‘Heavy is the crown’ for Jalen Hurts, who responded big time in Eagles’ shutout of Raiders

Jalen Hurts sat down for his postgame press conference with a level of stoicism that could make a statue blink first.

It was intense, even by any of the standards Philadelphia had come to expect out of its starting QB.

The Eagles had just decimated the Las Vegas Raiders, 31-0, to end what had been a brutal three-game losing skid. Hurts himself went 12-for-15 passing for just 175 yards, but with three touchdowns and a 154.9 passer rating that was maybe one drop shy of being perfect again.

He ran for another 39 yards on the ground, too, got sacked just once, and never turned the ball over.

Sunday, within a bitterly cold and windy Lincoln Financial Field, was the kind of response the Eagles needed to dampen doubts, if just for a few days, that they were falling into another 2023-esque collapse.

And it was the kind of response Hurts needed, after turning the ball over five times (and twice in the same play) in last Monday night's loss to the Chargers, with everyone watching, and many outside the Eagles' locker room ready to dismiss him as one of the NFL's elite.

"Everybody's watching," Hurts said with a gaze that pierced straight through the shadow beneath the brim of his cap. "It just comes with it, and it hasn't changed. I think everybody needs to remember where I come from and how I'm built.

"I just want to lead in the right way, set the right example."

"It's heavy to wear that crown, man," defensive veteran Brandon Graham said of his QB.

Jalen-Hurts-Stiff-Arm-Eagles-Raiders-Week-15-NFL-2025.jpg Eric Hartline/Imagn Images

Jalen Hurts ran for 39 yards in the Eagles' shutout Sunday of the Raiders.

The arguments surrounding Hurts have been never-ending and ever-shifting.

He's led the Eagles to the Super Bowl twice in a three-year stretch, showed up big time in both of them, and won the latter one big time with MVP honors.

He's seen the Eagles to the playoffs every year since he became the full-time starting quarterback in 2021, coinciding with Nick Sirianni's hiring as the head coach, and has been further than any of the QBs held up as the faces of the league who aren't named Patrick Mahomes – like Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, and so on.

Hurts and the Eagles also toppled Mahomes and the dynasty Chiefs in that last Super Bowl, but of course, as the arguments go, it wasn't because of him. It was the elite offensive line in front of him, it was Saquon Barkley in a generational year, it was DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown as his weapons, and it was a fearsome defense that really compensated for everything.

He was carrying the Lombardi Trophy down the Ben Franklin Parkway as the Super Bowl MVP, yet even then, the goalposts were always moving in the national eye, and during the three-game slide and especially after that terrible night against the Chargers, local, albeit volatile, talk radio even wanted to see him pushed out for backup Tanner McKee.

In a way, it got what it wanted by the fourth quarter on Sunday, but only after Hurts threaded a pass through the seam to Brown for his last touchdown, which sent the Eagles up 31-0 and gave Sirianni the OK to pull the starters.

Heavy is the crown.

"He's been handling it the right way," Graham continued about Hurts from the Eagles' locker room, in his week-to-week process and in the face of ever-building scrutiny from the outside. "It ain't always easy, because you're the guy that's gotta get all the blame for every little thing, just like Nick Sirianni, I feel like he does a great job, too.

"Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Everybody thinks they want it until they got it, and then they see how heavy that mug is."

"Responded with a win," Hurts said with his short and unbreaking demeanor in the conference room next door. "So gotta continue to stack those one week at a time, one day at a time."

Heavy is the crown.

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