planomateo
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š Lars Anderson "The Mystery Man of Alabama"
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Just ran across this Jalen Hurt's article on 24/7.
How one voicemail defines the essence of Jalen Hurts
(Photo: USAT, MaxPreps; Illustration by Ted Hyman)CHANNELVIEW, Texas āāHey coach ā¦ this is Jalen Hurts from Channelview High School. Itās been a while since we talked ā¦ā
That voicemail arrived in the inbox of a Power Five assistant coach during the spring of 2014 ā a school so far down the rung of FBS supremacy that listening to it now is surreal. Long before Hurts led Alabama to a perfect 12-0 regular season as a true freshman, on the brink of the Tide's third straight College Football Playoff berth, he politely checked in with an assistant coach at Middle of Nowhere University in search of an offer.
Hurts had no intention of being denied a college scholarship, just as he had no intention of appearing like a freshman in 2016. A four-star quarterback in the 2016 class per 247Sports, Hurts earned Alabamaās starting quarterback role a month after he turned 18.
Heās a dual-threat quarterback the likes of which the Crimson Tide have never seen before.
Hurtsā role is to guide a supremely gifted Alabama roster to a national championship. Yet the fulcrum of Alabamaās season is so young he completed a full semester of college before he could legally buy lottery tickets ā Alabama seems to have picked the one-and-a-million winner.
Itās a daunting task, but you wonāt likely hear about it.
Alabamaās policy is freshmen donāt talk to the media. In solidarity with his son, Jalenās dad and high school coach, Averion Hurts, wonāt either. Itās created a dearth of personal anecdotes and information about a player every college football fan knows and doesnāt really know at all.
But in a series of interviews in Hurtsā hometown with former coaches, teammates and even his quarterback-playing brother at Texas Southern, a picture starts to form. The prospect who dialed coaches to maintain contact is the same one who will start for the Tide against Florida in the SEC Championship on Saturday.
Hurts is uncannily calm, relentlessly dedicated to football and seemingly immune to pressure because of the rigors heās already faced as a coachās son. Heās much more than a game-manager, a term reserved for Alabama quarterbacks of the past. He's a rocketship hurtling towards stardom, blond-tipped dreads flapping in the atmosphere.
Heās, well, Jalen Hurts.
āI just canāt put a finger on why heās doing what heās doing now,ā his brother Averion Hurts, who shares a name with his father, told 247Sports. āBut heās the reason. Heās worked for everything.ā
***
Young Averion sat on the floor, tears welling in his eyes.
His PlayStation wouldnāt turn on, and he had to go tell his dad that heād broken the expensive system. A few feet away, Jalen, four years Averionās junior, asked: āDid you plug it in?ā Jalen, in elementary school at the time, walked over to the wall and pushed the power cord into the outlet. On came the PlayStation.
āItās something everybody talks about, his poise, his demeanor and his attitude and approach to things,ā Averion says. āHeās never been one to get overly excited. Itās just something that really stands out to me.ā
Hurts is unflinchingly composed to the point itās transformed into a clichĆ©. Turn on an Alabama game on CBS or ESPN and you canāt go a quarter without a broadcaster mentioning some descriptor of maturity.
Itās always been that way.
The son of a coach, Hurts started as a ball boy quite young. Channelviewās defensive coordinator Terry Bunn, whoās known Jalen for over a decade, remembers Jalen attempting to sneak into huddles and listen to the coachās calls before he officially played the game.
āHe was kind of intense as a ball boy,ā Bunn says.
That demeanor only budded as Hurts got older, to the point Hurts appeared stoic on the sidelines in high school.
Up until Hurts arrived at Alabama, his most momentous moment as an athlete was easy to trace.
The game came Hurtsā junior year against North Shore High School, an annual power in Texas. Channelview had never beaten North Shore, and with only 5.9 seconds remaining Channelview found itself down 48-42. On the sideline before Jalenās dad relayed the final play, Jalen told his friend, wide receiver Eterrious Giles, āWeāre fixing to win this game.ā
Things like that are often said prior to big moments, but Giles couldnāt turn away from the earnestness of Jalenās expression. A few seconds later, Hurts rolled right and threw to the right corner of the end zone. Blanketed by a trio of defenders, the pass tipped off Gilesā hands into the waiting arms of a teammate.
Jalen didnāt lie. Channelview won the game.
āHe just boosted everyoneās confidence,ā Giles says. āWe knew heād make something happen.ā
That play happened on Oct. 10, 2014 and Jalen celebrated at Wingstop. Two years and 26 days later, Alabama needed Hurts to make a play locked in a scoreless fourth-quarter tie with No. 13 LSU. Hurts had labored all day on the road to that point. Heād turned the ball over twice, and the Tideās offense stalled.
This third-and-9 seemed destined to be an inevitable failure, but then Hurts rolled right again. This time, he planted his foot and burst up the middle of the Tiger defense, outrunning a duo of defenders to coast into the end zone. He broke the tie by scoring the only touchdown of the game.
After his sprint ended, Hurts paused. He looked forward and his eyes darted left until he spotted what he wanted ā an official. Hurts tossed the ball to the opposite side of the field into the refs awaiting hands before walking back to the sideline.
Calm.
āI donāt think the stage is too big for him at all,ā Alabama head coach Nick Saban said after the win. āHe expects a lot of himself and we expect a lot of him because heās in the role. Heās handled that very, very well.ā
***
Hurts at a TCU camp in high school. (Photo: 247Sports)Itās the fall of Jalenās sophomore year and varsity basketball is set to begin today, but Jalen is in the football offices where Bunn remembers this exchange:
āDonāt you have practice today?ā Coach Hurts said.
āIām not playing,ā Jalen said.
āYouāre not?ā Coach Hurts said.
āI just donāt see how it makes me better for football,ā Jalen said.
Jalen, a 6-foot-2, 209-pound QB who runs with the loping grace of a gazelle, could have succeeded at many sports. He excelled in basketball, and Bunn remembers picking Hurts up for a random summer league baseball game and watching him turn a dribbler up the middle into a four bases (his speed forced two bad throws from infielders).
But by the time sophomore year came around, Hurts decided to focus on football. Forget the distractions of other sports.
āHe gets it,ā Bunn says. āIf it was something that was going to make him better than there wasnāt any sense in doing it.ā
The next few Hurts stories might bore you, but they're probably why Saban loves his young pupil ...
... That too-serious ball boy grew into a goal-oriented and focused young star. Itās certainly a platitude, but those who know Hurts best label him as a first-one-on, last-one-off-the-field type of player. Hurts would keep all of his teammates around post-practice if he felt things went poorly is a little different. Giles remembers Hurts bemoaning that the team could never end practice on a bad note.
His appetite for film study is also close to insatiable. Byron Henderson, Channelviewās quarterbacks coach, would walk in the hallways during the day and there were times Hurts would stop him and request they go watch tape.
āHe always wanted to know what he was up against,ā Henderson says. āHe wanted to be prepared.ā
Itās another clichĆ©, but both Bunn and Henderson describe Hurts as a coach on the field. But itās off the field where Hurtsā football dedication proves most potent in its influence. Hurts was so well regarded by teammates in Channelview when he walked in a room, horseplay would cease.
Not recede. Stop.
āWhen youāre around someone who is really true to the game, you straighten up,ā Giles says. āAnyone can be a captain, but Jalen was another coach. Heās like an old man in a young manās body.ā
Hurts committed to Alabama about a week before he headed off to the Elite 11 quarterback camp in California in June of 2015. He called Saban and offered his pledge, but Bunn that also came with a distinction ā Hurts didnāt need anyone to know he committed.
His family knew, the Alabama staff knew and the Channelview coaches knew.
Hurts just didnāt care if anybody else did.
The announcement of Hurtsā commitment didnāt come until a few days later on June 5, when Elite 11ās Twitter account broke the news for him with a prepared statement. Hurts, despite nearly 28,000 followers has tweeted just 36 times. Twitter is usually a fanās window into a playerās thoughts, but Hurts isnāt about that attention.
In fact, he has a Twitter account for one main reason ā to recruit for Alabama.
āItās a single-mindedness set on a goal that he wanted,ā Bunn says.
***
It seems a laughable thought now, but Hurts didnāt always want to be a quarterback.
He dreamed of playing wide receiver. Tall and lean on the outside with speed, he blew past defenders in his youth. Thereās also another reason: Averion left some big shoes to fill. At least Averion always remembers their dad saying so.
āJalen wanted to be everything but a quarterback,ā Averion says.
That attitude didnāt last forever. In middle school Jalen switched to quarterback because thatās where he was needed. As Giles puts it, āthere really werenāt any other good quarterbacks.ā So Hurts dutifully moved to signal-caller and opened a window for criticism. He would not only follow his brother as Channelviewās signal caller, he would play for his dad in the most visible position possible.
When Averion graduated high school, Jalen could have played immediately for Channelview as a freshman on varsity. But, just like in many football-crazed towns, both politics and experience play a role in team selections.
Averion received the brunt of the criticism as many accused his dad of favoritism by starting his son at quarterback, but Jalen still felt some of it when he started at quarterback as a sophomore.
āWe all knew who it was going to be,ā Bunn says. āThatās the hardest part for dad/coach. He knew deep down, but he needed to make sure it was obvious to everybody. Thatās the hardest part about being a coachās kid. There canāt be any doubt youāre the best one.ā
Averion and Jalen spent their developmental years around football. Dadās football office served as their daycare during summers, and the boys ran around with the team in the Houston heat. As they got older, the boys would join in drills. .
Football didnāt often enter the home ā dad would be in the office on Sundays while the boys watched the NFL on the couch ā but it certainly shaped the brothers in childhood.
This football immersion helped both, and by the time Jalen arrived on varsity heād seen his brotherās mistakes. He had no intention of making them himself.
He had been a shadow. When he made varsity, he would shine.
There were still detractors early in Jalenās varsity experience because of claims of favoritism. But nobody proved more critical of the brothers in their time than Coach Hurts. Itās a tough balance being a coach and a dad, and there are times coach/dad would be a bit more critical of his sons than he would be with other players. Itās natural.
Add those factors together, and playing for dad is what Averion considers the toughest challenge of his career. That includes not getting recruited out of high school, fighting through JUCO and eventually landing the starting job at Texas Southern.
That experience as a coachās son is how Averion rationales his brotherās performances each Saturday.
Nothing heās doing is anywhere close to the pressure of playing for dad.
āWhen you think of playing under a microscope, no microscope is greater than playing for your dad,ā Averion says. The criticism that you could receive from your peers can mess with you mind. When I see Jalen on TV and Nick Saban is screaming down his throat, thatās no surprise to Jalen. Weāve heard worse. Thatās not anything thatās difficult to deal with at all.
āWeāre used to it.ā
***
Jalen Hurts after his college debut. (Photo: Jerome Miron, USA TODAY Sports)ArDarius Stewart couldnāt believe it.
Alabama inserted a true freshman quarterback in the first quarter against USC in the Tideās season opener, and the kid fumbled his first play.
āI was like, āAh man, this young guy aināt going to know how to react,'ā Stewart remembers.
Nine minutes later Stewart hauled in a 39-yard touchdown pass from Hurts to give Alabama a 7-3 lead. That margin grew to 52-6 by the end of the game; the Crimson Tide had found their quarterback of the future.
āHe came in composed and got back on his feet,ā Stewart says. āHeās just a different type of guy. Itās just crazy as a freshman.ā
Since that throw to Stewart, Hurts has passed for 20 touchdowns against nine interceptions. Heās thrown for 2,454 yards while completing 66 percent of his passes. Heās also run for 840 yards and 12 scores. Hurts is not the most dangerous part of the Tideās monstrous outfit ā thatās the defense ā but the legs of the freshman have provided an element Sabanās title-winning teams have never had before.
Hurts is under Heisman consideration and is a lock for Freshman All-American honors at age 18.
Heās provided surprise after surprise for both his teammates and Alabama fans, but those who know Hurts best arenāt shocked at all.
The kid on the phone had an objective, and it didnāt stop with a football scholarship.
āIām proud, but in no way am I surprised,ā Averion says. āNo way.ā
How one voicemail defines the essence of Jalen Hurts
- Chris Hummer - 61 minutes ago
- 3
(Photo: USAT, MaxPreps; Illustration by Ted Hyman)
That voicemail arrived in the inbox of a Power Five assistant coach during the spring of 2014 ā a school so far down the rung of FBS supremacy that listening to it now is surreal. Long before Hurts led Alabama to a perfect 12-0 regular season as a true freshman, on the brink of the Tide's third straight College Football Playoff berth, he politely checked in with an assistant coach at Middle of Nowhere University in search of an offer.
Hurts had no intention of being denied a college scholarship, just as he had no intention of appearing like a freshman in 2016. A four-star quarterback in the 2016 class per 247Sports, Hurts earned Alabamaās starting quarterback role a month after he turned 18.
Heās a dual-threat quarterback the likes of which the Crimson Tide have never seen before.
Hurtsā role is to guide a supremely gifted Alabama roster to a national championship. Yet the fulcrum of Alabamaās season is so young he completed a full semester of college before he could legally buy lottery tickets ā Alabama seems to have picked the one-and-a-million winner.
Itās a daunting task, but you wonāt likely hear about it.
Alabamaās policy is freshmen donāt talk to the media. In solidarity with his son, Jalenās dad and high school coach, Averion Hurts, wonāt either. Itās created a dearth of personal anecdotes and information about a player every college football fan knows and doesnāt really know at all.
But in a series of interviews in Hurtsā hometown with former coaches, teammates and even his quarterback-playing brother at Texas Southern, a picture starts to form. The prospect who dialed coaches to maintain contact is the same one who will start for the Tide against Florida in the SEC Championship on Saturday.
Hurts is uncannily calm, relentlessly dedicated to football and seemingly immune to pressure because of the rigors heās already faced as a coachās son. Heās much more than a game-manager, a term reserved for Alabama quarterbacks of the past. He's a rocketship hurtling towards stardom, blond-tipped dreads flapping in the atmosphere.
Heās, well, Jalen Hurts.
āI just canāt put a finger on why heās doing what heās doing now,ā his brother Averion Hurts, who shares a name with his father, told 247Sports. āBut heās the reason. Heās worked for everything.ā
***
Young Averion sat on the floor, tears welling in his eyes.
His PlayStation wouldnāt turn on, and he had to go tell his dad that heād broken the expensive system. A few feet away, Jalen, four years Averionās junior, asked: āDid you plug it in?ā Jalen, in elementary school at the time, walked over to the wall and pushed the power cord into the outlet. On came the PlayStation.
āItās something everybody talks about, his poise, his demeanor and his attitude and approach to things,ā Averion says. āHeās never been one to get overly excited. Itās just something that really stands out to me.ā
Hurts is unflinchingly composed to the point itās transformed into a clichĆ©. Turn on an Alabama game on CBS or ESPN and you canāt go a quarter without a broadcaster mentioning some descriptor of maturity.
Itās always been that way.
The son of a coach, Hurts started as a ball boy quite young. Channelviewās defensive coordinator Terry Bunn, whoās known Jalen for over a decade, remembers Jalen attempting to sneak into huddles and listen to the coachās calls before he officially played the game.
āHe was kind of intense as a ball boy,ā Bunn says.
That demeanor only budded as Hurts got older, to the point Hurts appeared stoic on the sidelines in high school.
Up until Hurts arrived at Alabama, his most momentous moment as an athlete was easy to trace.
The game came Hurtsā junior year against North Shore High School, an annual power in Texas. Channelview had never beaten North Shore, and with only 5.9 seconds remaining Channelview found itself down 48-42. On the sideline before Jalenās dad relayed the final play, Jalen told his friend, wide receiver Eterrious Giles, āWeāre fixing to win this game.ā
Things like that are often said prior to big moments, but Giles couldnāt turn away from the earnestness of Jalenās expression. A few seconds later, Hurts rolled right and threw to the right corner of the end zone. Blanketed by a trio of defenders, the pass tipped off Gilesā hands into the waiting arms of a teammate.
Jalen didnāt lie. Channelview won the game.
āHe just boosted everyoneās confidence,ā Giles says. āWe knew heād make something happen.ā
That play happened on Oct. 10, 2014 and Jalen celebrated at Wingstop. Two years and 26 days later, Alabama needed Hurts to make a play locked in a scoreless fourth-quarter tie with No. 13 LSU. Hurts had labored all day on the road to that point. Heād turned the ball over twice, and the Tideās offense stalled.
This third-and-9 seemed destined to be an inevitable failure, but then Hurts rolled right again. This time, he planted his foot and burst up the middle of the Tiger defense, outrunning a duo of defenders to coast into the end zone. He broke the tie by scoring the only touchdown of the game.
After his sprint ended, Hurts paused. He looked forward and his eyes darted left until he spotted what he wanted ā an official. Hurts tossed the ball to the opposite side of the field into the refs awaiting hands before walking back to the sideline.
Calm.
āI donāt think the stage is too big for him at all,ā Alabama head coach Nick Saban said after the win. āHe expects a lot of himself and we expect a lot of him because heās in the role. Heās handled that very, very well.ā
***
Hurts at a TCU camp in high school. (Photo: 247Sports)
āDonāt you have practice today?ā Coach Hurts said.
āIām not playing,ā Jalen said.
āYouāre not?ā Coach Hurts said.
āI just donāt see how it makes me better for football,ā Jalen said.
Jalen, a 6-foot-2, 209-pound QB who runs with the loping grace of a gazelle, could have succeeded at many sports. He excelled in basketball, and Bunn remembers picking Hurts up for a random summer league baseball game and watching him turn a dribbler up the middle into a four bases (his speed forced two bad throws from infielders).
But by the time sophomore year came around, Hurts decided to focus on football. Forget the distractions of other sports.
āHe gets it,ā Bunn says. āIf it was something that was going to make him better than there wasnāt any sense in doing it.ā
The next few Hurts stories might bore you, but they're probably why Saban loves his young pupil ...
... That too-serious ball boy grew into a goal-oriented and focused young star. Itās certainly a platitude, but those who know Hurts best label him as a first-one-on, last-one-off-the-field type of player. Hurts would keep all of his teammates around post-practice if he felt things went poorly is a little different. Giles remembers Hurts bemoaning that the team could never end practice on a bad note.
His appetite for film study is also close to insatiable. Byron Henderson, Channelviewās quarterbacks coach, would walk in the hallways during the day and there were times Hurts would stop him and request they go watch tape.
āHe always wanted to know what he was up against,ā Henderson says. āHe wanted to be prepared.ā
Itās another clichĆ©, but both Bunn and Henderson describe Hurts as a coach on the field. But itās off the field where Hurtsā football dedication proves most potent in its influence. Hurts was so well regarded by teammates in Channelview when he walked in a room, horseplay would cease.
Not recede. Stop.
āWhen youāre around someone who is really true to the game, you straighten up,ā Giles says. āAnyone can be a captain, but Jalen was another coach. Heās like an old man in a young manās body.ā
Hurts committed to Alabama about a week before he headed off to the Elite 11 quarterback camp in California in June of 2015. He called Saban and offered his pledge, but Bunn that also came with a distinction ā Hurts didnāt need anyone to know he committed.
His family knew, the Alabama staff knew and the Channelview coaches knew.
Hurts just didnāt care if anybody else did.
The announcement of Hurtsā commitment didnāt come until a few days later on June 5, when Elite 11ās Twitter account broke the news for him with a prepared statement. Hurts, despite nearly 28,000 followers has tweeted just 36 times. Twitter is usually a fanās window into a playerās thoughts, but Hurts isnāt about that attention.
In fact, he has a Twitter account for one main reason ā to recruit for Alabama.
āItās a single-mindedness set on a goal that he wanted,ā Bunn says.
***
It seems a laughable thought now, but Hurts didnāt always want to be a quarterback.
He dreamed of playing wide receiver. Tall and lean on the outside with speed, he blew past defenders in his youth. Thereās also another reason: Averion left some big shoes to fill. At least Averion always remembers their dad saying so.
āJalen wanted to be everything but a quarterback,ā Averion says.
That attitude didnāt last forever. In middle school Jalen switched to quarterback because thatās where he was needed. As Giles puts it, āthere really werenāt any other good quarterbacks.ā So Hurts dutifully moved to signal-caller and opened a window for criticism. He would not only follow his brother as Channelviewās signal caller, he would play for his dad in the most visible position possible.
When Averion graduated high school, Jalen could have played immediately for Channelview as a freshman on varsity. But, just like in many football-crazed towns, both politics and experience play a role in team selections.
Averion received the brunt of the criticism as many accused his dad of favoritism by starting his son at quarterback, but Jalen still felt some of it when he started at quarterback as a sophomore.
āWe all knew who it was going to be,ā Bunn says. āThatās the hardest part for dad/coach. He knew deep down, but he needed to make sure it was obvious to everybody. Thatās the hardest part about being a coachās kid. There canāt be any doubt youāre the best one.ā
Averion and Jalen spent their developmental years around football. Dadās football office served as their daycare during summers, and the boys ran around with the team in the Houston heat. As they got older, the boys would join in drills. .
Football didnāt often enter the home ā dad would be in the office on Sundays while the boys watched the NFL on the couch ā but it certainly shaped the brothers in childhood.
This football immersion helped both, and by the time Jalen arrived on varsity heād seen his brotherās mistakes. He had no intention of making them himself.
He had been a shadow. When he made varsity, he would shine.
There were still detractors early in Jalenās varsity experience because of claims of favoritism. But nobody proved more critical of the brothers in their time than Coach Hurts. Itās a tough balance being a coach and a dad, and there are times coach/dad would be a bit more critical of his sons than he would be with other players. Itās natural.
Add those factors together, and playing for dad is what Averion considers the toughest challenge of his career. That includes not getting recruited out of high school, fighting through JUCO and eventually landing the starting job at Texas Southern.
That experience as a coachās son is how Averion rationales his brotherās performances each Saturday.
Nothing heās doing is anywhere close to the pressure of playing for dad.
āWhen you think of playing under a microscope, no microscope is greater than playing for your dad,ā Averion says. The criticism that you could receive from your peers can mess with you mind. When I see Jalen on TV and Nick Saban is screaming down his throat, thatās no surprise to Jalen. Weāve heard worse. Thatās not anything thatās difficult to deal with at all.
āWeāre used to it.ā
***
Jalen Hurts after his college debut. (Photo: Jerome Miron, USA TODAY Sports)
Alabama inserted a true freshman quarterback in the first quarter against USC in the Tideās season opener, and the kid fumbled his first play.
āI was like, āAh man, this young guy aināt going to know how to react,'ā Stewart remembers.
Nine minutes later Stewart hauled in a 39-yard touchdown pass from Hurts to give Alabama a 7-3 lead. That margin grew to 52-6 by the end of the game; the Crimson Tide had found their quarterback of the future.
āHe came in composed and got back on his feet,ā Stewart says. āHeās just a different type of guy. Itās just crazy as a freshman.ā
Since that throw to Stewart, Hurts has passed for 20 touchdowns against nine interceptions. Heās thrown for 2,454 yards while completing 66 percent of his passes. Heās also run for 840 yards and 12 scores. Hurts is not the most dangerous part of the Tideās monstrous outfit ā thatās the defense ā but the legs of the freshman have provided an element Sabanās title-winning teams have never had before.
Hurts is under Heisman consideration and is a lock for Freshman All-American honors at age 18.
Heās provided surprise after surprise for both his teammates and Alabama fans, but those who know Hurts best arenāt shocked at all.
The kid on the phone had an objective, and it didnāt stop with a football scholarship.
āIām proud, but in no way am I surprised,ā Averion says. āNo way.ā
August 7, 1998 makes him 18.
I'm not a mathematical genius, but 2016-1998=18. Just sayin'.
I meant to add that @OldPlayer is 100% correct.
Wow! Really great reads guys, thanks @TUSKstuff & @planomateo. Very impressed with this young man and very thankful he plays for the good guys.
bradenob
Member
OOPS! Sorry guys - misread that or Wikipedia changed it - thanks for the correction! :eyeroll:
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