Sirianni and Hurts agree on what makes a big-game star

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As the Eagles prepare for one of the biggest stages in the NFL, head coach Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts agree why some players have a knack for rising to the occasion.

And it’s not about rising at all.

“I think you just want to go out there and do the things that have gotten you there, not necessarily change your approach,” Hurts said this week. “Go out there and attack it like another game.”

Of course, that’s easier to say than do.

Because the stage is bigger. There’s more at stake. The atmosphere will be more electric.

That can be a lot to handle, especially for a player who hasn’t been in that position before. Then again, some guys just seem to have a knack for not letting any external factors bother them.

It’s about being the same player you’ve always been as the pressure gets to everyone else.

“It’s just who they are as players and who they are as people that they don't allow — you hear all the time, he has ice water in his veins, big-time players make big-time plays in big-time games,” Sirianni said. “You hear that all the time. I think the cream rises to the top at the biggest moments, and so it's the work that they put in.

“There's no doubt it's the talent that they have, the work that they put in for it, but it's also their mentality of, hey, I'm here, but I'm not treating this game like any differently than I treated the last game. I'm treating this game with everything like I treated the last game and everything like I got treated the game before that. I'm a completely locked in the moment and I'm not thinking about anything but how to do my job and how to make plays. I'm not thinking about the magnitude of the game, the magnitude of the moment, what happened to me the play before, what's going to happen to me after this. They are just locked in."

Leading the charge for the Eagles into this NFC Championship Game against the 49ers is Hurts, who has played in big games before and seems generally unfazed by just about everything. Hurts is a calming presence for the entire team. Part of what makes him special is that he’s the same guy in a preseason game that he is in a playoff game.

Hurts, 24, has helped lead the charge this week as the Eagles went through a normal week of practice as much as possible.

Whatever the Eagles have done this season has worked. They are 15-3 on the season and are 15-1 with Hurts on the field.

Why would they change?

“Again, I talk about that all the time with dawg mentality,” Sirianni said. “Like the best players, the best teams that I've been around, best coaches I've been around can be able to lock themselves into the moment they are in and focus on the task at hand only.”

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