Blatant Homerism: Jalen Hurts and OU's history of innovation
After the Philadelphia Eagles thrashed the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night, quarterback Jalen Hurts became the first former Oklahoma Sooner to win a Super Bowl MVP award. Yet, before he transferred from Alabama to OU in 2019, the possibility of Hurts ever even starting a game in the NFL appeared remote. His success in the pros stands as a testament to his own growth at the position and the vision of Philadelphia’s organization to build an offense that suits his strengths as a legitimate dual threat.
That transformation started in earnest when Hurts decided to leave the Crimson Tide. As word started to circulate that the understudy to Tua Tagovailoa at Bama might join the Sooners, the idea seemed absurd. OU certainly needed a QB for the ‘19 season after Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray left for the NFL. Nothing about Hurts’ skill set suggested he was a fit for the offense orchestrated by Air Raid whiz Lincoln Riley, though.
To Riley’s credit, he saw an opportunity to reorient his scheme around Hurts’ capabilities. The OU offense that season worked from his QB’s legs up. The damage Hurts could do as a runner made his life easier as a thrower, and he lit up opposing defenses at an average of 367.8 total yards per game and a combined 52 touchdowns for the season. In the process, Hurts raised his profile with NFL talent evaluators from a potential gadget player to a second-round selection in the 2020 draft.
Hurts’ ascendance at this year’s Super Bowl prompted my colleague Brady Trantham to write a piece earlier this week on our Patreon site taking a deeper dive into that one season in which Hurts was OU’s starting quarterback. Although the ‘19 team could be wildly frustrating at times, it seems fair to say Riley’s gambit with Hurts was a major success. By and large, Hurts played great football for the Sooners in a season in which they put together a 12-1 record in the regular season, won a Big 12 championship and qualified for the College Football Playoff.
OU’s offensive reinvention with Hurts behind center was yet another example of the program’s legacy of harvesting competitive advantages from strategic innovations. Deploying a running quarterback is common. However, it’s novel to see a coach reformat his offense for one year by melding it on the fly with concepts designed for a different kind of triggerman.
It may be a stretch to call that innovative. Nevertheless, OU has historically been at its best when it’s willing to draw on that type of resourcefulness.
That brings us to an important question about college football: Do innovation and resourcefulness still mean anything today? With information flowing faster than ever around the world, it’s worth considering that edges gained from tactics and strategy may be more fleeting.
Hoops and dreams
OU men’s basketball currently finds itself in an extraordinary position.
According to bracketologists, the Sooners are definitely on the right side of the bubble for this year’s NCAA tournament. Of the 106 projections tracked by Bracket Matrix, all of them currently put OU in the field of 68 as an at-large team. OU will be dancing next month for the first time in four years under head coach Porter Moser if that holds up.
OU did score a number of solid wins in an undefeated run through non-conference play, including victories over Arizona, Michigan and Louisville. That stretch feels like a lifetime ago. Since starting SEC play in January, OU is 3-8. Given the strength of the SEC this year, you can’t crush a team for struggling through a slate that includes heavyweights like Auburn, Alabama and Tennessee. But it’s the way the Sooners are losing: They’ve dropped three straight games by an average of more than 20 points.
The team’s trajectory suggests the tenuous relationship between OU and Moser could work itself out between now and Selection Sunday. If the squad continues regressing, it will likely play its way out of the tournament. Four years on the outside of March Madness would send a clear signal the time has come for the Sooners and Moser to part ways.
But even if OU does enough in the coming weeks to stay on the right side of the bubble, does it really feel like the program is doing anything other than running in place? It’s possible this would be the same team we watched for the previous three seasons – it just caught a different set of breaks.
The ideal outcome here may be OU earning a spot in the field of 68 and Moser parlaying that into a lateral move to another school. Everybody gets a fresh start that way.