Jalen Hurts continues to prove his doubters wrong when it comes to judging his performance. The Philadelphia Eagles were torched by the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday, through little fault of Hurts as he turned in a career-defining performance.
Hurts finished 32 of 48 (66.7%) for a career-high 387 yards with two touchdowns and zero interceptions in Philadelphia's 42-30 loss to Kansas City. He also rushed for 47 yards, accumulating 434 yards of total offense -- the most he's ever put up in an NFL game.
"That's one of the better quarterback performances I've seen. And I've been around a lot of good quarterbacks, Philip Rivers and Andrew Luck," Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said after Sunday's loss. "He battled. He made good decisions with the football. He got out of trouble when there was trouble. He made good checks. He made good reads.
"That's the best I've seen him in practice. That's the best I've seen him in a game since I've been here. Hats off to Jalen, he battled. That's going to be important for us moving forward."
Hurts is just the third quarterback in NFL history to put up 2,500 yards of total offense in his first eight starts, joining Cam Newton and Patrick Mahomes. Both quarterbacks have won league MVPs and have taken their teams to the Super Bowl (and Mahomes has won a championship) -- already excellent company to be included with.
Hurts has thrown for 1,167 yards with seven touchdowns to two interceptions and rushed for 226 yards and a score this season. He has completed 66.2% of his passes and compiled a 101.1 passer rating while averaging 8.1 yards per attempt.
The only statistic that matters to Hurts didn't show up on the stat sheet. All he sees is 1-3 -- the Eagles' record after four games.
"Look, we lost. We lost. We lost the game," Hurts said. "Have to do more, have to do better. And this is what I will say. You have every opportunity to learn, every opportunity, everything that you do, you learn from it. And we are clearly not there as a football team because we lost."
Even though Hurts has played well and things look bleak for the Eagles, he thinks this team is getting better. Hurts isn't satisfied until the Eagles win games consistently -- the true makings of a franchise quarterback and a leader.
"We are this close, we are this close. And that is something that I believe. Something I believe," Hurts said. "We have to continue to grow, continue to learn, continue to be one percent better every day. Continue to clock in and buy into that and believe in that. That's what it's going to take.
"We are not a finished product. No player on this team is a finished product. But it's about believing in that and continuing to grow. And learn from everything that you do. We played a good football team out there today. A team that many say is generationally one of the best. Great quarterback, great players, all that. We have great players, too. We have to put it together and we will."