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Jalen Hurts’ biggest number in Super Bowl LIX might have been his football IQ

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Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts had a strong set of statistics to earn the Most Valuable Player honor for Super Bowl LIX, which ended with the Eagles as NFL champions for the 2024 season after a 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.

Hurts completed 17-of-22 passes for 221 yards with two touchdowns and one interception and ran for 72 yards and one touchdown on 11 carries as he became the only player in NFL history with at least 10 passing touchdowns and 10 rushing touchdowns in postseason play.

But something that Hurts did during Super Bowl LIX that is not captured in numbers might have made the biggest difference in the game’s outcome.

“He did a great job of checking into better plays, better stuff he saw,” Kansas City linebacker Nick Bolton said on Sunday night.

Eagles left tackle Lane Johnson said Hurts’ ability to make the offense go with the Chiefs bottling up running back Saquon Barkley tilted the outcome in Philadelphia’s favor.

Barkley became the ninth player in NFL history to reach 2,000 rushing yards in a single season in 2024, then added 442 rushing yards in three NFC playoff games. But in Super Bowl LIX, Kansas City limited Barkley to 57 yards on 25 carries.

“Jalen was able to improvise,” Johnson said. “Credit to (offensive coordinator) Kellen (Moore) and (passing-game coordinator) Kevin (Patullo) and coach Nick (Sirianni): They called some great plays. You know we had a play-action pass that went to DeVonta (Smith) later in the game, so we did a good job of mixing it up. I though they had some difficulty covering (tight) Dallas (Goedert) and our receivers, but they did do a good job of stopping the run. They are really talented at doing that, so Jalen was able to win it there for us.”

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At his day-after press conference, Sirianni tried to explain why Hurts had been so good at getting the Eagles into the right play against the NFL’s No. 4 defense.

“Sometimes it’s you have a check, and it’s play-to-play,” Sirianni said on Monday. “Sometimes it’s this play versus this look and this play versus that look. Sometimes it’s, ‘Hey, Jalen, if you get this look, check to this play.’ Sometimes it’s something that he’s feeling in the moment that he’s checked to in the past that he gets to. Sometimes it’s just — you know, there’s a lot of different things for it, but it all takes the preparation that Jalen.

“You know, we can prepare as coaches all we want and try to put him in position to succeeed. But then it comes down to him recognizing the look from his film study all week — and all two weeks in this case — and getting to the right play. So he did an unbelievable job of that yesterday multiple occasions on all the different things that I just said on every different type of check that we could have. Man, he was on top of it, and that’s because the way he prepares and his football IQ and everything that goes involved in that. He sees the game outstandingly and can help us getting in and out of plays on a consistent basis.”

Hurts became the fourth former Alabama quarterback to start for the winning team in a Super Bowl, joining Bart Starr, Joe Namath and Ken Stabler. No other college program has had more than three.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.