It’s not easy to let a Super Bowl loss go, especially if you’re a quarterback.
Eagles center Jason Kelce said Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts still thinks about the pang of defeat he felt after this year’s 38-35 Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
“When you’re the guy — when you’re Jalen Hurts — I know the way he thinks, because we’ve talked about it, he still beats himself up for this play and that play,” Kelce said in a recent interview with JAKIB Sports.
“I’m like, dude, you had the best performance ever for by a quarterback in the history of the Super Bowl. You did just fine.
“The reality is when you’re that guy, when you’re really a competitor, you think you control stuff,” Kelce said. “You don’t want to acknowledge that somebody else — a field, officials — because once you start doing that, you start devaluing who you are and who we are.”
Kelce said there were no excuses for the team’s dramatic loss to the Chiefs, which featured slippery field conditions and questionable officiating during a pivotal Chiefs drive at the end of the game.
“No, we’re not giving that to anybody. we control the outcome, we made enough mistakes,” Kelce said. “If we were to fix that stuff up, we win that game regardless of what happens with the field, anything.”
Hurts had a strong game, throwing for 304 yards and a touchdown while he set a Super Bowl quarterback rushing record with 70 yards and three touchdowns, though he fumbled during a crucial possession in the second quarter.
The fumble, which Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton returned for a touchdown to tie the game at 14, was Kansas City’s first turnover in the postseason.
The Eagles’ Super Bowl loss came after a season in which Hurts finished second in MVP voting to the man who sealed their destiny in the playoffs, Patrick Mahomes.
Philadelphia went 14-3 in its best season since 2017, when the Eagles won the Super Bowl.
Last season, Hurts threw for 3,701 yards and 22 touchdowns in 15 regular-season games while running for 760 yards and 13 touchdowns.
