After Jalen Hurts ran for three touchdowns and threw for one in the NFC Championship Game, he said the game plan was to “let me out of my straitjacket a little bit.”
It seemed like an obvious joke, but some wondered whether he intended it to mean the Eagles had handcuffed this season given the way Saquon Barkley has run the ball. Hurts, after all, has had a lingering knee injury.
Alas, coach Nick Sirianni said Hurts indeed was joking.
“I think he was having fun after the game,” Sirianni said, via NFL.com. “You know, we’ve been winning a couple different ways this year. I think he’s just having fun after the game. But I know this: He’s said this plenty of times, ‘I don’t care how we win, as long as we win. And we do everything we can do to be able to win.’ As we’ve talked a lot, there’s been different circumstances of how games have went, and where we’ve been at late in games, but we’ve found a way to win and rattle off 15 out of 16. So, again, thought he was having fun with that after the game. Just loved how he went out and executed and prepared for this game.”
Hurts was 20-of-28 for 246 yards in the 55-23 blowout of Washington, and the Eagles will need another such effort in the Super Bowl to take down the Chiefs.