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Rating Jalen Hurts Half Way Thru the Regular Season

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BamaMoon

BamaMoon

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Apr 1, 2004
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I know we had the monster QB thread before the season started. Kudos to those who predicted JH would win the job. I didn't figure a true freshman would be this good and ready to play, so I thought it would have been Barnett.

I'm definitely a believer in JH now. I know he'll only get better, which is exciting. But I'm wondering in what areas you all see him currently excelling and those in need of improvement on a scale of 1-10. Feel free to add other areas I didn't mention.

1. COOLNESS/POISE: 10 - he's got this!!!

2. LEADERSHIP: 8 - he seems to have the respect of the team, but I'd like to see him become a little more vocal. We'll have to see how he handles a last minute comeback, at some point, but I think he's poised to handle it.

3. RUNNING THREAT: 7 - I like he's a pass first, run second guy. I actually would like to see him assert himself a little more in this area. He looks tentative at times, but I think this is just because he's such a "smooth" runner.

4. PASSING: 5 - I think this is his biggest upside in the long run when you combine his running ability. But his timing and accuracy need improvement. I saw some of that in the Arkansas game, but it needs to continue. Right now, he seems to throw better on a roll out than he does from the pocket. His accuracy is his biggest weakness. Though not terrible, he's usually a couple yards behind the receivers on mid to long throws. I actually think it could be more about confidence and tentativeness that causes him to react a little to slow on those long throws. But when he works this out (and I believe he will) he'll become our opponents worse nightmare!!!

5. INTANGIBLES/BALL PROTECTION: 9 - He just seems to get it. Cool, calm and when he makes an occasional mistake he bounces right back. He's strong as an ox, which should help guard against injury.
 
I give the kid all the stars available. We went into the season with a question mark at the QB position and now I consider it as solid as any one on the field. We are in great hands with JH and love to see the guy work his magic on Saturdays.
 
1. COOLNESS/POISE: 10 - Agreed there

2. LEADERSHIP: 9 - After getting smashed in the Ole Miss game, to get up and lead the team down for a score shows guts and leadership because he rallied the troops and never got down. He also cheers on the other QBs. It's like he knows it isn't about him.

3. RUNNING THREAT: 7 - I agree. I actually would like to see more of it. But that leads me to....

4. PASSING: 6 - He's gotten a lot better with his vision of the field. Accuracy has gotten better as well. He was picking Arky apart. Breakdown in pass protection reason for his INT. He still needs a bit of work on the long ball, but he isn't far off.

5. INTANGIBLES/BALL PROTECTION: 9 - Agreed there. Love what I see and hope it continues.
 
He is a super-star. My only concern is on long pass plays, where I would rate him a 2. Until he gets that figured out, just do what you did against Arkansas.
 
B1GTide said:
He is a super-star. My only concern is on long pass plays, where I would rate him a 2. Until he gets that figured out, just do what you did against Arkansas.
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Fair enough. I agree with everything on here. You can literally see his confidence growing every week. I said last week that he would have a breakout game against Arkansas and he did. This week, I expect him to top 300 yards mark.
 
I agree with the assessments above. Hurts' greatest strengths right now are his focus and poise under pressure and his "forgetability" -- meaning he doesn't let a bad play affect his next play. This is an incredibly important factor for this young man as he learns his trade. As he becomes more comfortable in his role, the play book will be opened up more to him and we will then learn what an amazing QB he may become. All I can say is that I'm enjoying the heck out of watching this true freshman navigate the perils of SEC defenses and overcoming them most of the time. I do think his biggest test will come in the Iron Bowl as far as pressure from Lawson and Adams. I just wish him the best for the rest of the season and hope he comes through it unscathed.
 
He has been better than I could have possibly imagined, even with the timing issues on deep throws. My only other slight (and I emphasize slight) nitpick, is he is almost TOO calm. I don't want him to be a whirling dervish of emotions, but I do want to see some emotions every now and then. It's his greatest asset, to be sure, I just don't want him to be too calm all the time. Sometimes you need to have a sense of urgency, and thankfully he showed in the OM game that he can turn if on when necessary.

Honestly, I'm almost talking myself out of my own argument. If he can just keep doing what he's been doing, we'll be fine.
 
The thing I like about this list are that the things a QB learns over the years (like accuracy, reading a defense, etc..) are the things he CAN work on and get better at.

The things that measure off the charts, those are things you typically have or you don't.

That shows his ceiling is ridiculously high, and has to scare the rest of the SEC.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 
I think the OP rated JH pretty accurately. But I disagree that JH should look to run more (if I understood the point correctly). From what I've seen, he runs when he should and throws it away when he should. As the OP stated, JH needs to get better overall in his passing game, including accuracy, timing, and correct reads. All that will come with playing time.
 
Getting Stewart back did him a lot of good. We've got WRs that turn short passes into 75 yard TDs.

I've never seen a true freshman QB take over a team like this. Never. I was too young to know anything about Holloway at Oklahoma in 1985 (and didn't he take over after the season began when Troy Aikman broke his leg?)

Hurts runs the team like a 4th year Junior. How in the world can an 18 year old kid come on a team that just won the NC, and earn the respect of the seniors so quickly? Again I am amazed. The freshman mistakes will still happen from time to time, like the deep throws that everyone has mentioned. That will get corrected, I have no doubt. I don't know where we'll end up this year, as so much depends on the bounce of the ball sometimes. But I'm no less confident than I was late in the year last year.
 
I think Tennessee, Texas A&M, and LSU are going to be the real tests for Hurts. They're the only teams with a quality DL that might be able to bottle up QB runs without having to go Arkansas' route of "zone up, 22 eyes on the QB, but be vulnerable to literally everything else Alabama can do."

I'm kinda reserving my assessment of Hurts as a QB capable of leading us to a championship until after that slate but of course that will mostly be answered for us by those three games anyway. I just haven't seen enough from Hurts to say "yes, he can pass against a team who can play competent man coverage while being forced to stay the pocket under pressure" and we won't know that answer until the end of the month at least.
 
But what do I think of Hurts as our QB for the next few years? Heck yeah, brother.

He's very much a freshman QB in some ways but in others we may have never had a cooler customer at QB.
 
TideEngineer08 said:
Getting Stewart back did him a lot of good. We've got WRs that turn short passes into 75 yard TDs.

I've never seen a true freshman QB take over a team like this. Never. I was too young to know anything about Holloway at Oklahoma in 1985 (and didn't he take over after the season began when Troy Aikman broke his leg?)

Hurts runs the team like a 4th year Junior. How in the world can an 18 year old kid come on a team that just won the NC, and earn the respect of the seniors so quickly? Again I am amazed. The freshman mistakes will still happen from time to time, like the deep throws that everyone has mentioned. That will get corrected, I have no doubt. I don't know where we'll end up this year, as so much depends on the bounce of the ball sometimes. But I'm no less confident than I was late in the year last year.
Click to expand...

Having a father in his life. It's the difference between Jordan and Lebron. Just my assessment.


Sent from my iPhone 7 Plus [emoji336] using Tapatalk
 
1. COOLNESS/POISE: 5 - I'm going to disagree with some here. He looks cool on the surface but his completion percentage under pressure is not good, something like 7 for 27. I'm keeping in mind that he is a freshman but how many passes did Austin Allen complete under pressure Saturday? He is also a first year starter.

2. LEADERSHIP: 8.5 Here. I believe Hurts is a natural here. Guys want to go to battle with this young man. He's got something there you can't coach or buy. He could be more vocal but I believe he will excel at this.

3. RUNNING THREAT: 7 - Agree with the running, he's not DeShawn Watson but he runs well enough that they HAVE to account for it. It can't be ignored.

4. PASSING: 5 - agree here as well. His release is not very fast and his passes are often off the mark forcing the receiver to adjust instead of take it in stride. I attribute some of this to just the speed of the game. When it slows down for him I believe he will improve in all areas here.

5. INTANGIBLES/BALL PROTECTION: 9 - Like the leadership thing I believe he has the "it" factor. He's also mature beyond his years. Last week he gets assaulted by some freak neck wrangling him on the ground. Most people would get up and start a fight which would no doubt (with that ref crew) have resulted in a flag on us. Not Hurts. He gets up and doesn't even acknowledge the guy, just walks back to his team.

Just to compare though game 6 of 2011:
McCarron 98-150-4 int 6 TD's 1156 yards
Hurts 97-152-2 int 9 TD's 1242 yards

McCarron didn't have the receivers Hurts has but his stats compare favorably non the less. That season McCarron really improved after the LSU game.
 
I agree with most of the posters here about his performance. He has been a great asset to the team and seems to have great pocket awareness (exception being the Ole Miss sack-fumble-touchdown) and judgement in terms of when he needs to take off. His running style takes getting used as he always seems to be just jogging along due to his deceptive speed. Like others, I have been more than impressed with his leadership.

I was very impressed by a brief moment Sat night. After he was replaced by Bateman, he was being, patted on the back and given kudos on the sidelines by various players and coaches. He glances towards the scoreboard and begins yelling for Bateman to hike the ball so as not to get a delay of game. He may have been cued by someone out of the camera's view, but he seemed to be the only one in his immediate vicinity that noticed and reacted (he didn't have on the headset either). Him having that awareness even though his "job was done" for the night was pretty cool to see.

I think we have a pretty good one for the next couple of years.

RTR!!!
 
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