Jalen Hurts | QB | Oklahoma

Height | 6-2

Weight | 219

College Bio Page

Career Stats

Strengths

Hurts’ transformation from a barely draftable prospect to one of the top quarterback prospects in the 2020 class has been fun to watch this season.

The NFL is a copycat league, and with the success of Lamar Jackson and Kyler Murray this year, some team is bound to try and replicate that success with Hurts under center. He is a dynamic athlete with very good lateral agility both in the pocket and in the open field, and while not quite as fast as the aforementioned two, he still has great breakaway speed for the quarterback position.

Hurts was always a good athlete at Alabama, but his improvement as a passer since transferring to Oklahoma is what has teams impressed. His sense of timing and anticipation has gotten a lot better, as he has shown flashes of great placement on the deep ball. He has good velocity behind his throws and can fit his passes into tight windows. Throwing on the run is another asset in his game, as his athleticism and accuracy make him a tough quarterback to defend when he rolls out or scrambles.

Weaknesses

Though Hurts has gotten better as a passer, he still has quite a bit of work to be done.

His throwing motion is elongated and his release is too slow. That, combined with his tendency to lob deep balls, could make him an easy target for NFL defensive backs to read and pick off more easily than Big 12 defenders. He is also, for the most part, a one-read quarterback who locks into his targets too often and forces throws.

Hurts also tends to struggle under pressure. He has the athleticism to maneuver around defenders and extend the play, but he does so at the expense of reading the field, as he often keeps his head down and focuses more on running around in a backyard style of quarterbacking than he does scanning the field and finding the open man. He can be more consistent in terms of identifying the checkdown option and going through his progressions.

Bottom Line

Hurts is a dual-threat quarterback with ample athleticism who has shown improvements as a passer. He’s still a work in progress, but there will be a team willing to take a gamble on him fairly early in the draft.

Projection: Round 2

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