Eagles QB Jalen Hurts (Post-Game Transcript)

On what got the team’s passing attack going:

“We executed and I think we played a good brand of football.”

On whether he thought the team was being conservative:

“What’s conservative?”

On Eagles WR A.J. Brown wanting to see the offense open up more:

“They opened up in the second half.”

On the process with making adjustments in this game:

“It was a matter of just figuring it out, I think. Let me just set the pace here. When you look at a  game, and a game like that and you are able to find a way to win. I know we’re going to point the fingers and point our attention to what’s going on on the offensive side of the ball, but we won the game. We were gritty in the game. We stayed together as a team. We did not quit. Nobody gave up in competitive sports. That’s what it’s about, and I’m very proud of that. I’m not proud of how we started the game; I’m not proud of the flow in which we played the execution and the focus that we had earlier in the game. I am proud of everybody not giving up, and everybody being determined to find a way to win the game. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that someone was going to make a play on their field goal, especially looking at those two Georgia guys lined up next to each other. Win, lose, or draw, we were going to look back and be very critical of ourselves and that’s who we would be. And I’m very eager to grow as always, but there’s a lot to learn from, a lot to learn from, a lot to learn from. Sometimes, there’s a lot to learn from, and I say you either win or you learn. But when you win and you feel like you got a lot to learn, you come on with the come on.”

On if it helped the offense to go up-tempo:

“I think it’s important as an offense in general to make it about what you do as an offense and not necessarily the opponent. There are a lot of great defenses, a lot of exotic looks you may get. There may be someone who chooses to attack us in a certain way and it’s about having the built-in things to respond to those things when they come. Playing within the system, playing within your roles, playing within what you’re coached to do, and making sure that we’re coached to execute it in an advantageous and high-leveraged way, but also just playing within ourselves. I think in the second half when pressure was as high as it was, we kind of just let it loose and went out there and played, and that’s the brand of football we played for a long time. So I don’t necessarily want to make it harder than what it is. We just got to go out there, execute, and play the style of football that we know we can play. The beautiful part about it is we’ve been able to play and win in multiple ways. We’ve been able to play defensive games, play well on defense, and protect the ball and win games. We’ve been able to be very efficient and potent and have a lot of fireworks on offense over time and find ways to win games. We’ve been able to come back from very, very ugly situations and it’s a dangerous thing. And [Head] Coach [Nick] Sirianni, he talks about it’s a dangerous thing when the group never gives up, and this group never gave up. That’s what I’m very proud of. I think a win like this is encouraging, but it also lights a fire under everybody to strive for the level of execution that we want. We talk about playing for a standard. The standard isn’t to produce or to have these numbers or certain statistics, it is to execute whatever we’re asked to do. I don’t think we did that in the first half. I think we kind of changed our approach in the second half and that definitely helped us weather throughout the game and make plays the way we did. But it’s about execution in this game and the way I learned football from [Former Alabama Head] Coach [Nick] Saban, it’s about playing to a standard. We play to win. We also play to a standard and so we can’t lose sight of what that is given all the things that we’ve been able to do over time.”

On how important it was collaborating with Eagles Offensive Coordinator Kevin Patullo to have success in the second half:

“Well, it was a complete team effort and I had the reflection of whatever it takes. If it meant getting out of character, given the situation and just trying to do it. The only thing that we ever cared about out there is to go out there and find a way to win the game. And so, there’s a lot of passion on that field, a lot to learn from on the field, and I think it’s always great to be able to navigate a way to find a win. And every week it’s completely different. We got a great challenge coming up this week, but this is very revealing about our team. A lot to learn from obviously, but to be able to make plays when you need them the most, there’s no such thing as luck. You make your own luck.”

On having to face long fields on multiple possessions:

“We just have to go out there and play. In the league, there is no perfect play, so it’s not something that we can chase. We just have to go out there and play. Trust the rules of which we have, make sure we have the right rules in place, and just go out there and play ball.”

On what he learns about the team and his teammates in these kinds of games:

“It’s exciting. It’s exciting, because you can look back on the game and say, ‘What play will it be? Will this come back and bite us?’ You can think of all of these things and try and rationalize what happened or why something happened. Ultimately, when you stay in the moment and you play each play as its own and just go out there and give it your all, show it when the moment needs you to. There isn’t another group of guys that I want to play with when it comes to that. There’s never a doubt, there’s never a quit and there’s always that sense of fight to try and figure it out and so, we’ve been talking about taking pride in winning. We take pride in this game, as ugly as it was and as beautiful as it ended. That’s the agony and the ecstasy of the game of football and we learn from it all. We learn from it all, but it’s always great to learn after a win.”

On how you personally kept it together especially after the first series in the third quarter being down by 19 points:

“I truly feel it was just a matter of time. I truly feel it was just a matter of time. We have to really watch the film to be able to assess that, but the confidence I have when we play a type of football we play, just got to go out there and just let it loose and play our game and it takes the collective unit to do that.”

On what was behind those plays on the touchdown drive and if there was a concerted effort to get the ball to the top guys – Eagles WRs A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith – in those spots:

“I really have to watch the film, watch the film. I know there were a lot of conversations between [Eagles Offensive Coordinator Kevin Patullo] and I to try and get to the best look, but nobody cares how it gets done. It is just a matter of getting it done. You guys care about how it gets done. I don’t. But just going out there and finding a way to win. [Eagles WR] A.J. [Brown], he made some big-time plays. He made some big-time catches, some big-time catches. And [Eagles WR DeVonta Smith] made some big-time catches. [Eagles T] Fred [Johnson] showed up and showed out when his number was called on. [Eagles DT Jordan Davis] on the other side. I mean, it is a beautiful game and I think I just take a lot of pride in finding ways to win because that’s why you play the game. That’s why you play the game and also take a lot of pride in playing to a standard, too. So once we kind of look ourselves in the mirror as a team and say, ‘This is what we need to be better at. This is how we can approach things differently. There is room for us to grow and aggressively attack those things.’ There’s nothing casual about what’s going to happen moving forward. There is a very assertive effort being made to play to the standard more often. Ultimately, it’s about winning ball games and I’ll never lose sight of that. I think this team will never lose sight of that, but it’s a great collective team effort showing up in those crucial moments. The execution by both sides, the way to hang in there and just a great team effort. We just want to be great at controlling things we can and focus on finding ways to win in the end.”