Jalen Hurts’ greatness prevails again in Eagles’ stunning last-second win over Titans
Rarely will you see a quarterback make a more consequential series of throws than the ones Hurts made late on a muggy afternoon in Week 2. Even rarer will you see it in circumstances this grim.
The talent prevails. The poise prevails. The unflinching self-belief prevails.
You can say a lot of things about Jalen Hurts. The list starts with those three truths.
He has shown it time and again at every level of football, from Alabama to Oklahoma to the second round of the NFL draft to the questions that seem to swirl around his future on an every-other-year basis.
» READ MORE: Eagles win 24-20 thriller in steamy Nashville; Jalen Hurts atones for two INTs with epic two-minute drive vs. Titans
Most recently, and most notably, he showed it Sunday. Rarely will you see a quarterback make a more consequential series of throws than the ones Hurts made late on a muggy afternoon in Week 2. Even rarer will you see it in circumstances this grim.
The headline, highlight, and game-ender was a 3-yard toss to Darius Cooper in the back of the end zone with 9 seconds left that lifted the Eagles to a 24-20 win and stunned a Titans team that had taken the lead 107 seconds earlier.
David Murphy alerts
But was Hurts’ game-winning throw any bigger than the one that immediately preceded it? Third-and-6, Titans’ 22-yard-line, DeVonta Smith breaking toward the left sideline and hauling in a perfectly located 19-yard throw to set the Eagles up at the 3-yard line?
Was the throw to Smith really any bigger than the one he made two plays prior, when he somehow managed to muscle himself outside of the tackle box and throw an incompletion while wrapped up by Titans defensive end Jacob Martin for what would have been a significant loss to push the Eagles back toward the fringe of field-goal territory?
And what about the 20-yard pass to Dontayvion Wicks on third-and-6 from the Eagles’ 39-yard-line, a play that jump-started the nine-play, 65-yard drive?
Take away any one of these moments, and the Eagles would have been trying to explain the inexplicable instead of shrugging off another flawed victory over a vastly inferior team.
Instead, we can focus on that which is perfectly inexplicable.
The best thing you can say about Hurts, the highest compliment you can give him, is that he has shown us that we should expect everything that we saw in the closing minutes on Sunday. The calm, the rhythm, the blankness of mind. Apart from his self-evident physical gifts, his greatest competitive advantage has always been a near-total self belief that prevails regardless of circumstance. On Sunday, that circumstance was a small handful of uncharacteristic throws that nearly proved decisive on an afternoon when the Eagles’ patchwork interior offensive line struggled and their defense seemed to vacate the premises for the final two quarters.
» READ MORE: Eagles grades vs. Titans: Jalen Hurts steps up, O-line shaky, defense a mixed bag
With the Eagles knocking on the door in the first quarter, he threw a horrible pass directly to Titans safety Amani Hooker, who returned it 92 yards to set up a Titans touchdown that gave them an early 7-0 lead. Hurts bounced back from that early miscue to play a nearly flawless first half, carving up the Titans while leading an Eagles offense that ran a remarkable 40 plays in the first two quarters. His accuracy left him for a stretch in the second half, most fatally on an underthrown interception (albeit while being hit) that set the Titans up for a drive that ended with a 33-yard field goal by Joey Slye that gave the Titans a 20-17 lead with 1 minute, 56 seconds left.
There are lots of things to be ironed out. The Eagles’ first drive of the second half was upended by 15 yards of penalties on the offensive line. Their running game matriculated in nibbles rather than the chunks of yesteryear, an indictment more so of the blockers than of the efforts of Tank Bigsby and Will Shipley with Saquon Barkley sidelined by a first-quarter stinger. The defensive lapses were uncharacteristic to the point of inexplicability.
It is far better to iron these things out while 2-0. Once again, Hurts was the difference.
