Nick Saban reveals what he told Jalen Hurts after Tua Tagovailoa’s injury
By Keith Farner
Published:
Alabama prepared for this all season by continuing to insert Jalen Hurts into the game even though he was the backup quarterback after Tua Tagovailoa’s incredible second half in the national championship game.
So when Hurts came in to replace Tagovailoa in the second half of the SEC Championship win over Georgia, coach Nick Saban had a simple message for him.
“I told him this is your time, and he certainly took advantage of it,” Saban said. I’ve probably never been more proud of a player than I am Jalen.”
Hurts was the hero for Alabama as the Crimson Tide trailed by two touchdowns before Hurts engineered the tying and then go-ahead touchdowns in the fourth quarter. The game-tying score capped a 16-play, 80-yard drive when Hurts connected with WR Jerry Jeudy in a drive that was more than seven minutes long.
“It’s unprecedented to have a guy that won as many games as he won, I think it’s 26 or something, over a two-year period,” Saban said. “Start as a freshman. Only lose a couple games his whole time as a starter. And then all of a sudden he’s not the quarterback. How do you manage that? How do you handle that? You got to have a tremendous amount of character and class to put the team first, knowing that your situation is not what it used to be. And for a guy that’s a great competitor, that takes a lot. It’s not easy to do, and he’s always put the team first.”
Saban admitted that Hurts continued to play this season even though Tagovailoa was the clear-cut starter. As the graduate transfer has become popular around college football, Saban weighed in on the alternative to that in Hurts, who had every opportunity to leave, but chose to stay.
It was, of course, a role reversal from last year’s national championship as Hurts’ role has completely shifted from 2017 to this season.
“He’s gone in the game whenever we’ve asked him to go in the game, and we’ve played him as much as we could so if this came up, he was going to be ready,” Saban said. “I think it worked out great, and I think this is a great example of why guys don’t need to run off, and just transfer every chance they get, or every time something doesn’t work out. Jalen is going to be a more successful person in his life because of what he went through, not winning 26 games, but what he went through this year trying to be the kind of person to support other people after he was a star player.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
