Jalen Hurts Is One of the Best Sports Stories of the 21st Century
The guy holding the Lombardi Trophy in those photos as last night's Super Bowl MVP was benched at halftime of the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship in favor of freshman Tua Tagovailoa, who came in and won the game for Alabama in overtime — ironically throwing the winning pass to Devonta Smith, to whom Hurts threw a touchdown in Super Bowl LIX.
Hurts stayed at Alabama for the following season knowing he'd be the back-up, but remained committed to his team in an era where every other quarterback transfers at the whisper of potentially not starting. And if anyone in the country had a valid reason to hit the transfer portal, it would have been Hurts.
But he stayed in Tuscaloosa and lo and behold, Hurts got the opportunity to reverse the situation from the year prior when Tagovailoa suffered an injury in the second half of the 2018 SEC Championship Game. Hurts came in and led the Crimson Tide to a comeback win over the same Georgia Bulldogs team in the same stadium where he was benched the season prior.
Then, after finally transferring to Oklahoma on Nick Saban's advice to have one more year of starting, Hurts finished second in Heisman Trophy voting and got himself drafted in the second round. And in his five-year NFL career, all he's done is throw for more than 14,000 yards, rush for more than 3,000 yards, win the NFC twice and now has a Super Bowl ring after taking the Kansas City Chiefs out behind the woodshed and bending them over a barrel. If that isn't one of the best sports stories we've ever seen, I don't know what is.
Is Hurts the best quarterback in the NFL? No. I'm not even sure where I'd rank him, but he's unquestionably one of the best leaders we've seen in football in a very long time and I'd take him on my team 11 times out of 10. It takes quite a bit for me to at all admire an Alabama football player, but I respect the hell out of this guy.
