Jalen Hurts has another opportunity to silence critics
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Like any highly competitive athlete, losses are tough to accept. Especially as the quarterback at the University of Alabama, a program that demands perfection weekly from a fan base that is accustomed to having watched the Crimson Tide win 130 games since the arrival of Nick Saban in 2007.
Jalen Hurts has a remarkable record as a starting quarterback at Alabama having won 24 of 26 games, but the two losses have come at pivotal times over the last two seasons, losing most recently to Auburn 26-14 on November 25 and way back on January 9 in the National Title Game when the Crimson Tide was beaten by Clemson on the final play of the game losing 35-31.
Needless to say, both losses have prevented Alabama from winning both an SEC Championship this season and more importantly, the National Title last season. In the two Alabama losses under Hurts, he’s hasn’t played his best games and while you can never pin a loss on one specific player, any quarterback is going to point the finger right back at themselves.
Against Auburn, Hurts was just 12 of 22 passing for 112-yards with one-touchdown ending the night with a quarterback rating of 112.3, his lowest rating of the season. Against Clemson last year, Hurts was 13 of 31 passing for 131-yards with one-touchdown and while Hurts did score what appeared to be the game-winning touchdown off a 30-yard score with 2:31 remaining, Clemson’s Deshaun Watson would be held as the hero of the game hitting Hunter Renfrow for the game-winner with just one second left.
This season Hurts is 135 of 222 passing (60.8%) for 1,940-yards with 15 passing touchdowns and has a rating of 155.6 (up 16.5 from last year), but despite his on the field progression and winning ways at Alabama, the general fan and college football analyst projection of Hurts is that he cannot get the job done when it matters most.
During Nick Saban’s first media appearance before Clemson. Saban talked about Hurts and that as a team, they need to be more efficient when passing the football.
“We’ve had the same goal with the passing game as always. We want to have great balance in our offense, we have really good skill guys, we want to make explosive plays with those guys and we have to be able to execute all phases of the passing game better,” Said Saban.
“Whether that is the quarterback's presence in the pocket in terms of reading, getting to the second read at times, executing the plays as they are designed, and the same thing with pass protection, and pass routes. Just the overall efficiency is everyone’s responsibility and I think that is something we need to improve on. We need to make it easier in some ways so that we can get better at execution.”
On Saturday, December 16 Jalen Hurts spoke to the media for the first time since Alabama's loss to Auburn.
“Just being able to learn from the two losses. Those are not losses to me, they are learning experiences. I have a lot of players around me that are capable of making big plays and it’s essential to give those guys opportunities to make plays.”