Jalen Hurts: We didn’t play to our standard, but we found a way to win

The Eagles were down 10 points on the road in the rain on Monday night, but they scored the only points of the second half and left Kansas City with a 21-17 win that moved them to 9-1 on the season.

On paper, that sounds like a satisfying way to wrap up a trip to Kansas City. Quarterback Jalen Hurts didn’t sound terribly pleased with himself and the overall effort when he spoke to reporters after the game, however.

The Eagles had a hard time moving the ball most of the night while giving up five sacks and turning the ball over once, but their defense kept them in the game long enough for Hurts to find Devonta Smith for a 41-yard halfway through the fourth quarter. Hurts ran for his second touchdown of the game on the next play to take the lead and said after the game that it showed the Eagles can “make those plays when you need to make those plays.”

“I don’t think we played clean tonight. I don’t think we played to our standard, nowhere near our standard,” Hurts said in his postgame press conference. “But I think the thing that you can’t test or quantify is the resilience that a team has, the ability to persevere and see through things and overcome things, and this team has that. We’ve yet to put up a performance to our standards, but we continue to find ways to win. When you win games like we’ve won games, that builds a ton of character. We’re kind of in, I guess, character development mode with the games we’ve played and how we’ve won. It’ll only serve us for great things in the future.”

It’s not the first time that the aftermath of an Eagles win has featured some nitpicking about the manner in which it came together, but the end result is still a 9-1 record that has the Eagles atop the NFC coming into the final stretch of the regular season. If you are what your record says you are, the Eagles are a tough team to beat and that gives them a good chance to make another long postseason run come January.

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