In the 2020 NFL Draft, the Philadelphia Eagles used a second-round draft choice on a quarterback even though they had a four-year starter at the position who was under contract for five more seasons.

The consensus among Philadelphia fans appeared to be that Eagles general manager Howie Roseman had wasted the pick on Jalen Hurts, the former-Alabama-by-way-of-Oklahoma QB. But Hurts finished second in the voting for The Associated Press NFL Most Valuable Player Award for the 2022 season as Philadelphia won the NFC championship.

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In conjunction with this year’s NFL Scouting Combine, Philadelphia provided some insight into why Roseman chose Hurts by releasing the video of the quarterback’s interview with the team at the 2020 NFL Scouting Combine, and the general manager ran down his reasons during a press conference at the combine on Wednesday.

The question from the Eagles to Hurts in 2020 was: “Why should we draft you?”

“I’m a difference-maker, a dog,” Hurts said. “I’ve been able to kind of cement myself into two prestigious programs. I think people have found a way in both places to follow me. And I’m not going into these places saying, ‘Hey, come on. Y’all got to follow me.’ That’s earned; that’s not given. People lead because their peers let them. I don’t know, for some odd reason, people follow me everywhere I’ve been.

“I can make every throw, make every play. I don’t put a ceiling on how good I can be. I can’t say the sky’s the limit because I think I have that much. I’m confident in that.

“I’m a student. I want to learn. I just want to maximize all the gifts I have so I can be the best I can be and be an asset to some people, an organization and impact the people around me and bring some people with me.”

With four games remaining in his rookie season, Hurts replaced Carson Wentz in Philadelphia’s lineup, and he’s started every game since when healthy.

At this year’s combine, Roseman said he didn’t exactly take a flier on Hurts because he saw a college star who had the makeup needed to become a top-flight NFL quarterback.

“The reasons that we drafted Jalen are he’s an elite competitor, he’s an elite worker and he’s got elite talent,” Roseman said. “I think we use words like worker and competitive nature that kind of frame it in a way that the guy’s not extremely talented, and Jalen’s an elite talent. He’s got elite arm strength. Anything you tell him to do – like you saw his completion percentage, his accuracy jump. And so I think at the end of the day, he’s got special talent. You combine that with a special football mind and special work ethic, and it gives him a chance to be a special player.”

During the 2022 season, only one player who threw more passes than Hurts had a better passing-efficiency rating than he had, and Hurts also came within one of tying the NFL single-season record for touchdown runs by a quarterback in the 2022 regular season.

Hurts followed that by throwing for 304 yards and one touchdown and running for 70 yards and three touchdowns – a set of four stats that had never been reached by one player in the same game – in the Eagles’ 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII on Feb. 12.

“You can’t win in this league without a great quarterback who plays at a high level,” Roseman said. “We saw how Jalen played in the Super Bowl on the biggest stage, and that’s exciting for our team, for our fans, for all of us.”

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For Hurts in 2023, Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni wants the quarterback to “continue to grow,” and he hopes to assist that process.

“We know what he likes, we know what he does well,” Sirianni said during an appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio while attending the combine. “Trying to add wrinkles to that to make yourself unpredictable in different scenarios. Continue to do things he does well. Continue to feature the guys that are doing it well with him with A.J. (Brown) and DeVonta (Smith) and Dallas Goedert, the run game, no matter what it is.

“And so, again, it’s just trying to continue to make gradual steps of getting better – continuing to do what we do well, the little wrinkles that you try to do to get better, finding things in the offseason that you say, ‘Huh, that fits us pretty good and nobody knows we’re going to run that the first couple of games,’ and we’ll put that in. And so that’s what offseason studies are for — trying to elevate your game. And if we’re always asking our players to get better, get better, get better, get better, we better be doing that as coaches, and then that’s what we’ll be working hard on this offseason to make sure we’re giving him some more bullets to, hopefully, do some great things with.”

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