Nick Sirianni says Jalen Hurts requested to come in on Eagles’ day off for extra work

Jalen Hurts is hardly the first NFL player to work really hard.

But given everything we’ve observed about the maniacal dedication to his craft, it’s fair to think he might be among those who grind the hardest.

You know how Mockdraftable’s spider graphs show the percentiles for various athletic attributes? Such as this:

Yeah, well, Hurts might be 99th percentile in the “hard work” category.

Case in point: the Eagles quarterback requested to come to the NovaCare Complex on Monday despite Nick Sirianni giving players and coaches off following Philadelphia clinching the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoff picture.

Sirianni revealed this much about Hurts when speaking with Angelo Cataldi on the WIP Morning Show.

CATALDI: How do you think he [performed]?

SIRIANNI: I thought he played a solid game. And what I was happy with … I know this is a crazy thing to be happy about, but, I was happy he was able to make some mistakes in that game yesterday. And we all make mistakes in the game, starting with myself. But I was happy that he was able to make some mistakes in the game to kind of, I wanna say, knock the rust off a little bit. Because he had been out for the past two weeks, as we all know.

So, I was happy that he— we don’t want to make the mistakes. But I’d rather him make them then, yesterday, instead of in the playoffs. Even though yesterday we were playing for everything. And they were minor mistakes, they were just things we need to knock the rust off of.

But besides that I thought he played a good game.

Now, I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t even watched the tape yet. We don’t get very many opportunities in this league to not work the next day. And that’s why I’m giving you two more questions, because I don’t have a meeting to rush to. And I didn’t have to have the film graded.

I’m actually going in [to the facility] with Jalen. I know the coaches are off but Jalen said, ‘Hey, let’s watch the tape tomorrow.’ I said ‘You got it.’ He wanted to work and move on. So, at 12 o’clock, me, him, [offensive coordinator] Shane [Steichen], and [quarterbacks coach] Brian Johnson are going to watch the tape together in there. So, a couple of us are working, but everyone else needs to have that time off.

Hurts was not his sharpest in his first game back after suffering a shoulder sprain. During his postgame press conference, he assessed his performance as “good enough.” And it was an accurate descriptor in terms of being able to lead the Eagles to victory over a Giants team that played a lot of backups.

But one would be remiss to think Hurts was truly satisfied. Speaking in the locker room after the game, he talked about how there’s room for improvement (warning: NSFW language).

Hurts is preaching the right message ahead of the postseason. The success the Eagles have experienced thus far shouldn’t be taken for granted. But there’s still a lot of hard work to be done to reach the ultimate goal.