Jalen Hurts wanted no part of it.
While most opposing players — particularly quarterbacks — dutifully fall into differing states of genuflection when Tom Brady’s name is mentioned, the 23-year-old Eagles quarterback had no time for fawning or reflection.
Hurts and the Eagles (9-8) will face Brady and the Buccaneers (13-4) on Sunday in a 1 p.m. NFC wild-card playoff game at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla. When he was asked this week what his first memory of watching the 44-year-old Brady play was, he offered a terse, disinterested response.
“I don’t remember,’’ Hurts said, not offering a follow-up statement.
OK, then.
Hurts was 6 years old when Brady led the Patriots to a 24-21 win over the Eagles, then quarterbacked by Donovan McNabb, at the end of the 2004 season.
That was the third of Brady’s seven career Super Bowl titles. Sunday will mark Brady’s 46th career postseason start (he’s 34-11) and the first for Hurts, who’s in his second season, but his first as a full-time starter.
Jalen Hurts and Tom BradyGetty Images; APConsider Hurts, who’ll be the youngest quarterback in Eagles history to start in a playoff game and is 21 years younger than his quarterback counterpart, unfazed.
“We just want to continue to do the things that got us here,” Hurts said. “As an offense, we’ve revolutionized and evolved in terms of who we are and our identity. I’ve said different things to ignite the growth. Early on, we were searching for who we were.”
Asked about his own evolution, Hurts said, “I’ve improved in every [aspect] of the game.”
Hurts’ indifference to the Brady reference was not surprising considering his personality makeup, which can be described as stoic. His facial expression rarely tells the story about what’s taking place on the field. You’d be hard-pressed to differentiate his mood after he has thrown a touchdown pass or been intercepted.
Former Eagles coach Doug Pederson last season told Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury of Hurts: “You’ve got to check his temperature sometimes to see if he’s got a pulse.’’
Eagles tackle Lane Johnson told reporters after Philadelphia’s Week 17 win over Washington: “I still have never seen him happy, really, as far as [being] enthusiastic.”
Hurts, the son of a high school football coach (his high school coach), is no stranger to big games and big moments.
He was a 18-year-old freshman starter at Alabama for the 2016 season, and he led the Crimson Tide to the national championship game at Raymond James Stadium on Jan. 9, 2017, which they lost to Deshaun Watson and Clemson, 35-31.
Not surprisingly, Hurts declined to comment this week about the significance of returning to the same stadium at which he played that game.
Hurts also is no stranger to adversity and disappointment.
He helped lead Alabama to a 26-2 record during his two seasons as a starter, but was benched in favor of Tua Tagovailoa in the 2018 national championship game against Georgia. He played one more season at Alabama, backing up Tagovailoa, then transferred to Oklahoma in search of a new start.
After a successful season with the Sooners, Hurts was drafted by the Eagles in 2020 and pushed Carson Wentz from the starting job.
Hurts produced 26 TDs for the Eagles in 15 starts this season — 16 through the air and 10 rushing — completing 61.3 percent of his passes for 3,144 yards and rushing for 784 yards.
The Eagles lost to the Buccaneers, 28-22, on Oct. 14 to drop to 2-4 at the time. They lost the following week to the Raiders to fall to 2-5. They closed the season on a 7-3 run, though their 51-26 loss in season finale against the Cowboys essentially was a give-away game, considering they rested their starters.
“They’re a completely different team than what we saw in Week 6,’’ Bucs defensive coordinator Todd Bowles said. “[Hurts] has got a great pocket presence and he runs like a halfback, but he can throw the ball very well. Jalen kind of drives the offense. You can see the maturity, you can see the control of the offense and I think he has done a hell of a job.”
The Buccaneers, who returned all 22 starters from their Super Bowl championship team and followed that by winning the NFC South to earn the No. 2 NFC seed for the playoffs, are more polished and experienced than the Eagles — particularly at quarterback with Brady, the most accomplished postseason player in NFL history.
“Some of our guys have never been in the playoffs or who are rookies,’’ Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said. “But they’ve played in national championship games, and those games are huge. They have the same type of hoopla that surround them [as the NFL playoffs]. We have winners on this football team.”
Beginning with Hurts.
