That statement is just a complete and total load of crap. I understand you might be feeling bad about QBs lately, but you might be mistaking how J.T played with how Hurts played. For the record, Hurts had a better game against Clemson than Barrett did. And if you compare those, you might go "yeah but a lot of that was one pass". So? You don't get to take away the big plays! You don't get to cherry pick the stats! What you just said was like saying "well if you take away the big runs from a running back, he's one of the worst in college football". Yeah... if you take out productive parts of a player's statistics, guess what, it looks bad!
Here, take a look:
http://www.espn.com/college-football/conferences/statistics/player/_/id/8/sec-conference
Let's just go over those a bit. Hurts is tied for third in the SEC in TD passes. He was 4th in the SEC in passing yards. His rating, the raw statistical judgement on his passing alone has him as 6th in the SEC. Now, you want to remove the short passes from his stats, ok well you have to do that to everyone else to! If you are going to try to judge him that way, you have to judge everyone that way and the truth is a lot of QBs would look far worse if you did that. Heck, just take a look at another true freshman, Jacon Eason (a great passer supposedly). Eason has a 120 rating, well below Hurts, a 55.1 completion percentage, well below Hurts 62.8 and Eason's 16/8 TD/INT is far worse as well. That's without removing the stuff you're talking about from Eason's passing numbers. You think that all came downfield? Of course not! And we're not even talking about Hurts running ability here...
To keep going though, Hurts did what it took to win every single game. The last time he had the ball in the Clemson game, he did something J.T. was incapable of doing. He marched his team down the field and scored to put Alabama back in the lead. He did what he had to do! He did what he had to do every single game! Now, can he improve as a passer? Yes! Should he improve as a passer? Yes! Is he all in all a bad passer? Nope! He finished the season, once again as an 18 year old, facing the #5 defense, the #12 defense and the #8 defense. He did this with a shaky playercaller situation. As it was, he still put his team in the lead every time he had to.
It feels like some people didn't really watch Hurts and consider the variables. I said it was dangerous playing a true freshman, and it is. But Hurts literally outdid every true freshman quarterback in the history of college football! He has issues, yes, but he played the #1 SoS in all of college football, and yet still his numbers are remarkable for a true freshman, and clearly in the upper half of the SEC. He went through a ton of adversity, and he remained poised and effective when he had to be. He'll only get better. Don't dismiss the fact that he's a good quarterback now, but truth is he could easily become a great college quarterback, he won't have too far to go.