JALEN HURTS IS THE NEW MVP, AS EVEN BRADY MIGHT SEE IN HIS SCUBA SUIT

The greatest all-time quarterback can enjoy his snorkeling, but to dismiss the entire NFL as mediocre, he hasn’t been watching the clutch moments of Hurts and the Eagles, who host the 49ers on Sunday

     Somewhere way down below, as Tom Brady peers between snorkeling legs in his bachelor-slim suit, let’s re-establish his NFL parameters. He thinks the league misses supreme coaching. He thinks schemes are suffering. He thinks rules have allowed “bad habits” to diminish play. Whatever he’s doing, reminding folks in his scuba gear that he did “Michigan and Massachusetts winters for a long time,” he’s staring at his flippers and looking for a date.

     “I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL. I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past,” he said. “I just think the product in my opinion is less than what it’s been.”

     If we can freeze his body and prepare him for the game he once played, in the coldest of weather, let’s bring him to Philadelphia this weekend. That’s where the new Most Valuable Player lives — an award Brady won three times in the regular season, five times in the Super Bowl — and should remind Aqualung Tom how the Eagles and Jalen Hurts have moments of resilience that defy his version of today’s performances. There is no beauty in how they win, just the respite and freedom of victory in gallantly clutch moments.

     They’re 10-1 as December hits, with Hurts rallying his team after trailing by 10 points the last three games. He’s 27-2 in 29 regular-season starts and survives when others fail, such as Kansas City’s Marquez Valdes-Scantling, who dropped a winner from Patrick Mahomes, and Buffalo’s Gabe Davis, veering left when Josh Allen thought he was heading right. With no real nickname except the obvious — losing Hurts — he has four game-winning drives this year and is second in league history only to Mahomes in turning double-digit deficits to victories. This week, the Eagles host the San Francisco 49ers in what many believe are the league’s best two teams. Can Brady make his way from the sun to see real football, where he might stand near the end zone in Hurts’ time of gravity and see him staring at the rowdies inside Lincoln Financial Field?

     “I kind of had a reflection moment, what am I supposed to say, what do you guys want me to say?” Hurts said. “We just continue to find ways to win. We play together, we’ve shown our resiliency day in and day out, game in and game out, we’ve been challenged in a number of different ways, but we always find a way. That’s something you can’t really take for granted and it’s hard to quantify.”

     But what about the firm reality that he won’t let his team lose, apparently refusing to falter this season after coming close to winning the Super Bowl? The word, again, is clutch. He won’t use it. “That's not for me to concern or roll with. I just try to go out there and play to the standard and be the best I can be for my team," Hurts said. “There were times today I felt like I didn't do that, but when it mattered most, I felt like we did a good job of doing what we needed to do.’’

     Mediocrity? Brady should do more snooping on Hurts, who sounds like No. 12 in the day. “I have not executed to the level of my standard and what that is yet. It seems to be enough. But in terms of the standard that I like to play to consistently and what I like us to play to consistently as a team, enough is never enough,” he said. “I talk about it all the time, it’s a standard. It’s in a sense manipulative to myself. Winning is the only thing that matters, but the standard is pretty darn important, too.”

     We’ve known the Hurts story for years. He played at Alabama and reached three straight national-championship games, but he was benched and left town for Tua Tagovailoa, who hasn’t reached the same level as a pro. He was drafted 53rd in 2020 by the Eagles, who had Carson Wentz in house but wanted to be “quarterback developers.” Within three years, general manager Howie Roseman was handing Hurts a five-year contact of up to $255 million, with $179 million guaranteed. To make $51 million a year has not changed him. He still does a round of pushups when considering personal criticism from coach Nick Sirianni. When they lost the big game, he blamed himself, despite throwing for four touchdowns and 304 yards. He stays in the team facility from 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Why do you think Michael Jordan’s shoe brand signed him as a football face?

     “Heavy is the head,” Hurts said.

     It’s easier to trust his coaches and mates. They know he rules the position the way Mahomes does and the way Brady did, without all their spectaculars. “You know that he’s clutch, he’s been clutch for us and clutch for this city and this team for the past three years now,” Sirianni said. “He just kept going and put his head down and worked and made some big-time plays in the end. Just clutch in clutch moments.”

     Said center Jason Kelce, whose two late penalties were rescued by Hurts: “I think it’s a Jalen performance. There aren’t too many guys that I’ve played with who are more clutch down the stretch. Especially last year, two-minute situations, game on the line, in the Super Bowl ... he’s been so good in crucial situations when things have to happen. That’s a trait not to take lightly. When you look at most of the best players, that’s a trait that they have to have. A big reason we’ve won.”

     Yet unlike Mahomes, who is in many of the day’s commercials as Brady was, Jalen Hurts isn’t about selling himself. His promotional material doesn’t emerge until a game is over. He throws. He runs. He scores touchdowns via his arm and his torso. He is the new MVP.

     “One-hundred percent, that dude should be MVP,” right tackle Jordan Mailata said. "I don't know the requirements, but I know he's got the best f—ing record of all the MVP candidates. I love him, man. There's no words to describe the love I have for the guy. He really embodies the perseverance, and he leads by example.”

     Even in a mask and a necklace, about as far from Philadelphia as the northern hemisphere allows, Brady can perform a new tally on sub-standard notions. Sure, injuries have killed quarterbacks and coaches are being railroaded, including his ex-colleague, Bill Belichick. The league is astray. But one team and quarterback are above the fray.

     “Let me have this,” Brady said online by the sea.

     I’d rather see him sing, “Fly, Eagles Fly!”

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.