After Jalen Hurts’s final, desperation heave fell incomplete Sunday night, Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata made a beeline for his quarterback and gave him a hug. The two players walked to the sideline together before disappearing in a cloud of red and yellow confetti as Chiefs players began their celebration.
“I said I was proud of him,” Mailata explained later from the Eagles locker room. “Everything he’s accomplished this year, everything he’s overcome. … The guy threw for over 300 yards, [ran for] three touchdowns. Not bad for a system QB, right?”
For Eagles fans and even those within the organization, it’s hard to know whether to label Sunday’s 38-35 loss in Super Bowl LVII as a missed opportunity or the start of something special. Hurts is a major reason to embrace the latter. He went up and down the field, throwing for 304 yards and rushing for 70 more. It’s just the fourth time in NFL history that a quarterback has thrown for 300-plus and rushed for at least 70 in a playoff game. It’s the first time in NFL history that a quarterback has done that in the Super Bowl.
Hurts’s defining characteristic has been his unflappable demeanor. His first-half fumble was returned by the Chiefs for a touchdown. On the Eagles’ very next drive, they went 75 yards on 12 plays and scored a touchdown. Hurts converted a key fourth-and-5 with a 28-yard run. As has been the case all season long, one miscue didn’t mean another was coming. Things never seem to snowball with Hurts.
In the fourth quarter, after the Chiefs went up 35-27, Hurts responded again. He led the Eagles on an eight-play, 75-yard TD drive and ran into the end zone for a two-point conversion to tie the game. The next time he got the ball, there were only six seconds left, and the game was essentially over. A loss is a loss. But in his second year as a full-time starter, at the age of 24, Hurts went toe-to-toe with Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl and more than held his own.
In the locker room after the game, Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni made his way to the corner where the Eagles’ defensive backs were getting dressed. He gave each player a handshake and a hug. Fox cameras had flashed to Sirianni during the national anthem before kickoff, and tears were streaming down his face. It seemed as though the emotions had gotten the better of him once again as he absorbed the loss afterward.
In another corner of the locker room, running back Miles Sanders went up to his offensive linemen and hugged each of them one by one. The room was mostly quiet. There was no music and no reason to celebrate. Every little sound—the footsteps on the carpet, the lockers slamming shut, the bags being packed—stood out.
Eagles All-Pro center Jason Kelce took a seat in between fellow offensive linemen Isaac Seumalo and Mailata. Andy Reid was Kelce’s first coach in the NFL after he was drafted in 2011. After that, he played for Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson, and now Sirianni. He’s seen the highest highs and lowest lows during his 12-year career in Philadelphia. Kelce knows a special group when he sees one, and this one had it. They went 16-2 with Hurts as their starter. Had they held on Sunday for a victory against the Chiefs, we would probably be talking about the 2022 Eagles as the best team in franchise history.
But Kelce also knows how different each year is and how much can change from one season to the next.
“I think we all knew going into this game, this team’s gonna look a lot different next year,” Kelce said after the loss. “I think a lot of the young guys on the nucleus will be here. We’ll see, older guys like myself, we’ll see what happens.”
Offensively, the Eagles are positioned to mostly run it back. The team’s three featured pass catchers—DeVonta Smith, A.J. Brown, and Dallas Goedert—all showed up in a big way against Kansas City. They’re all in their 20s and are under contract for at least the next two years. That continuity with Hurts is a big reason to be bullish on the Eagles’ future.
Up front, Seumalo will be a free agent, and Kelce has to decide whether he wants to keep playing or retire. At running back, Sanders is a free agent. And offensive coordinator Shane Steichen reportedly is headed to Indianapolis to become the Colts head coach. There will be changes, for sure. But it’s reasonable to think that the Eagles offense is positioned for success in 2023 and beyond.
The defense, however, could be a different story. The Eagles couldn’t get a stop in the second half against the Chiefs. Kansas City scored touchdowns on three straight possessions and then took 5:07 off the clock before kicking the game-winning field goal.
Sirianni likes to show movie clips to the players to reinforce certain themes. In a team meeting before the Super Bowl, he broke out a clip from the movie Focus with Will Smith. Smith plays a con man, and the scene Sirianni showed highlighted the character’s attention to detail when setting up one of his targets. But attention to detail was precisely what was missing from the Eagles’ defense against Mahomes and Reid. They were flummoxed by Reid’s scheming and use of motion in the red zone. The defensive backs failed to adequately communicate, leading to a pair of wide-open touchdowns. Overall, Mahomes and the Chiefs moved the ball with ease. Just 7.4 percent of Mahomes’s throws went into tight windows, according to Next Gen Stats.
In some ways, the defensive performance resembled the last time the Eagles were in the Super Bowl. Tom Brady lit them up for 505 yards in that game, but the defense got the takeaway it needed in the fourth quarter. That’s what they needed against the Chiefs: one play. They had four second-half possessions to find one, but came up short, failing to notch even a sack.
The Chiefs posted their best success rate of any game this season, according to TruMedia. It was tied for the sixth-best success rate by any team in any game this season. The Chiefs ran for 158 yards, and Mahomes completed 77.8 percent of his passes—the second-highest mark for any Super Bowl quarterback in the past 20 years.
Going forward, the roster turnover on defense could be massive. The Eagles have eight starters or prominent role players slated for free agency: defensive linemen Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, and Javon Hargrave; linebackers T.J. Edwards and Kyzir White; cornerback James Bradberry; and safeties Chauncey Gardner-Johnson and Marcus Epps. The Eagles could also be looking at a new defensive coordinator if Jonathan Gannon gets the Cardinals’ head-coaching job.
The truth is that any excitement for the future has to be balanced by the reality of how hard it is to get back to the Super Bowl. The Eagles had a lot of things go their way this season. They faced the NFL’s easiest schedule. And they had nearly unprecedented injury luck. All 22 of the Eagles’ regular starters played in the Super Bowl. Their depth will almost certainly be tested more next season.
The Eagles have been chasing sustained success for a while now. They won the Super Bowl after the 2017 season and made it back after the 2022 season. In the four years in between, they went 31-33-1. After 2017, the Eagles thought they had their long-term coach and quarterback in Pederson and Carson Wentz. Now it’s Sirianni and Hurts. This version feels more sustainable. But committing to Hurts also likely means a new contract in the neighborhood of $47 million to $50 million per year.
Piece it all together, and the Eagles have a leg up on most teams with their coach, quarterback, and young talent. But they had a 10-point lead at halftime of the Super Bowl and couldn’t hold on. There are no guarantees of getting that close again in the next few years.
“The unknowing is kind of the sad part,” said Mailata. “This team’s not gonna be the same next year, and we understood that heading into the game. We talked about it a lot in our team meetings and just the brotherhood and relationships that we formed this year up until this point and how special this group is, this team. It’s definitely sad, man. It’s out of our control. But we tried to make the most of it with our time together and fell short in the end.”
