PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jalen Hurts pointed at A.J. Brown — and just showed everyone watching, including a hapless defense — where he would throw the ball.
Sure enough, Hurts tossed a strike down the sideline to Brown for an easy score earlier this season in a win over Minnesota.
It was a beauty. The kind of play that actually frustrated Eagles fans this season because they wanted more of them.
Kind of like “ The Dagger ” in the Super Bowl.
The one where Hurts faked a handoff to Saquon Barkley, dropped back and unloaded a 46-yard strike to DeVonta Smith that was the final — well, dagger — in the Chiefs' bid for a three-peat and sent the Eagles on the way to the franchise's second Super Bowl championship.
Hurts has the athleticism and mobility and all the essential tangibles needed to be a great quarterback. Yet ask Hurts what has defined his ability to rise to the biggest occasion — he has a Super Bowl MVP to back that up — and it's not his arm, his legs or any play drawn up in the playbook.
It's just the way he's hard-wired.
“Some things are in you," Hurts said.
The Eagles need more of those big games out of Hurts in the postseason as they play for back-to-back Super Bowl titles and not the periods of inconsistency that largely defined this season.
He threw a career-high 25 touchdowns — yet had two second halves this season where he failed to complete a pass. He threw only six interceptions — yet had four in one game, that included the ignominious feat of throwing a pick and losing a fumble on the same play. Long a dual-threat, Hurts' 421 yards rushing were his lowest total since his 2020 rookie season and opposing defenses seemed to have solved the tush push.
Much of the blame for his erratic season fell at the feet of first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo.
The question is, will Hurts be able to flip the proverbial switch and morph into a postseason star when the NFC East champion Eagles host San Francisco on Sunday in an NFC wild card game?
Hurts — who holds postseason quarterback records for single-game rushing yards and rushing touchdowns in a game — believes he can again meet the moment.
Hurts had both the stats and the championship against the Chiefs.
He went 17 of 22 for 221 yards and two touchdowns, and he ran for 72 yards and a touchdown, joining Hall of Famer Joe Montana as the only quarterbacks to throw for at least 200 yards and two TDs and rush for at least 50 yards and a score in a Super Bowl.
“Experience is the biggest teacher,” Hurts said. “A lot of moments you can lean on.”
Hurts is 6-3 in the postseason with two trips to the Super Bowl in the last three seasons. Hurts is one of three quarterbacks in this season’s playoffs who has won a Super Bowl (Aaron Rodgers and Matt Stafford are the others) and he scored a rushing touchdown against the 49ers three years ago in an NFC title game rout.
The 49ers sure haven't forgotten being on the receiving end of Hurts orchestrating a big game beatdown.
“He’s got a big time-arm,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said. “With those wideouts and stuff he has, he’s capable of making any throw, whether on time or whether extremely late. Usually when a quarterback’s late, you can’t throw it that far and catch up with those guys. He can. So, you’ve got to honor the entire field with him.”
Rodgers (11-11) and Buffalo's Josh Allen (7-6) are the only quarterbacks with more postseason wins in the playoffs than Hurts.
Hurts is 5-0 at home in his postseason career.
“The amount of big games we play on a yearly basis in our regular seasons are huge and then played, how many playoff games is this now? This will be our 10th,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “That’s huge, right? Every time he steps out on the field, I feel like Jalen does a great job of continuing to raise his level of play.”
Consider, Hurts threw two interceptions in his first career playoff game in 2021 against Tampa Bay. Over the next eight games — which includes 304 yards and a touchdown, running for 70 yards and three scores in his first Super Bowl against the Chiefs — Hurts has nine touchdown passes and only one interception.
“I just think what you see from Jalen is you see this steadiness at all times,” Sirianni said.
The Eagles shook up the organization when they drafted Hurts out of Oklahoma in the second round in 2020. They had Carson Wentz entrenched at QB and seemingly had more pressing needs than another quarterback — especially one that could make a run at the starting spot.
Hurts was expected to serve as insurance for Wentz. Instead, he supplanted him and became one of the top young quarterbacks in the NFL.
Hurts is 27 now and understands he will ultimately be judged on how many wins he can get the Eagles in the postseason, not necessarily how they won the games.
He has winner traits — those innate ones inside him that he can't define — that the Eagles hope can lead them to yet another Super Bowl.
“You can’t faze him,” 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh said. "I mean, the young man’s got elite presence and is a damn good football player.”
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Philadelphia Eagles' Jalen Hurts passes during the second half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
U.S. President Donald Trump wants to own Greenland. He has repeatedly said the United States must take control of the strategically located and mineral-rich island, which is a semiautonomous region that's part of NATO ally Denmark.
Officials from Denmark, Greenland and the United States met Thursday in Washington and will meet again next week to discuss a renewed push by the White House, which is considering a range of options, including using military force, to acquire the island.
Trump said Friday he is going to do “something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”
If it's not done “the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way," he said without elaborating what that could entail. In an interview Thursday, he told The New York Times that he wants to own Greenland because “ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO, and Greenlanders say they don't want to become part of the U.S.
This is a look at some of the ways the U.S. could take control of Greenland and the potential challenges.
Trump and his officials have indicated they want to control Greenland to enhance American security and explore business and mining deals. But Imran Bayoumi, an associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the sudden focus on Greenland is also the result of decades of neglect by several U.S. presidents towards Washington's position in the Arctic.
The current fixation is partly down to “the realization we need to increase our presence in the Arctic, and we don’t yet have the right strategy or vision to do so,” he said.
If the U.S. took control of Greenland by force, it would plunge NATO into a crisis, possibly an existential one.
While Greenland is the largest island in the world, it has a population of around 57,000 and doesn't have its own military. Defense is provided by Denmark, whose military is dwarfed by that of the U.S.
It's unclear how the remaining members of NATO would respond if the U.S. decided to forcibly take control of the island or if they would come to Denmark's aid.
“If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops,” Frederiksen has said.
Trump said he needs control of the island to guarantee American security, citing the threat from Russian and Chinese ships in the region, but “it's not true” said Lin Mortensgaard, an expert on the international politics of the Arctic at the Danish Institute for International Studies, or DIIS.
While there are probably Russian submarines — as there are across the Arctic region — there are no surface vessels, Mortensgaard said. China has research vessels in the Central Arctic Ocean, and while the Chinese and Russian militaries have done joint military exercises in the Arctic, they have taken place closer to Alaska, she said.
Bayoumi, of the Atlantic Council, said he doubted Trump would take control of Greenland by force because it’s unpopular with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, and would likely “fundamentally alter” U.S. relationships with allies worldwide.
The U.S. already has access to Greenland under a 1951 defense agreement, and Denmark and Greenland would be “quite happy” to accommodate a beefed up American military presence, Mortensgaard said.
For that reason, “blowing up the NATO alliance” for something Trump has already, doesn’t make sense, said Ulrik Pram Gad, an expert on Greenland at DIIS.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers this week that it was the Republican administration’s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force. Danish and Greenlandic officials have previously said the island isn't for sale.
It's not clear how much buying the island could cost, or if the U.S. would be buying it from Denmark or Greenland.
Washington also could boost its military presence in Greenland “through cooperation and diplomacy,” without taking it over, Bayoumi said.
One option could be for the U.S. to get a veto over security decisions made by the Greenlandic government, as it has in islands in the Pacific Ocean, Gad said.
Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands have a Compact of Free Association, or COFA, with the U.S.
That would give Washington the right to operate military bases and make decisions about the islands’ security in exchange for U.S. security guarantees and around $7 billion of yearly economic assistance, according to the Congressional Research Service.
It's not clear how much that would improve upon Washington's current security strategy. The U.S. already operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, and can bring as many troops as it wants under existing agreements.
Greenlandic politician Aaja Chemnitz told The Associated Press that Greenlanders want more rights, including independence, but don't want to become part of the U.S.
Gad suggested influence operations to persuade Greenlanders to join the U.S. would likely fail. He said that is because the community on the island is small and the language is “inaccessible.”
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen summoned the top U.S. official in Denmark in August to complain that “foreign actors” were seeking to influence the country’s future. Danish media reported that at least three people with connections to Trump carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.
Even if the U.S. managed to take control of Greenland, it would likely come with a large bill, Gad said. That’s because Greenlanders currently have Danish citizenship and access to the Danish welfare system, including free health care and schooling.
To match that, “Trump would have to build a welfare state for Greenlanders that he doesn’t want for his own citizens,” Gad said.
Since 1945, the American military presence in Greenland has decreased from thousands of soldiers over 17 bases and installations to 200 at the remote Pituffik Space Base in the northwest of the island, Rasmussen said last year. The base supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.
U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance told Fox News on Thursday that Denmark has neglected its missile defense obligations in Greenland, but Mortensgaard said that it makes “little sense to criticize Denmark,” because the main reason why the U.S. operates the Pituffik base in the north of the island is to provide early detection of missiles.
The best outcome for Denmark would be to update the defense agreement, which allows the U.S. to have a military presence on the island and have Trump sign it with a “gold-plated signature,” Gad said.
But he suggested that's unlikely because Greenland is “handy” to the U.S president.
When Trump wants to change the news agenda — including distracting from domestic political problems — “he can just say the word ‘Greenland' and this starts all over again," Gad said.
CORRECT THE ORDER OF SPEAKERS, FILE - Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, right, and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, left, speak on April 27, 2025, in Marienborg, Denmark. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)
FILE - Danish military forces participate in an exercise with hundreds of troops from several European NATO members in the Arctic Ocean in Nuuk, Greenland, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)
President Donald Trump listens as he was speaking with reporters while in flight on Air Force One, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, as returning to Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen arrives for a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Tuesday, Jan.6, 2026. (Yoan Valat, Pool photo via AP)
FILE - A plane carrying Donald Trump Jr. lands in Nuuk, Greenland, Jan. 7, 2025. (Emil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, file)
