Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles celebrates a touchdown run...

Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles celebrates a touchdown run alongside teammate A.J. Brown while playing the Washington Commanders during the third quarter in the NFC Championship Game at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday in Philadelphia. Credit: Getty Images/Mitchell Leff

Jalen Hurts plays the most preeminent position in sports, one that has made much bigger stars of men with far fewer accomplishments.

He has had success and production few can match. He is 42-11 in NFL games he has started and finished. He holds the record for most postseason rushing touchdowns by a quarterback. He’ll become the eighth quarterback to start multiple Super Bowls in their first five seasons in the league. The other seven are Hall of Famers or will be one day.

He has been at his best on the grandest stages, whether it was last week’s four-touchdown performance in the NFC Championship Game or his 304 passing yards in Super Bowl LVIII, when he went facemask-to-facemask (and some would say outperformed) Patrick Mahomes. He hasn’t turned the ball over since Nov. 10.

Yet he’s not up for MVP or Offensive Player of the Year. He was an alternate for the Pro Bowl behind Sam Darnold, Jared Goff and Jayden Daniels and nowhere near the ballots for the All-Pro team. He’s rarely mentioned in any off-the-cuff rankings of the top quarterbacks in the league that include Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and sometimes four or five others before he comes to mind.

In a league in which mediocrity is celebrated like Mozart, Hurts remains the Salieri of the sport. Even on his own team, he is regularly overshadowed by other storylines, personalities and, yes, crises.

It was just a few weeks ago that A.J. Brown was asked what the Eagles' offense needed to improve upon, and he said: “Passing.” Brown tried to insist that wasn’t a direct knock on Hurts, but it was hard to view it any other way.

Even Hurts gets into the self-deprecating act sometimes. After throwing for 246 yards and a touchdown last Sunday, Hurts said of coach Nick Sirianni’s game plan: “I guess he let me out of my straitjacket a little bit today.”

He was kidding. Sort of.

“I think Jalen never gets enough credit for a lot of things he does for this offense," former Eagles center Jason Kelce — ironically one of those from a typically unheralded position who managed to outshine his quarterback both as a player and now as a retiree — said on WIP Radio in Philadelphia this past week.

“Saquon Barkley would not have the season he had without having Jalen Hurts as the QB. And that's the reality of it, and he never gets credit for that. All of that goes to the offensive line and Saquon. The reality is, his threat as a runner, his threat as an RPO person, all of that stuff opens up so many other things . . . To me, he has cemented himself as a competitor and as a leader.”

So why isn’t Hurts appreciated like his peers? Good question.

Is it because he didn’t roar into the league like so many of them do, entering instead through the second-round side door and taking some time before earning a definitive role as starter? Because his introduction to public consciousness came from him losing his job at Alabama — being benched at halftime of a national championship game, no less! — and sticking around as a backup for a year before transferring to Oklahoma?

His throwing stats are pedestrian (he finished with 2,000 fewer yards than league leader Burrow, and four different quarterbacks had twice as many touchdown passes as he did). His rushing stats are not elite (17 starting quarterbacks averaged more yards per carry than he did).

Yes, he led his position in rushing touchdowns with 14, but the majority of those came on the unsightly goal-line scrums the Eagles routinely deploy and generally are credited to the rest of the team . . . even though it is his tush they push.

Hurts may not play the game the way modern passers are expected to, flinging the football all over the field and scrambling to create confusion. But what have all those gaudy numbers and ridiculous highlights gotten for Allen and Jackson and Burrow and their ilk? No rings, that’s for sure. Mahomes has been hogging those.

Maybe a different approach will succeed where others have failed. Hurts already lost one Super Bowl to Kansas City in a game in which he played a lot like that three-time champ, but nobody can out-Mahomes Mahomes. Perhaps playing more like himself than his opponent will change the outcome for Hurts.

“I don’t play the game for stats,” Hurts said. “I don’t play the game for numbers, any statistical approval from anyone else. And I understand that everyone has a preconceived notion on how they want it to look, or how they expect it to look. I told you guys that winning, success, is defined by that particular individual, and it’s all relative to the person. And what I define it as is winning.”

The best way to fix those perceptions of him, then, is to simply do what Hurts is hell-bent on accomplishing anyway.

He may not even get his due laurels if he and the Eagles win Super Bowl LIX. The latest betting lines give Hurts the third-best chance to be named the game’s MVP behind Mahomes and Barkley. Travis Kelce, Brown, Chris Jones and Jalen Carter are getting decent odds too.

“It’s not about me, it’s not about me,” Hurts said. “I’ve never been motivated by achieving the personal things, the personal goals. All of those things come when you put the work in, out of the right mentality. Embrace what the group’s mission is.

“We just need to find it in us to muscle out one more.”

If they can, at least Hurts will be able to say he got there his own way, in his own style, on his own terms . . . even if it is as the backseat outlier of NFL quarterbacks.

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