2020 NFL Draft: Jalen Hurts Scouting Report

Quarterback Skills and Flaws

Watching the film on Jalen Hurts best plays in 2019 shows a quarterback that looks hungry to win and prove his detractors wrong. Although he doesn’t always play with this level of energy when playing every down, when Hurts is in this mode he can make some spectacular plays. For a great collection of these plays, check out the video below.

However, we all know that a quarterback’s skills cannot be judged solely on a highlight reel. It takes watching several games across multiple seasons to get a true understanding of a players skills. But it is still fun to check out his greatest plays of 2019 if only to get a glimpse of the young quarterback when he is operating at his best.

For the purposes of this scouting report, I will mostly be relying on his game footage against Baylor from November 16th, 2019. This game I think best showcases what kind of quarterback Hurts has been since he entered college football. I also like to remember that Baylor was a conference rival and a ranked team when the Sooners came to Baylor.

So while it is unfair to judge his whole body of work as a quarterback on one game, this game best encapsulates what a team can expect from Hurts once he is in the NFL. This list is not meant to be a complete catalog of every trait Hurts has, but rather the biggest things that Hurts shows on tape. To watch along with me, check out the video below.

Accuracy

If you went solely off the numbers alone, Hurts would appear to be just like any other elite college quarterback entering the 2020 NFL Draft. Through four seasons playing in the NCAA, Hurts has 80 touchdowns to 19 interceptions. He has a 65.6% completion percentage and has thrown over 9,000 yards over his college career, according to Sports-Reference.com.

Hurts has had a completion percentage this season of 71 percent, so you would assume Hurts has great accuracy. But when your best receiver is CeeDee Lamb, the consensus top wide receiver in the 2020 NFL Draft, those completions tend to come much easier. It’s important to realize that while Hurts has good completion numbers, that doesn’t necessarily mean he is super accurate.

Watching the Baylor film, Hurts mostly throws to open wide receivers. Multiple times in the game Hurts threw to receivers who had 2 yards or more of open space. On several plays, receivers who had a yard or less of space were passed over during his progressions. You can’t blame Hurts for throwing to the receiver who is wide open, but this makes it harder to ascertain what his actual accuracy looks like.

Watching Hurts throw the ball, it is clear that he can get the ball in the general area of the receiver. But to say Hurts has pin-point accuracy would be dishonest. Several big plays this season from Hurts involved wide receiver going up to get the ball or making exceptional plays to secure the completion.

One of the hardest parts of determining his accuracy is that Hurts has gone through hot and cold spells with accuracy throughout the season. For the first month of the 2019 season, Hurts had one of the highest accuracy rates in all of college football, logging in a total Quarterback Rating (QBR) of 96.6 according to 247Sports. This put Hurts in the upper level of college football quarterbacks, outpacing Joe Burrow at one point for accuracy.

But as the season progressed, Hurts made some bad throws that brought his QBR back down to earth. Those temporary lapses of judgment when throwing the ball brought his QBR down to 90.6 by the end of the season, according to ESPN. Still good for fourth-best in the NCAA, but still concerning when thinking about his future in the NFL.

It is also important to remember that quarterbacks running the ball plays a part in QBR ratings, and considering how much Hurts runs with the ball, it is hard to use QBR as a reliable measure of his accuracy.

Overall, I’d say that Hurts has enough accuracy to make sure receivers have a good chance of securing the ball. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say he is the biggest contributor to successful completions. His accuracy could cause problems in the NFL, where receivers are far less likely to get as much separation from defenders as they are in the NCAA. But Hurts has also shown at times to have elite accuracy while throwing the ball.

For any team that decides to draft Hurts in the 2020 NFL Draft, coaches and fans will need to understand that Hurts will potentially be very hot and very cold at times when it comes to accuracy. Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings is a good example of this tendency. The times when he is accurate makes him look like a top-five quarterback in the NFL. But every so often, he will throw a pass that just doesn’t make any sense on film.

The team that takes Hurts in the 2020 NFL Draft may have a similar issue. It’s not a deal-breaker, as Cousins has made a good career for himself being hot and cold when it comes to accuracy. But prepare for some truly cringe-worthy highlights during the season.

Technique

For this section, I am including both his throwing technique and his rushing ability. Most people would think when transferring from Coach Saban’s offense to Coach Riley’s would require an overhaul of his technique and mechanics. After all, Riley has produced two gunslinging quarterbacks in the past two drafts in Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray.

Both quarterbacks were selected first overall in their respective drafts and with Saban dumping Hurts for Tua, many people assumed his transfer would require him to change.

But Coach Riley is quoted as saying very little needed to change when he came to Norman, Oklahoma. According to OUDaily.com, Riley instead had Hurts spending more time in the offseason learning the team’s system and getting in the right headspace to excel at Oklahoma.

Whether or not Coach Riley had Hurts change any of his techniques in Oklahoma, it cannot be denied how good Hurts looked this past season playing for Oklahoma. His release when throwing in Oklahoma looked a lot crisper than it did in Alabama. His passes left his arm with more energy and it appeared to me that he was throwing harder than when he was with Alabama.

His stance when dropping back reminds me a lot of Cam Newton’s after the snap. Hurts will bob on the tips of his toes and will lean slightly forward when going through his progressions, which is typical of a dual-threat quarterback. Hurts may be a good thrower of the ball, but most plays he looks like he is one misplaced linebacker away from taking off on a run.

Hurts has great pocket management and avoid sacks as well as any quarterback in the 2020 NFL Draft. This can be partly attributed to defenses being hesitant to blitz Hurts, as he has shown he will rush the ball as well as any halfback.

He does have a tendency of shuffling out of the pocket when the pressure hasn’t arrived yet, which can ruin a quarterback’s progressions and open him up to more pressure. But I believe this might be his attempt at moving defenders away from receivers down the field. By moving out of the pocket prematurely, linebackers and safeties might assume Hurts is getting ready to run, which will move them up and away from receivers.

His arm strength is concerning, as several passes this season where Hurts has thrown the ball deep have floated in the air far longer than you would like to see. This is far less of a problem in the NCAA, but in the NFL that extra half-second in the air could make all the difference in the world. His windup when throwing is a little longer as well.

This again is an issue that hasn’t caused too many problems while playing in college, but long windup times in the NFL can be deadly, where cornerbacks are far more talented and pass-rushers are far faster. His arm strength and windup can be coached out of him once he is a professional football player, but it is still an issue with his technique today.

Where Hurts really makes defenders pay is in his ability to run down the field. At 6-foot-2, 218 pounds Hurts is athletic enough to get a good head of steam going when he is rushing and big enough to make him a problem to tackle. He shows very little hesitancy when rushing and it is legitimately hard to tell which runs were designed for him and which were in-play decisions.

After the departure of Robert Griffin III and Michael Vick from the NFL, teams and analysts started to downplay the significance of the running quarterback. The increased likelihood of injury to the quarterback made teams hesitant to build an offense around a quarterback running the ball more than a handful of times per game. But the effectiveness of Lamar Jackson for the Baltimore Ravens has seen a renewed interest in quarterbacks who can throw and run on any given play.

The NFL is a copycat league and with Jackson playing at an MVP-level this past season, expect several teams to be in the market for a rushing quarterback like Hurts in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Comparing Jackson to Hurts is kind of like comparing a car to a train; they can both get you where you need to go but they do it very differently. Jackson tends to rush towards the sidelines and makes it a priority to avoid contact with defenders.

Hurts, on the other hand, will run right down the middle of the field and will aggressively fight for yards against safeties and linebackers. Hurts also appears to have fewer designed-runs called in a game and instead chooses to run when he sees an opening, whereas Jackson seems to go into certain plays planning to run the ball.

Overall, Hurts has shown to have a good grasp of the fundamentals of what makes a good quarterback. Watching his film, I didn’t see any major red-flags or bad habits that make me think he will need to be a project quarterback in the NFL.

There are parts of his game that can be improved upon, but very few quarterbacks come into the league perfect in every way. The areas where Hurts needs to improve are easily coachable and shouldn’t be an obstacle to general managers drafting him.