Jalen Hurts shuts up his critics with a brilliant game against the Steelers on a big night for the Eagles

The road back to respect for Jalen Hurts began with some of his first words after his worst game of this season. Inside the Eagles’ locker room a week ago, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Jordan Mailata, among others, had lamented a putrid performance from the team’s passing attack in a tight victory over the hapless Carolina Panthers, and a review of the game tape wasn’t necessary to know what the problem was. Anyone watching in real time could see it. Hurts was too hesitant. Hurts was too cautious. Hurts had receivers open and, for whatever reason, wouldn’t throw them the damn ball.

In such situations, when criticism is sure to come his way, Hurts can get his back up, can get defensive. He can start speaking in public not with the bluntness that a quarterback and leader sometimes has to wield but in nothing but vague aphorisms, as if his real full-time job were writing fortune-cookie messages. This time was different. This time, Hurts was direct and honest and left no doubt that he, too, understood what the problem with the Eagles was and who had to fix it.

“We did a bad job,” he said, “and it starts with me.”

Seven days later, in a game against an opponent that promised to test Hurts’ and the Eagles’ toughness and resilience, he rendered the week’s worth of sturm und drang pretty much irrelevant. This was a 27-13 Eagles win over the Steelers that really wasn’t that close, not when it came to which team controlled the game, and this was Hurts at his best, better than he had been through his first 13 games this season: 25-for-32 for 290 yards, excelling despite a broken finger on his left hand, targeting Brown and Smith a combined 23 times for 19 receptions, zipping an off-his-back-foot touchdown pass to each of them.

“One is 1,” running back Kenny Gainwell said, referring to Hurts' jersey number. “We all know what 1 can do. He came in and attacked the game in a very special way.”

To play that well in these circumstances — against a Mike Tomlin-coached team, against a defense with T.J. Watt and Cameron Heyward and Minkah Fitzpatrick — was to offer an answer to every question about whether Hurts has it in him to win the Eagles a big game. It was a refutation to every critic who suggested he had lost the mojo that made him so special during the 2022-23 season. That man who went toe-to-toe with Patrick Mahomes in Super Bowl LVII, who outplayed the best quarterback in the sport that night in Glendale, was still in there somewhere. And presto, there he was again Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field, and when he entered the press-conference room and glared out at the media members there, he might as well have thrown his hands up in a combination of triumph and indignation, gone full Gladiator, and demanded to know if everyone had been entertained.

“Is this what you guys wanted to see?” he asked.

The easy joke to make before kickoff was that Hurts might throw the ball to Brown on the Eagles’ first … say … 17 offensive plays or so. Brown, after all, had been the one who summed up the offense’s flaws against the Panthers: “Passing.” Anyone who interpreted that quote as an indication that Brown hated Hurts or disliked Hurts or was bound to end up cranking out stomach crunches in Hurts’ driveway doesn’t know anything about Brown. He’s beloved by his teammates, Hurts included. Yes, Brown had conjured an occasion for a team that had won nine straight games, but the only question was whether Hurts would rise to it.

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He did. ”Jalen was in complete control," Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “Another good day by him. ... I think we’ve been super-efficient. Today, we needed our passing game even more.”

Sirianni overstated just how good Hurts had been over the previous four weeks. There’s a fine line between being efficient and being just another supporting actor in an ensemble, and with his passing yardage total declining to a paltry 108 against Carolina, Hurts had been trending toward the latter. But give him credit: With the exception of a first-quarter fumble, caused when Watt made a great play to strip the ball from him, Hurts couldn’t have been better Sunday. He was on time with his throws, was smart about where he went with the ball, did nothing that was either too timid or too risky. “It comes down to discernment,” Hurts said, “of when to do something and when not to.” The Eagles needed Hurts to do more doing. They won’t win a Super Bowl — hell, they might not get out of the NFC — with Hurts holding the ball, pumping his arm, playing the way he did against the Panthers, so fearful of making a mistake that the prospect of throwing the ball downfield seemed to stop him cold.

All anyone wanted from him was simple: Find that balance between the turnover machine he’d been through the first four weeks and the ultra-careful caretaker he’d been lately. He found it. No complaints or controversies now, not for another week at least. The Eagles did a great job Sunday, and it started with the player who had the most to gain and lose. It started with Jalen Hurts.