Odds are, you’ve been hearing a lot about Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts to start your week. That’s because the 2023 MVP finalist just became the highest-paid player in NFL history — and just the second to eclipse an annual salary of $50 million — when he agreed to a massive five-year extension that will keep him in Philly through the 2028 season.
And this time, the team is truly committed to their QB, going so far as to give Hurts the first no-trade clause in franchise history, a rarity in NFL deals.
That means Eagles fans are going to be cheering on the Houston native for years to come — and it also means the typically reserved Hurts isn’t going to have much of a choice but to open himself up to a city that he’ll have called home for the better part of a decade when his contract is up.
» READ MORE: How the Jalen Hurts extension impacts the Eagles’ salary cap situation and resets the NFL’s QB market
Perhaps, then, it was perfectly timed that Essence dropped a cover story on Hurts the same day he tied himself to Philly for the next five years. While we’ve already gotten to know a bit about Hurts over the years, here’s a look at three takeaways from his interview with Danyel Smith...
Hurts is ‘a mixture of Kobe Bryant and Beyoncé’
Getting compared to one GOAT is humbling enough — and Eagles coach Nick Sirianni did that earlier in the year when he compared his quarterback to Michael Jordan. In this Essence story, Hurts’ agent Nicole Lynn compares her client to not one but two GOATS.
Hurts’s agent, Nicole Lynn, says she doesn’t often post him to her Instagram feed—“because I get all the DMs, and I’m like, Hey, that’s my little bro. Everybody gotta chill.” But Lynn knows what she’s working with. “He’s a mixture of Kobe Bryant and Beyoncé,” she says. An avid Bey fan, Lynn knows she’s said a mouthful, but hear her out. “Jalen gives you so little in public,” she explains. “Even when you’re talking to him, you want more. You don’t really know him. He’s not intentionally secretive but naturally has this elusive I need to know, I need more. That’s Beyoncé. It makes you wanna know them. It makes you wanna root for them.” And as for the late Kobe Bryant? “Jalen’s got the Kobe obsessive work ethic. Shooting for greatness. And never satisfied.”
Danyel Smith, Essence
That Kobe-like quest for greatness shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Hurts showed some rare emotion when the late Hall of Famer came to visit Alabama during his time there and later admitted to studying Bryant’s work ethic prior to the draft.
“The self-reflection I’d say, being able to take your breaks before this new journey begins,” Hurts told KHOU back in 2020 when asked about how the pandemic changed his preparation. “I’ve had the opportunity to read up on a guy I have a lot of respect for: Kobe Bryant, rest in peace to him. And learning more about him, the competitor he was, it’s done nothing but make me better throughout this quarantine. So reading up on him, watching videos, games even, the competitive nature he had, I admire it all.”
» READ MORE: Jalen Hurts is the antidote to Carson Wentz and Ben Simmons | Marcus Hayes
Hurts later outwardly showed that admiration prior to a game in Denver.
As for the Beyoncé comparison, it’s hard to argue with, especially because we’re getting a rare glimpse at who Hurts is off the field. Well played.
Like Beyoncé, Hurts is spoken for
The rumors began to swirl when Hurts was spotted walking off the field after the NFC championship arm-in-arm with a young woman that the QB was spoken for. This was the first time he stepped out in a major public way with girlfriend Bryonna Burrows, whom he has known since college.
In his interview with Essence, Hurts spoke about their relationship.
And when Hurts talks about romance, he mentions things like strolling the holiday Houston Zoo Lights extravaganza with a date. “I’m not married or anything like that,” he says. “But I am spoken for.” Hurts’s girlfriend, Bryonna “Bry” Burrows, works as an IT professional and is a woman of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.—Hurts himself is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. They’ve been dating off and on since their University of Alabama days, back when he was quarterbacking for the Crimson Tide. When the two made their romance public, after last season’s NFC Championship game, many Black women across the Internet simultaneously mourned the fact that Hurts was off the market and were giddy to see that a Black woman had won his heart. Jalen and Bry made romance look effervescent and victorious—like we deserve to talk as much about green flags as red.
“I knew a long time ago,” says Hurts about Burrows. “I mean, to this point in my life, that’s an irreplaceable feeling. I think that’s what allowed us to get to where we are now.”
Danyel Smith, Essence
Hurts believes in empowering Black women — because that’s who empowered him
One of the things about Hurts that only really started to get national attention during the Eagles’ Super Bowl run is the fact that he employs a management team composed entirely of women, from his agent to his media manager. Most of them are Black women.
The relationships Hurts has with Black women extend from the personal to the professional—including the fact that his first cover story as a pro athlete is with a magazine that has been in service to Black women since 1970. And Hurts’s alliance with his agent is historic. In addition to being president of football at large for Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports Group, Lynn is the first woman of any race to represent a Super Bowl starting quarterback. “Just to give you context on repping quarterbacks,” she says via phone, right before jumping on an elevator, “what I do as an agent is already unique because I am a Black woman. I’m a woman. I’m in the 1 percent of all 900 certified agents. But even for a White male, repping quarterbacks is upper-echelon.” ...
“I’m not doing anything to be different,” says Hurts. “I just think that’s the way it’s been ordained. I have the ultimate amount of respect for anyone who goes out there and grinds for something. Puts the work in, and they go get it done. I don’t put a gender on those things.” Hurts is as active and imaginative in his life story as he is on the field. “This process has been very efficient,” he says with what is quickly becoming the quarterback’s trademark grin. “Work has been done. It’s the kind of innovative thoughts that we all just pour. We think about stuff and create opportunities.”
Danyel Smith, Essence
Hurts might not think he’s doing anything out of the ordinary with his management team because of the way he was raised, influenced just as heavily off the field by his mother and grandmother as he was on the field by his football coach father.
One of his main things is the role Black women play in his life. Hurts often reminds folks that while he did not grow up in church, there are other ways to find faith. “I love me some Granny Cindy,” a smiling Hurts says of the grandmother with whom he often FaceTimes. Then he pulls back his hoodie and tilts up his cap. His eyes are bright and engaged. “She’s the staple in my spirituality. She’s always the one like, ‘Ask God for what you want. Ask God for what you need. He knows, but it’s okay to say it in prayer.’ ”
Hurts is also tight with his mother, Pamela Hurts. An all-star game attender, she gave him a love for artists like Guy, Angela Winbush, and Maze featuring Frankie -Beverly—and she’s deeply and publicly protective of her middle son. Mrs. Hurts, who has been married to Hurts’s father, Averion Hurts, Sr., for nearly 30 years, also modeled for the Eagles star quarterback how to, as he says, “get it out the mud, because she’s had to get it out the mud for herself.”
Hurts recalls a time, right around his freshman year in college, when his mother, a special education teacher, saw colleagues being laid off and decided she had to find a way to reinvent herself. “She went back to school, and she got her master’s to become a counselor,” he recalls. “That’s a living testimony for me.”
Danyel Smith, Essence
Hurts drinks his coffee black with ... honey?
I’ve heard of tea and honey, but this is a new one for me.
“I’ll take it black,” says Jalen Hurts, “with honey.” This is how the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles orders his coffee. There are layers to this man.
He wants his beverage piping hot, and who can blame him? It’s about to be spring, and Philly is featuring snow flurries. We’re sitting in an empty, yuzu-scented Buddakan dining room, opened early especially for Hurts, as starstruck staffers prep for the dinner rush.
Danyel Smith, Essence
Honestly, if that’s what’s giving him his super powers, maybe I shouldn’t knock it.
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