What separates those who fold under pressure from those who forge legacies? For Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, that answer lives inside one of the most humbling nights in college football, and he’s sharing what got him through.

January 8, 2018. Alabama trailed Georgia 13-0 at halftime of the National Championship. Head coach Nick Saban benched Hurts (26-2 record as a starter) in favor of freshman Tua Tagovailoa. Tagovailoa then engineered a historic comeback and sealed the title with a 41-yard overtime touchdown to Devonta Smith. Hurts went back to his hotel room that day and cried.

“There was a time in college where I really questioned: ‘What’s going on?’, ‘Where do I go from here?’ I had a lot of adversity in front of me, and I was counted out,” Hurts recalled on Good Morning America. “I was doubted and broken down and dissected in all these different ways.”

But Jalen Hurts didn’t quit. He stayed, embraced backup duties, and put up highlight reels whenever he got the chance. Then, when Tagovailoa went down injured in the 2018 SEC Championship, Hurts stepped in, sent the game into overtime, and sealed a 35-28 victory with a 15-yard rushing touchdown. In the coming season, he transferred to Oklahoma and led the Sooners to the Big 12 Championship and the College Football Playoff.

That refusal to fold wasn’t toughness alone; it was cultivated. The same tenacity with which he stayed relevant in Alabama and later dominated in Oklahoma has brought him the Super Bowl LIX MVP title.

“I just persevered,” Hurts told GMA. “My passion overcame every ounce of doubt or fear. And I think that’s the number one thing in life and in this book. You’ve got to have the courage to press forward. And so without the courage, the perseverance and the resilience, and the passion, I wouldn’t be here today.”

For Jalen Hurts, these roots trace back to a childhood Scholastic Book Fair. He once spotted a book with two African-American football players on the cover and rushed home, only to discover it was Tiki and Ronde Barber’s By My Brother’s Side.

“I had no idea that they were football players, but I knew them as authors,” Hurts admitted. “And so that’s something that resonated with me.”

That image of athletes inspiring children as storytellers never left him. Instead, that childhood memory became the blueprint for what Hurts built next.

Better Than a Touchdown: Jalen Hurts’ literary debut

On March 10, Jalen Hurts will release his first book, titled Better Than a Touchdown, through Penguin Random House. Illustrated by Nneka Myers, the story follows a young boy chasing his passion, mirroring Hurts’ own football arc.

“Just the idea of community,” Hurts told GMA when asked about the book. “When all of us are up here, we have the platform and everything that we have because of the help of other people. And so it’s the journey of a kid going and chasing a passion of his. And throughout that, he’s taken on so much wisdom and many different ideas from the people around him that encourage him to kind of be a problem solver in a situation that he’s very passionate about.”

Hurts grounded the theme in a metaphor as simple as it is layered, originating from something a friend has often told him.

“An acorn has everything it already needs within it to be an oak tree,” Hurts explained. “And so with the right nourishment, right environmental influences, it can be what it’s destined to be. And I think that’s exactly what we are as people.”

From being benched in college to lifting the Lombardi Trophy, Jalen Hurts’ journey has it all. And now, he’s transferring that to a book to inspire the next generation of kids to never give up. Hurts has been a Super Bowl MVP, found himself in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025, and also earned Philadelphia Citizen of the Year. Being a published author adds to that resume now. But what’s next for him?

“I think impact, legacy, is the things that come to mind,” Hurt said. “Obviously, being more than a football player. Being able to extend myself in ways through a book and obviously through my passion of the game of the football.”

Naturally, that also means being a serious contender in the 2026 NFL season as well.

“Going forward, just want to go out there and work to be the best that I can be,” Hurts concluded. “Go win more championships, win a lot of games. That’s always the object of the game. So can’t lose sight of that.”

More Than a Touchdown will be in stores soon, and every page will help make Hurts’ point: the Super Bowl LIX MVP isn’t done, on the field or on the page.