The future doesn’t look good for Jalen Hurts, either way

As much as Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts respects his father Averion, I’m sure there’s a little bit of him that wishes his Dad would have shut up.

Jalen Hurts didn’t need his father to tell the world about the man-to-man conversation they had in an interview with Bleacher Report. He certainly didn’t need Averion to repeat the words that he said to Jalen after his awful National Championship Game performance: “You f–ked up, you opened the door and put yourself in this situation…”Now it’s up to you to dig yourself out”.

Jalen Hurts certainly didn’t need Averion to practically threaten Alabama head coach Nick Saban LaVar Ball-style with his son’s transfer should he not get the starting job by saying: “My job is to do what’s best for Jalen—and make no mistake, Jalen is a quarterback, and he wants to play quarterback. He loves Alabama, loves Coach Saban and everything about that place. But he wants to play, and he will play…”. The whole “biggest free agent in college football history” smelt a lot like Ball, too.

Lane Kiffin agrees. The FAU coach – and former Alabama OC – said in January after the National Championship Game: “I want to take a poll of the hundred-and-whatever-30 coaches out there – head coaches – how many of them would have given anything to have him on their team? Probably every one of them, except maybe Oklahoma”. Right now, bearing in mind Baker Mayfield’s gone and OU’s love of the spread offense, Oklahoma would too.

Saban replied with the usual lines about everyone at Alabama competing for a place (it helps when every position on the team is three or four-deep) and how the matter, while public will be “handled in a very private manner”. Saban was never going to go crazy about this (he reserves this for perceived slights against him, his program, or anything that he can rant about).

SABAN HOLDS THE ACES

So what’s the future for Hurts? Probably, he’s going to be replaced by Tua Tagovailoa, who is going to come back from injury and he’s going to take the starting job for the 2018. Hurts didn’t help himself by a pretty awful performance in the Alabama Spring Game, going 19-37 with 1 INT and zero TDs, and earning himself a chewing out by Saban that went public on ESPN.

Then there’s the head-to-head with Saban. This is not a battle that Jalen Hurts is going to win. Not only does Saban not need Hurt, but he won’t be going to SEC rival, simply because of the bylaws that stop one SEC player going to another SEC school unless he’s spent a ‘full academic year’ at the school.  Then there’s the fact that Saban could try and stop him playing for any major program (like the Shea Patterson battle between Ole Miss and Michigan), citing the fact that ‘Bama ‘might meet them in the play-off’ (this might include Georgia Tech, for whom Hurts would be one of the better gets of 2018 if that happened). Hurts would probably end up playing for a fairly anonymous FBS program. He (or more’s the case his Dad), wouldn’t want to take the Mekhi Brown route of leaving Tuscaloosa to play at FCS level.

In other words, Hurts might well end up getting Hurts.