the double standard for Black quarterbacks and how he has to work harder to get the same respect as white quarterbacks. The Black quarterback fraternity — particularly the one in this city — is something Hurts doesn’t take for granted.
“It’s been wonderful just knowing how rich in history this place is with having African American quarterbacks taking the reins and knowing how hard and how far of a journey it’s been,” Hurts said. “It’s something that I appreciate, I hold in high regard.”
I tell Hurts that stuff like that seems illustrative of who he is as a person. From watching Hurts’ interviews, reading stories about him and scrolling social media, he seems intentional about how he’s perceived as a Black man and quarterback.
The quarterback position has almost always been billed as the CEO position of football: not only are you the leader, but your image has to reflect that of the buttoned-up professional. In the NFL, that has historically meant your quarterback should be non-controversial, should stay away from political and social issues, and particularly as a Black quarterback, don’t remind the audience that you’re Black. Cam Newton went from saying “I’m an African American quarterback that may scare a lot of people” in February 2016 before Super Bowl 50 to telling GQ that America was “beyond” racism within a year in August. Vick, while being investigated for a dogfighting operation, cut his cornrows off in 2007 to, in the words of a team spokesman, “help him professionally and personally.” Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played a down of football since 2016, the season he kneeled during the playing of the national anthem to protest police violence.
Hurts seems to have a vision for what a Black man looks like and how he carries himself, and he wants his image to reflect that. He’s a member of Omega Psi Phi, a historically Black fraternity founded at Howard University. He signed with a Black-owned sports agency, Klutch Sports Group, where the majority of his business team is made up of women, most of them Black, including his agent, Nicole Lynn. His stylist, DexRob, is a Black man with many Black clients in sports.
And then it’s how Hurts presents himself.
He loves cologne and is a God-fearing man. He uses cocoa butter and Carmex lip balm and wears a do-rag. His hair (braids, Afro fade, bald fade) is always crisp for when he takes his helmet off on the sideline and the cameras are focused on him. He rocks a hoop earring like NBA legend Michael Jordan does. His love of Philadelphia soul group Frankie Beverly and Maze is well-documented — he brought in some of the group’s vinyls from his collection for the photo shoot.
For lack of a better word, Hurts is just a smooth cat. He always has a stern-yet-stoic look on his face, and his demeanor rarely deviates from calm. He speaks in a low, heavily Southern drawl that is as thick as Alaga syrup. The eye contact he maintains when speaking with you is punctuated by thick eyebrows that illustrate his emotions when he raises or furrows them. Most notably, Hurts gives rapper LL Cool J a run for his money for the amount of times he licks his lips during casual conversation. A running joke on social media is that Hurts is “90s fine” like popular attractive Black actors from the 1990s, such as Denzel Washington, Shemar Moore or Morris Chestnut.
He comes across as very serious, but not in an off-putting way. I compare it to the regalness of actor Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa character in Black Panther: While other Marvel superheroes can be quippy and make fun of themselves, T’Challa rarely joked but could be unintentionally funny. While being asked about some of his favorite sneakers, Hurts confuses the Jordan Brand’s collaboration with contemporary artist Nina Chanel Abney, incorrectly calling them the “Nina Simones.” For the crawfish video, I don black disposable gloves to keep the seafood smell off my hands. While filming, I tell him this is my first time eating crawfish. “I can tell,” he replied.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (left) shares crawfish with Andscape senior writer Martenzie Johnson (right). Hurts says he only eats crawfish he or his father prepare themselves. (Christian Cody for Andscape)
When it comes to his play: smooth as butter. It’s how Hurts drops back in the pocket or how he scrambles for a first down, he looks totally in control when he does it. When he scores a touchdown, there’s no elaborate dance routine. That’s not his style. He’s more likely to casually flex or cross his arms and lean back with a mean mug across his face.
“I just think he’s a cool guy. Doesn’t get too high with the highs and low with the lows. He just stays even-keeled,” South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley said. “In the position that he plays, you have to have that. It’s not many young superstar quarterbacks that really [have]his perspective and his poise.”
Staley, who has won three national championships since 2017, was born and raised in Philadelphia (“You grow up in Philly, it’s weird not to be an Eagles fan,” she said.) The pair have known each other for a few years, and they periodically text one another for encouragement before and after their respective games. Hurts spoke to the Gamecocks in the locker room before their national championship win over Iowa in April.
What Staley appreciates the most about Hurts is his ability to remain true to himself even in such an unforgiving sports city like her hometown.
“Philadelphia is a rah-rah city … we like to get rowdy,” Staley said. “And he’s just calm and cool and collected.
“I do think sometimes people want him to get riled up, but that’s just not his personality. I’d rather have somebody that’s cool and calm and can operate in the space of always being under control.”
How Hurts chooses to endear and root himself to the communities he plays in is a reflection of who he is. In July, he officially launched the Jalen Hurts Foundation, with the stated goal of “strengthen[ing]communities by servicing and advancing the youth.” For Hurts, his work in the community is about helping develop young people based on the principles that are most important to him, namely integrity and discipline.
Hurts has hosted young athletes from Côte d’Ivoire at Eagles practices and, in collaboration with Philadelphia youth mentorship organization KB Foundation, provided financial management lessons to local boys. One of the first initiatives of the foundation, the Keep It Cool Campaign, was the donation of $200,000 to provide 300 air conditioning units to Philadelphia K-12 public schools.
Hurts only learned about the lack of air conditioning from one day — before Week 1 of the 2023 season — watching the local news, which he rarely does, when he viewed a story about how public schools were being closed due to historically high temperatures. At that moment, Hurts realized how much of a privilege it can be in this country to simply have access to air conditioning in the summer.
“He has poured so much into the city.”
— Quinta Brunson on Jalen’s impact in Philadelphia
“It just struck me because I could never think of a day that I went to school and had to worry about that back home,” he said.
“That’s hyperspecific, that comes from a person and a team that is really paying attention to the needs of schools,” said Quinta Brunson, a Philadelphia native and the star and creator of Abbott Elementary, a sitcom based in a fictional Philadelphia elementary school. “A/C units in particular are just so necessary in Philly public schools. There are so many schools without working A/C.”
In Abbott Elementary’s Season 3 premiere in February, Hurts made a cameo appearance as himself after offering up his services to the show’s producers a year before. While Brunson applauds the quarterback’s acting chops (“I think he is darn good for someone who this is not their field at all”), what most impresses her most about Hurts is his dedication to becoming a member of the community.
“He has poured so much into the city,” Brunson said. “… That means a lot to me to have an athlete realize that whether he’s from that city or not he has now become a beacon of hope, a beacon of light.”
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts makes a cameo appearance in the ABC show Abbott Elementary, which stars Philadelphia native Quinta Brunson. (Warner Bros.)
When I asked Hurts specifically about how he decided on the people to surround himself with, he said it simply came down to effort. Rather than accept the status quo of a quarterback’s image and team, Hurts puts in the time and effort (there’s that “effort” word again) to find the best people, who don’t always have to be white and/or male. In football, decisions on how your business team looks can “have certain norms that are out there that are just trendy, kind of comfortable,” Hurts said, “But I think with seeing things as they are and looking at the facts of something, I guess doing the right research about stuff, I think that’s just allowed me to make some of those decisions confidently.”
Confidence is the perfect word. It’s a critical component of being a star athlete, it’s where swagger meets preparation. Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, whom Hurts admires, once told a confidant he’d rather go for 0 for 30 than 0 for 9, because going 0 for 9 “means you beat yourself, you psyched yourself out of the game … you’ve just now lost confidence in yourself.”
Confidence isn’t something that can be measured exactly. When you see it, you know it. When it comes to Hurts, it’s as obvious as a sunny day. When Hurts is amping up his teammates in the pregame huddle yelling, “Give these [expletives]what they came to see,” it doesn’t sound contrived or rehearsed. When he faced an eight-point deficit with just under 10 minutes remaining in the Super Bowl in 2023, he helped march the team down the field in four minutes, completing 3 of 3 passes for 63 yards and running in the touchdown and two-point conversion to tie the game.
For the photo shoot for this story, photographers and videographers give him instructions to do unexpected poses and movements, but when Hurts does it, it looks effortless and chill. When a prop artist applies artificial sweat to Hurts’ arms and face for part of the shoot that takes place in the gym, Hurts asks if he can apply it himself and gets heavy-handed with the application.
In conversation, he comes across as measured and thoughtful, giving attentive eye contact when listening and responding to questions. He takes time to answer. He stops himself mid-sentence if he’s not getting across the point he’s aiming for. He is deliberate about what he says and what he wants others to hear.
Whether it’s with me or Eagles beat writers during the season, he’ll give a knowing glance or sly smirk to let you know he’s not interested in the question you’re asking — like a parent being constantly asked “why?” by a talkative toddler. It’s respectful, but it’s clear he knows what he wants and prefers to not deviate from that.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is a member of historically Black fraternity Omega Psi Phi, whose four principles are manhood, scholarship, perseverance, and uplift. “Those are principles that I think takes a special man to live on and live by in all different areas of your life,” Hurts said. (Christian Cody for Andscape)
Those who know him say he’s a private person, and that’s evident during our interview. He’s very cagey about some of the most obvious things about himself, including his sex appeal. When I ask him about Omega Psi Phi (Hurts is the first starting quarterback since Steve McNair to be a member of the fraternity), he prefers to not talk about it, other than to expound on the organization’s four principles, manhood, scholarship, perseverance, and uplift.
“Those are principles that I think takes a special man to live on and live by in all different areas of your life,” Hurts said. “And I feel like that’s something that is a good structure for me, a good structure for me and the man that I want to be.”
Woods, the strength and conditioning coach, said that Hurts’ more introverted personality can make him hard to read. The quarterback can be difficult for some people to understand because it can feel like he isn’t excited with you or for you, but that’s just who Hurts is. He doesn’t mean that in a bad way.
“He thrives off of confidence. You’re not going to get a lot of affirmations from him, but he’s very thankful, he’s very gracious,” Woods said.
Hurts said his confidence in himself as a football player is a reflection of the work he puts into his job. No matter the obstacle — losing a Hall of Fame center, working under a fifth NFL playcaller in five seasons — what remains the same is the discipline and purpose of perfecting his craft. That, he says, is what pays off in the end.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (left) plays in Super Bowl LVII matchup vs. the Kansas City Chiefs on Feb. 12, 2023, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. He threw for 304 yards, ran for an additional 70 yards and scored four touchdowns. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
“I think as you grow, you experience different challenges,” he said. “I always say every new season requires a new version of yourself, whether that’s a new faith for new mountains that you have to climb, or a new work ethic, a next level you have to take it to. We’re always trying to grow, strive for more.
“So I think you always are a reflection of what you’ve done to get better and improve yourself.”
Hurts told Sports Illustrated in February 2023 about how he processes negative comments made about him as a quarterback. “It’s nothing new,” he said. “It’s something I embrace. I embrace all of the opinions, all the hate, the doubt. And I didn’t let it define me. And I won’t start letting it define me now.”
Many athletes say that they’re not bothered by what people say about them. It’s just white noise, they pay their haters no mind. But that’s all one big lie. Aside from their athleticism and demanding work ethic, athletes are just like us. They feel the same emotions we all do. Jordan would invent slights made at him just to bring out the ultra-competitor in himself.
I asked Hurts if spite ever motivates him to want to be a better player. Does wanting to prove that he should start at Alabama as a true freshman, or prove that he could take over for a former MVP candidate, Carson Wentz, or prove that he’s worth $255 million make him work just an extra bit harder?
“It’s not a trigger, it’s not a motivation,” Hurts said of criticism of his play. “It’s nothing more than a reminder.”
He said this during the shoot back in June. Afterward, Hurts took some photos with the crew and departed the warehouse in his white luxury sedan. I figured this would be the last time I heard from him, since he had training camp starting up in a few weeks.
But this is Jalen Hurts. Within three hours of his departure, I received a voice note from Hurts where he wanted to further explain some of the things we discussed.
When it came to criticism being a reminder, he added that the critiques remind him of everything he’s gone through as a quarterback — getting benched at Alabama, dropping to the second round of the draft, etc. — and what he still has yet to accomplish. It’s more introspective than being able to tell someone I told you so!
“It reminds me that you’re doing this to prove that you are who you are,” he said. “You’re doing this to prove to the people that believe in you.”
He’s not perfect, obviously, but the quest for perfection is as important to his story than actually accomplishing it.
“All of the fathers and the young boys and men and women and whomever living life that may look at what they see from me in a public eye and draw from that to better themselves – that’s what it’s about. Leaving a legacy and impacting the people around you,” he said in the voice note.
“And I think with those different things that come about – the doubt and the hate and the things that one may be fueled by – I think the bigger the doubt, the bigger the legacy.”
behind the cover
crew credits
As they say, “Teamwork makes the dream work,” and we couldn’t have produced Andscape’s digital cover without a team of talented people. Learn more about them below.
Jason Aidoo, VP and Head of Andscape.
Andscape editorial team: Britni Danielle, Karin Berry, Erik Horne, John Gotty, Ashley Melfi.
Andscape social and video team: Mary Almonte, Cornell Jones, Brandon Meyer, Cayla Sweazie.
ESPN Creative Studio: Matthew Becker, Leon Belt, Rob Booth, Jessi Dodge, Heather Donahue, Nick Galac, Kaitlin Marron, Beth Stojkov.
Developed by 10up. Illustrations by Yay Abe. Production by Craig Oppenheimer and Bryan Sheffield/Wonderful Machine. Standby Stages. Giant Artists. Additional imagery from Getty and AP.
Yellow sweatsuit: Jacket and pants by Wales Bonner. Mesh shirt by Second Layer. Undershirt by JW Anderson. Watch by Audemars Piguet. Shoes by Bottega Veneta. Socks by Uniqlo.
News conference suit: Jacket by Dries Van Noten. Shirt by Kenzo. Watch by Rolex.
Workout outfit: Shirt and pants by Uniqlo. Socks by DIALLO. Shoes by Jordan Brand.
Interview outfit: Shirt by Bottega Veneta. Pants by Maison Valentino. Socks by DIALLO. Shoes by Lanvin.
Striped suit: Suit by Burberry. Shift by Alexander Wang. Shoes by Fear of God.
