Jalen Hurts is not Taysom Hill, so stop the comparisons
By John Buhler
It’s a flawed narrative only fools believe. Jalen Hurts is not Taysom Hill. He’s way better as a quarterback, so stop with the lazy comparisons, please.
If you think Jalen Hurts and Taysom Hill are one and the same, you need help, buddy.
Sure, for a non-college football fan, the comparisons are cute at first. We can tell you’re trying, but it’s just not going to work out for you in the long run. The idea of having a high-end forever backup can be alluring to teams with locks at franchise quarterback in the New Orleans Saints and the Philadelphia Eagles. However, Hurts can become a starter one day, while Hill honestly never will.
Hurts’ collegiate resume takes Hill’s to the woodshed. As a freshman in 2016, Hurts was named SEC Offensive Player of the Year, leading the Alabama Crimson Tide to an SEC Championship, a College Football Playoff berth and a national title appearance. As a sophomore, he was part of a national championship winning team that upended their SEC foe Georgia Bulldogs in Atlanta.
Hurts lost his starting job as a junior to a future top-five overall pick in Tua Tagovailoa. While Hurts’ junior season in college didn’t go as planned, he rose to the occasion when the Crimson Tide needed him most. When Tagovailoa was ineffective vs. Georgia in the 2018 SEC Championship, he came in and led Alabama to victory, another playoff berth, en route to another national title bout.
With an undergraduate degree in his back pocket, Hurts transferred to Oklahoma where he’d become the latest Heisman Trophy finalist to play under Lincoln Riley in Norman. The Sooners won the Big 12 and reached the College Football Playoff. Outside of winning a Heisman Trophy, Hurts did everything anyone could ever dream of in college. He’s a legend in Tuscaloosa and in Norman.
Did Hill ever accomplish any of that at BYU? Didn’t think so.
Hurts’ rise up NFL Draft boards was incredible. Not to say it was his fate to go undrafted like Hill did out of BYU, but going in the second round to Philadelphia did come as a surprise. Then again, few organizations prioritize a strong backup quarterback quite like the Eagles do. This is the franchise that gave us Nick Foles‘ brilliance over two stints. The Eagles know what they’re doing.
Even if the Eagles have Carson Wentz under center, he gets hurt, a lot. Despite the Eagles playing in the last three postseasons, he hasn’t a single playoff win on his ledger. Hurts has the humility, the skill set and the determination to be one of the best backups in the league right away. Hill is a glorified gadget player who has never thrown a touchdown, an overpriced Mohamed Sanu.
Let’s also factor in this. Hurts is eight years younger than Hill. While Hill turns 30 in August, Hurts will be feeling 22 in the same month. Hill may have had great coaches in Sean Payton and Bronco Mendenhall in college, but Hurts has had a crash course in quarterbacking the last four years in college and is about to have the same experience professionally.
At Alabama, he played quarterback under the following men: Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, Brian Daboll and Mike Locksley. Kiffin and Locksley run Power 5 programs, Daboll is the Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator and Sarkisian is poised to lead a Power 5 program once again in 2021. Throw in a year of Riley at Oklahoma and Hurts is ready for what’s next under Doug Pederson.
So in his rookie season, we’re going to see a lot of Hurts holding a clipboard and helping the Eagles run their offense from the sideline. He may not play a snap, but don’t count him out. Do that at your detriment. There will come a time where Wentz will have to leave a game due to injury and Hurts will help guide The Birds to injury. He’s not playing on special teams, he’s better than that.
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So if anybody who is a self-proclaimed draft guru who says he’s watched the tape and believes Hurts is the next Hill, don’t listen to him because he’s an idiot. He has revealed himself as a fraud who couldn’t be bothered to watch a single game of college football in the last four years. While it remains to be seen what Hurts can become as a professional, he’s not Hill, he’s a better prospect.