PHILADELPHIA – Whether he was expecting it or not, Nick Sirianni didn't hesitate when asked about a familiar criticism levied against his fifth-year starting quarterback, Jalen Hurts.
“I think that’s bull@#$,” was Sirianni’s response to the idea his Super Bowl MVP was along for the ride with the NFL’s most talented roster en route to a Super Bowl LIX championship win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
In hindsight, a roster so good that it could lose Milton Williams, Josh Sweat, Darius Slay, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, and Mekhi Becton and still be considered by most as the best in football put the Chiefs on blast less than six months ago.
The talent assembled was so good that it turned dynasty proclamations for an Andy Reid/Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs team into the idea that Kansas City is a descending team with one other-worldly dominant performance for 60 minutes on Feb. 9.
Long of belief that football is the ultimate team game, Sirianni expressed that mindset again as the back and forth of how good Hurts really is continues to be bandied about.
“Anytime I hear that – 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,” Sirianni said to a small group of reporters this spring, including Eagles on SI. “I understand that, but we're talking about the most ultimate team game there is, and [Hurts] does whatever he needs to do to win each and every game.”
Then came the challenge Sirianni has proffered to Hurts' detractors previously.
“You name me a team that wins and wins consistently, that doesn't have good players around,” the coach said. “You name me and [I’ll] speak on my end, like you name me a coach that doesn't have good players around him that wins.”
That’s the interesting part of the debate because Sirianni and Hurts have won together at a rate never before seen in Philadelphia, and rarely seen across the NFL as a whole, yet both are often downgraded because of it.
Just as you rarely hear Hurts mentioned in the same breath as Mahomes, MVP Josh Allen, previous two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, or perhaps the NFL’s best QB at the moment, Joe Burrow, Sirianni generally lags behind Reid, Sean McVay, Sean Payton, and John Harbaugh and others in the coaching ranks.
The idea presumably being the Eagles “should” win with their array of stars.
“Wins and losses are not a quarterback [or coaching] stat.” is a sentiment most who try to evaluate the NFL objectively believe in. However, when it’s an outlier to the tune of Sirianni’s .706 winning percentage in the Super Bowl era or Hurts’ 52-23 mark as the team’s starter, it becomes relevant to Sirianni’s idea of his QB doing “whatever he needs to do to win each and every game.”
“I mean, he plays the most important position in all of sports,” said Sirianni. “... 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.”
That really captures the dichotomy of Hurts and the Eagles. Critics want him to throw on a more consistent basis week to week.
The irony is that if Hurts’ selflessness turned into the selfishness of personal statistics, the winning likely heads southward, and the goalposts are moved to why the Eagles aren’t winning as much.
So Sirianni tried to slice through the gift the best way possible – with common sense.
“You don't win with bad players if you're a quarterback either. It's a team game,” Sirianni explained. “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.
“Whether it's [Tom] Brady with [Rob] Gronkowski or Brady's defenses early on, Mahomes with [Travis] Kelce, Steve Young with Jerry Rice, the list goes on and on and on.”
And just like that Sirianni tied his summation into an expletive bow.
“But yeah, I guess, my first initial [reaction] to Hurts being along for the ride] was it's bull@#$%.”
