Commentary: Jalen Hurts took the hard road. And kept plowing forward.

NEW ORLEANS – Jalen Hurts chomped his gum so hard during that jazzy national anthem by Jon Batiste it looked like he was going to crack his own jaw. His eye black was smeared all the way down to his goatee, giving him a villainous look like Iago. In this town of sweet whiskey and absinthe, he was like the bitters. He was the sternest thing here, until he lifted that trophy, when the glare suddenly became gleam.

Hurts had worked so hard for so long toward this Super Bowl victory, and the confirmation that came with it, you wonder what the 26-year-old will do with himself now with nothing left to smolder over. By the time he walked into a riotous Philadelphia Eagles locker room with a fat cigar in his mouth and a pair of champagne-proofing goggles saying “Champ” hanging around his neck, there was no doubt he belonged among the great dual-threat quarterbacks. The Eagles seem like dynastic contenders after their 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

“I think in the end, things come right on time,” Hurts said, and added, “The end ain’t coming any time soon.”

The words “champion” and “Super Bowl MVP” completely alter Hurts’ portfolio. Add another word: singular. “It’s not normal,” he said. “It’s been an unprecedented journey.”

Hurts’s road here has been practically broken pavement, a nearly 10-year journey of anguishing losses and continual suggestions he wasn’t quite elite as a passer. There was that very public benching in the college national championship game in 2018, when Alabama’s Nick Saban moved on from him midgame in favor of freshman Tua Tagovailoa. A year as a backup. A transfer to Oklahoma only to finish second in Heisman Trophy voting to Joe Burrow. The drift to the 53rd pick in the NFL draft. Then the trip to the Super Bowl in 2023, only to be beaten by the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes by the torturing margin of 38-35.

“I carry my scars with me wherever I go. I don’t forget,” Hurts said two years ago. “Do I waste my energy worrying about the opinion of someone else, the opinion of a sheep? No.”

He is one of the most uniquely chiseled and determined men to ever win in this game. Name, please, another great QB who was demoted in college because he couldn’t throw or read defenses well enough – and evolved into a Super Bowl MVP? “You got to be able to use these experiences in the past because they’re formative for your future,” Hurts said Sunday night.

It’s hard to think of a more painful formative experience than the one Hurts underwent in 2018. Saban, after pulling Hurts at halftime against Georgia in the championship game, relegated him to the bench for the entire next season. Saban told Hurts if he wanted to play in the NFL he had to get better, had to learn to see the field better, had to become more accurate as a passer. Hurts didn’t sulk. Instead, he spent the next 12 months doing everything Saban recommended. “He probably improved more the year he didn’t play than the years he did, as a passer,” Saban remarked a couple of years ago.

The pattern repeated itself in the NFL: Hurts went from completing 52.0% of his throws as a rookie to 68.7% this year, and he was at 77.3% Sunday night. “Keep stacking, keep stacking,” Hurts said of his process earlier in the week.

But with the stacking came a lot of slow burning. After the Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs two years ago, Hurts put a screensaver on his phone: a photo of himself walking off the field in dejection as the victory confetti came down for Patrick Mahomes.

“Processing that experience lit a great flame in me,” Hurts said Sunday.

Here’s what all the stacking and the burning added up to: Hurts became the first quarterback ever with at least 200 yards passing and 50 yards rushing in multiple Super Bowls. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t do against the Chiefs, a read he didn’t make, or a throw that wasn’t a zip line. “He played incredible,” receiver A.J. Brown said. “Poised the whole game, always in control, made checks and threw dimes and gave us opportunities, and when we were covered a little bit, he took off running, used his legs.”

His 221 yards in the air with two touchdowns and 72 yards rushing, including another TD, seemed almost calculated to speak to past criticisms. You want a guy who can throw deep to a receiver half a field away and drop the ball in gently into the hamper of his arms? Check. There was that gorgeous spinner of 46 yards to DeVonta Smith with 2:40 left in the third quarter that snuffed out any thought of a three-peat by the Chiefs.

You want a guy who can read the entire field and dash away on dancy feet? Check. Hurts set the Super Bowl record for most rushing yards by a QB. “If he needs to run the ball, he will run it,” Mahomes said. “If he needs to throw the ball, he will throw it. If he needs to make a big play, he will make it. That’s something not everybody has.”

This time when the confetti came down it was all for Hurts. But when he was asked if he would finally change that picture on his phone to one of him smiling, he said, “Maybe it’s something that needs to stay up there, so I can come back here.”

Then he went back into the locker room, and sat on the floor, still in his uniform, with a trophy on the carpet in front of him. He lit the cigar and let it burn, and blew a few long streams.