Four quarterbacks were selected in the opening round of the 2020 NFL Draft, but Oklahoma football quarterback Jalen Hurts was not among them.
Please don’t misunderstand me. This is not a lament that Hurts wasn’t a first-round pick; he wasn’t expected to be. In the weeks and days leading up to this year’s annual auction block of college talent known as the NFL Draft, however, the former Alabama and Oklahoma quarterback’s draft stock has been elevating.
A number of draft experts have projected Hurts going in the second or third round, and we’ll see how accurate that is when reality sets in as Saturday gets set to turn the clock to Sunday and closes the book on Day 2 of the draft.
I still believe we’ll see Hurts’ name come off the board somewhere between the 33rd and 106th overall pick. Nate Davis of USA Today and ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. have the Oklahoma quarterback going 49th overall to the Pittsburgh Steelers in their latest mock drafts.
Although the Dallas Cowboys are likely to turn to defensive needs with their upcoming pick, it is intriguing to speculate the possibility of the ‘Boys selecting Hurts with the 51st or 82 pick. The OU QB has frequently been compared to Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott and would seem to be a nice complement and an upgrade over the current Cowboy backup Cooper Rush.
Other NFL teams that could be in the market for a quarterback pick in the second or third rounds are the New Orleans Saints, who are looking for a backup to Drew Brees after Teddy Bridgewater left in free agency for the Carolina Panthers, the Jacksonville Jaguars and perhaps the Las Vegas Raiders, who have shown as much pre-draft love for Hurts as any NFL team.
Another team to keep an eye on is the Detroit Lions with the 35th pick in the second round and the 67th in the third.
The knock on Hurts has always been that he is not a prototypical NFL quarterback. The concern is he is more of a run-first quarterback and doesn’t have — or at least didn’t have — the greatest skills as a passer.
Most NFL scouts would agree that Hurts has shown consistent growth and improvement every year of his college career.
“I definitely think he’s come a long way,” Lincoln Riley told Oklahoman sports columnist Berry Tramel in an interview recently. “He’s played in a lot of different systems and seen a lot of different defenses and has had to execute a lot of different concepts. He’s had sustained success at different places…and his durability in incredibly impressive.
“I think people saw he improved a lot at Alabama his junior years when he wasn’t the starter, and I think this year he was head and shoulders above that.”
Tramel made an interesting observation in an article in the April 23 edition of The Oklahoman. “Hurts enters the NFL at an opportune time,” he wrote. “The lock on the (quarterback) box has been busted. Imaginative thinking is all the rage. Mobile quarterbacks are as hot in the NFL as they are on campus.”
He notes in the Oklahoman article that the likes of Lamar Jackson Baltimore Ravens and the NFL Most Valuable Player last season), Russell Wilson (Seattle Seahawks), Deshaun Watson (Houston Texans) and former OU QB and Heisman winner Kyler Murray have demonstrated that the “taboo on running quarterbacks is over.”
Riley told Tramel that he has fielded calls from about every different type of offense you can see in the NFL. “I think the interesting thing is there’s not many people who’ve crossed him (Hurts) off the list. I think he’s intriguing to a lot of different people.”
We’ll see in Friday’s second and third rounds of the NFL Draft how much interest there really is in Hurts as an NFL quarterback and if the intangibles he brings — great character, leadership, exceptional work ethic and the mind set and resume of someone who knows how to win — are enough to overcome his perceived weaknesses and have a team take a risk on his selection in an early round.