So the joke goes something like this: Nick Saban is the only person who successfully stopped Jalen Hurts.
But before we get into rehashing the past or who did what and why, maybe the fall and rise of Hurts can be a teaching moment for college football quarterbacks of the now generation.
Maybe, if we look real close, Hurts isn’t the outlier. He’s part of an undeniable quarterback trend that can no longer be ignored.
“There’s untold value in failure,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart told me last summer.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of that.
Somewhere, amid the hustle and bustle of free player movement and NIL deals, and if it doesn’t work here, there’s always the transfer portal, is a story of reality everyone needed.
The story of the young quarterback from suburban Houston who arrived at Alabama in 2016 as a midterm enrollee, and it took all of one quarter in the season opener for Saban to realize Hurts had to be on the field. If you think that’s an improbable ride, consider these next steps:
— But for an improbable, two-minute touchdown drive from DeShaun Watson and Clemson, Hurts would’ve been a national championship quarterback as a freshman.
— A year later, after leading Alabama to 25 wins in 27 starts, Hurts was benched at halftime of the College Football Playoff national championship game against Georgia for freshman Tua Tagovailoa.
— A year after that, after the humility of losing the starting job again in fall camp, Hurts stayed at Alabama and eventually replaced an injured Tagovailoa in the SEC championship game. And led a comeback victory.
Only then did Hurts transfer to Oklahoma, where he led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff and was a Heisman Trophy finalist. Only then did he persevere five more years before finally completing the road to redemption with a Super Bowl championship.
From benched in the then-biggest moment of his athletic career, to coming all the way back to being named MVP of the Super Bowl. That’s the value of failure.
That’s Hurts, whose cell phone wallpaper was a photo of his dejected self after losing Super Bowl LVII in 2023. For two years that photo was the first and last thing he saw every day.
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But Hurts isn’t alone in his unique battle with failure.
Nearly a year ago, Kansas State told Will Howard after four seasons in the program it was moving forward with uber-talented sophomore Avery Johnson. So Howard signed with Ohio State, absorbed two brutal losses to Oregon and Michigan, then played the best four-game stretch of his college career and won it all.
Stetson Bennett failed at Georgia, was told he wouldn’t play quarterback for the Bulldogs and left to play in junior college. He returned a year later, and eventually won back-to-back national titles in 2021-22.
Joe Burrow failed for three seasons to win the starting job at Ohio State, transferred to LSU in 2018, and in 2019 had the greatest individual season in the modern era of college football ― and won the national title and Heisman Trophy.
See a trend?
The issue in college football isn’t the transfer portal. It’s giving up.
The issue isn’t players making money off their name, image and likeness, it’s players gaming the system for more money while ignoring the beautiful slog of the grind.
It’s quarterbacks, the most important position on the field and the one position with more turnover than any other, hopping from team to team, and dream to dream.
It’s avoiding failure and all the potential to learn and develop from it, for the easy money and easy out of the next team.
Four of the top 10 quarterbacks in the 2024 recruiting class, according to the 247Sports composite ranking, are no longer with their original teams. Five of the top 10 from 2023 aren’t, either.
Free player movement was a pipe dream when Hurts was benched in 2017, and then didn’t win the job again in his junior season of 2018. Only after graduating early from Alabama prior to the start of the 2019 season, could Hurts use a graduate transfer rule to play immediately at Oklahoma.
But think about this: he could’ve left Alabama during the fall camp of 2018, when it was clear Tagovailoa was the team’s starter. He could’ve sat out a season, and still played in 2019 at Oklahoma.
The beautiful slog changed him. Just like it did Bennett and Burrow and Howard after him.
Like it did for Bo Nix and Kurtis Rourke and maybe even Arch Manning.
There is value in failure. It doesn’t take a Super Bowl trophy to see it.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
