NFL Testimonial: Jalen Hurt

[jbTX]

Interesting Wall Street Journal article yesterday with a great testimonial: Before Jalen Hurts Was a Super Bowl Quarterback, He Was a Powerlifter

Some quotes from the article:

Hurts emerged as the NFL’s breakout star this season, and the 24-year-old’s brawn is one of the main reasons. He’s a nightmare to bring down when he’s on the run. He routinely delivers crucial yards and even touchdowns on plays that look like rugby scrums. He’s a quarterback who plays like a powerlifter, and that’s because he used to be one.

“When guys try to tackle him, they find out that he’s as strong as any of them in the lower body,” says Averion Hurts, Jalen’s father, high-school football coach and high-school powerlifting coach. ...

One of the most remarkable parts about Jalen’s success as a powerlifter—he finished first in his weight class at several competitions—is that he didn’t train to be one. He just did the normal offseason workouts he would be doing anyway, Averion says. The only difference was that on some Saturdays during the powerlifting season, from January through March, he woke up early to head to meets.

At one of those, Travis Anderson once experienced a bitter outcome that Patrick Mahomes desperately wants to avoid: He got beaten by Hurts in epic fashion. By the end of the regional championships in 2015, Anderson and Hurts had both squatted, benched and deadlifted the same exact amount: 1,430 combined pounds over the three events. Hurts in particular excelled at the squat and dead lift, the two events that test your legs. ...

And it has been impossible to watch Hurts’s star turn this season without noticing his leg strength. When he runs, he’s the rare quarterback who can embrace contact, instead of avoiding it, because he can power through. He’s also an outlier because he looks perfectly at home executing one of the most punishing plays in football.

This is verbatim what Rip argued in his 2014 interview with Onnit (link). These NFL players have the genetics -- will they put in the work? Rip vindicated once again.

[Eric Larousse]

With all due respect to you and Jalen. Running qbs are a different story at that position. Run heavy qbs do not last in the league while guys that sit in the pocket ala Brady and manning do.

Big Jalen hurts fan but he will be all but done in a year or two.

Both brady and manning were terrible in at the combine. Neither broke 30 inches in the SVJ. That position is a skill position first.