Why Jalen Hurts fell out of first round of NFL Draft

Whenever people ask Philadelphia Eagles QB Jalen Hurts about his journey to potentially being the 4th-youngest QB to win the Super Bowl, Hurts talks a lot about trusting the process and keeping the faith. If you’re a fan of Philadelphia sports, you know all about “Trust the Process”.

For Hurts personally, however, the process is paramount in his path to Super Bowl LVII, and it starts with his NFL Draft process.

Jalen Hurts started out at Alabama, as the starting QB for the Crimson Tide. He was the first freshman to start at QB for Alabama and went 26-2 in his time there, while accumulating 71 total touchdowns. However, when Hurts was taken out of the national championship game at halftime for QB Tua Tagovailoa, it felt like the beginning of the end for his Alabama career.

Hurts transferred to Oklahoma in order to get another chance at starting for his final year in college, and performed well, posting 32 passing touchdowns and 20 rushing touchdowns, but the NFL Draft process was not kind to Hurts. The thought was that then-Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley’s offense was extremely quarterback-friendly, and there were perceived notions about Hurts’ ability as a pocket passer. Hurts doesn’t have the strongest arm in the world, and scouts said that Hurts had the tendency to be a one-read QB and was knocked for not playing from the pocket enough. In a draft class with Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert and Tagovailoa, Hurts was deemed to be in the second tier, behind those three.

Before we truly get into what happened and what we learned, there has to be a discussion surrounding the obvious stereotypes that Black QBs face when they enter the NFL. Although the NFL has made progress in this area, the biggest issue is not with allowing these QBs into the league, but with giving them time to grow and develop, or even giving them chances to fail. When you think about Black quarterbacks, and how often they’re immediately pulled or not given another chance at redemption, it makes what happened to Jalen Hurts even better. Hurts struggled in his time as a starter before 2022, but the Eagles stayed with him and allowed him to develop, while providing Hurts with the requisite talent to succeed.

Now, when it comes to the Philadelphia Eagles selecting Hurts, they were in an interesting spot. They had QB Carson Wentz in tow, and while we know what Wentz is now, in 2019 Wentz threw 27 touchdowns to seven interceptions. Hurts was drafted as the eventual successor to Wentz, one year before Wentz actually took a significant dip in play. It was tremendous foresight by the Eagles to bring in Hurts, and when the Wentz era was over, they had a QB ready.

In addition, Philadelphia also did Hurts a massive favor, and provided the NFL a lesson in how to develop QBs. Philadelphia surrounded Hurts with a great environment to grow, while widening his margin for error. Hurts isn’t as accurate on outside throws? Simply draft Devonta Smith and trade for AJ Brown! Want to fix pocket presence? Keep offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland and develop left tackle Jordan Mailata, while keeping Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson around! This isn’t minimizing Hurts’ success at all, this is more just saying that surrounding a QB with question marks around him with talent and you’ll see the QB blossom.

The lesson we should learn here is to build the offense around your young QB’s strengths, instead of trying to shoehorn him into an offensive ideology that doesn’t fit. That’s how Hurts went from 2nd round pick to Super Bowl starter.