Goodbye, Jalen Hurts’ potential redshirt 2018 season

With the Alabama Crimson Tide putting a whooping on the Texas A&M Aggies, we can say goodbye to backup quarterback Jalen Hurts getting a redshirt in 2018.

We’re only four weeks into the 2018 college football season, but one thing is certain: the Alabama Crimson are just better than everybody else. The Crimson Tide have crushed everybody that has gotten in their way so far. Saturday saw Alabama give it to new SEC West rival Texas A&M.

With Alabama routing Texas A&M, starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was pulled from the game. You know what that means, right? Last year’s starter Jalen Hurts has entered a ball game for the fourth time on the season for Alabama. This means he can no longer play in any more games this season without burning his redshirt.

Hurts had two years of collegiate eligibility remaining entering 2018. With Tagovailoa replacing him at halftime in the national championship and winning in overtime over Georgia, the writing was on the wall for Hurts to remain Alabama’s starter.

Since he did enroll early out of high school, Hurts is on track to graduate from Alabama this fall. If he were not to play in another game, he would be eligible to play immediately for somebody else in 2019 and have two years left to play college ball.

However, his entrance into Saturday’s blowout rout of Texas A&M has completely ruined that. How sure are we that head coach Nick Saban isn’t going to play Hurts any more this season when he has played in every game thus far? It’s not like Alabama is done beating the tar out of the opposition.

With Tagovailoa at quarterback, this could be the second Crimson Tide team under Saban to go undefeated and win a national title. Should the Tide pull it off and go 15-0, they’d be the first time to do that in the College Football Playoff era.

So what is Saban to do? Does he have an unspoken agreement to not play Hurts anymore to keep his potential redshirt intact? Let’s side with a firm “no” on that. Alabama is not going to win the national title if Tagovailoa gets hurt. So playing Hurts in relief of him only seems natural, given that he is No. 2 on the Alabama quarterback depth chart.

Could there be another quarterback capable of taking snaps from Tagovailoa in garbage time? Yes, but we know that Hurts’ style of quarterbacking is in sync with what Saban wants out of his signal caller: don’t turn the football over, ever.

That will ensure Hurts will indeed play a fifth game this fall at some point. The only saving grace would be if Alabama plays tighter ball games the rest of the way. We don’t see that happening. Plus, it’s not like Hurts is going to up and quit school for the semester this close to graduation.

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Since Hurts isn’t an NFL quarterback, we would have hoped that he could continue his strong college career for two more seasons somewhere else. Expect him to transfer after graduation, but in doing so, he only has one year left to play college ball. However, he will be able to start immediately. So look for him to make headway with somebody else in 2019. It’s Tua Time now and next year in Tuscaloosa and everybody knows that.