If we know one thing about Jalen Hurts, it’s that the Eagles quarterback is never satisfied.
He could throw for 600 yards in a game and run for 200 more, and he’d still say there were things he could have done better.
So Hurts wasn’t pleased even after he took the Eagles down the field in the fourth quarter, methodically using up 7 minutes, 58 seconds, before the Eagles settled for a go-ahead field goal with 1:45 remaining against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday.
The way Hurts saw it, he left time on the clock for the Cardinals to either tie or win the game. Hurts mentioned flashbacks to the national championship game when he was a true freshman quarterback at Alabama. On that Jan. 2017 night, Hurts had led his team down the field for the go-ahead touchdown with 2:07 left, only to see Deshaun Watson lead Clemson down the field for the game-winning score with 1 second left.
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“As a competitor, when you have the ball in your hands at the end of the game, you want to take advantage of it, and not give the opposition an opportunity to win the game, tie the game, whatever it is,” Hurts told reporters after the Eagles’ hard-fought 20-17 win Sunday. “Those are the mixed emotions that I have.”
But really, Hurts is being too hard on himself.
The Eagles are 5-0, the only undefeated team in the NFL, precisely because they’re tough enough to withstand anything. This is what good teams do.
The Eagles, and Hurts, showed that throughout the game. It went beyond the stats. Hurts threw for 239 yards, ran for 61 more. But Hurts was even better on the final drive, despite trying just three passes.
The Cardinals had just scored to tie the game with 9:43 left, taking it to the Eagles’ defense on a 90-yard drive.
The Eagles’ running game had stalled in the second half. The offensive line was battling through injuries with three starters out for most of the first half − left tackle Jordan Mailata ruled out before the game, and center Jason Kelce and left guard Landon Dickerson left in the first half with ankle and leg injuries, respectively.
Kelce returned for the start of the second half and Dickerson later in the third quarter.
And yet, as Eagles coach Nick Siranni explained on that final drive: “We jumped on our offensive line’s back and rode them down the field. It was pretty special.”
What did it mean to see Kelce start the second half?
“If that doesn’t get you going, then you don’t have a pulse,” said left tackle Jack Driscoll, who was filling in for Mailata. “When he went down, he’s one of the toughest SOBs I’ve ever met. The fact that he went back out and played got everyone really fired up.”
“He’s a soldier, he’s relentless,” Hurts said.
The Eagles ran 17 plays on that final drive, 14 of them were runs.
Of the three passes, one was a 3rd-and-12 from the Cardinals’ 36 that showed everything as to why Hurts is a legitimate MVP candidate. It was too far for a field goal with a brand new kicker in Cameron Dicker who had never kicked in an NFL game before.
Everybody knew that, including the Cardinals, who were sending a blitz at Hurts.
Hurts saw what was coming, changed the play at the line of scrimmage, then calmly completed a pass for 16 yards to Dallas Goedert for a first down at the 20. But not until Goedert slipped a tackle to gain the necessary yardage.
“We had a different play on,” Goedert said. “Jalen did a good job getting to the check, found the open window, and I knew I needed to get the first down. I was going to do whatever I could to get the first down, keep the chains moving, keep the clock ticking.”
Twice on that drive, the Eagles faced 3rd-and-1 situations. Everyone knew Hurts was sneaking the ball up the middle. He made it anyway, just like he did throughout the game. In all, Hurts converted 5 of 7 situations where the Eagles needed a yard or less either for a first down or a touchdown.
On one of those sneaks early in the game, Kelce came off the field and revealed afterwards that he was checked for a concussion.
“I got up slowly on one of the quarterback sneaks because there tends to be a pile of human flesh on top of you,” Kelce said.
There was no other choice late in the game. The defense was gassed. The offense needed to stay on the field, then score.
“We all looked at each other and said it’s on us now,” Driscoll said about the offensive line. “(We) said we’re going to run it, try to kill as much time as we can and get in the end zone … Those are the types of drives you love as an O-lineman.”
No, the Eagles didn’t score a touchdown. But they used up 8 minutes and got the go-ahead field goal.
And no, they didn’t run down the clock all the way to zero. But they did leave the Cardinals with little margin for error.
Quarterback Kyler Murray then made that critical error. He ran up the middle on 2nd-and-10 from the Eagles’ 34 with 30 seconds left, starting his slide a yard shy of the first-down marker. Murray thought he picked up the first down, so he spiked the ball to stop the clock with 22 seconds left.
But that made it fourth down. The Cardinals had no choice but to try a 43-yard field goal with a backup kicker in Matt Ammendola.
He missed, and the Eagles won.
It might not have looked pretty, but that’s how it goes.
“Smash-mouth football,” cornerback Darius Slay said. “Right there, we just took like (eight) minutes off (the clock). That was like 1980s football. Just hand the ball off. My guy and your guy, mano-a-mano. That’s like toughness. That’s not a finesse game. We didn’t finesse anything. We knew we were running the ball, and we ran it.”
And the Eagles didn’t stop until they were 5-0.
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
