The MVP candidate is everywhere, but while everything is different now, it’s always the same him. His face is blank and expressionless, whether on the mirrors lining a wall in a small space adjacent to the Eagles’ locker room, or on the TV nearby, where he’s building a candidacy no one else expected.
It’s always the same look with Jalen Hurts, even after touchdowns: stoic, intense, firm and unfeeling; his countenance so consistent that it might seem like an act, an I-work-too-hard reply to the what’s-your-biggest-weakness question at a job interview. But here he is now, the real him—same face, same demeanor, same everything—sitting atop a swivel chair on a Friday afternoon in mid-December.
For a man whose own brother refers to him as “The Robot,” even a routine haircut is anything but. Because this is Hurts, the doubted-but-never-deterred Eagles quarterback, his eyes scan for holes in his preferred fade. They spot tiny imperfections, mistakes the size of a needlepoint, while signaling the makeup of a man who wears a cloak of self-assuredness. Hurts doesn’t simply get his hair cut; he directs the barber like he orchestrates the lethal offense of a Super Bowl contender. Right there. Little higher.
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At this point, it’s two days before Hurts and the Eagles will play the Bears in Chicago. Win and Philadelphia will move closer to locking up the NFC’s No. 1 seed. Everything—his fade, his season, his career—is going exactly as planned. At least for another 48 hours.
As “Big Pimpin’” booms in the background, Hurts tries to explain his 2022 campaign, the one that demanded recognition of his value and followed a time that he refers to as “everything else.” He makes the evolution sound simple, the product of glorious-and-infamous-and-indicative events and how they shaped him; the goal, no more than continuous improvement; progress born from process, the routine bolstered and advanced but the soul unchanged since middle school.
He pivots into values: consistency, persistence, patience, diligence, accountability. They are not revolutionary. But Hurts isn’t spewing buzzwords for consumption. Nor is he, as often labeled, “emotionless.” He’s principled, unwavering, mindful and intentional, a throwing-slashing-running-spinning-escaping-and-scoring embodiment of the famous Shakespearean phrase, “to thine own self be true.”
Bzzzzzzzzz. The clippers interrupt the silence, as Hurts displays the self-awareness that helps him both recognize and reconcile the gap between how he sees his value and how a significant portion of football types appraise him. He might not discuss the more egregious takes—the Madden rating of 74 before the season, the notion that his success owes to his teammates and not the other way around—but he’s aware of them. In fact, he stores them. Not, he says, in a notes file, or on a bulletin board, but in his head.
The doubts that morph and shift no matter how many times Hurts proves “them” wrong only exacerbate his problem. They assume he should see his career, accomplishments and trajectory in a certain way. But most assumptions cap well below what Hurts himself believes is possible. “There is no arrival,” he says, deploying air quotes. “The eagerness, the thirst, the desire to want more will always be there.”
