BALL IN THE FAMILY
Hurts brothers travel different paths, eventually find each other
Jalen Hurts will take the field Saturday already coronated as a teenage marvel well prepared to bear the weight of the biggest game in college football this season.
He enrolled early at Alabama last winter, so early that he suited up to mimic Clemson’s Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback Deshaun Watson on the scout team before the national championship game. He offered future teammates a glimpse at the rarefied athleticism he would wow the rest of the world with this season as an 18-year-old QB nearly on pace for 3,000 yards passing and 1,000 yards rushing. He also is completing 63.5 percent of his passes, which if it holds up would be the Southeastern Conference record for a true freshman.
Of his gifts, his strength is the most impressive. The legend of his powerlifting prowess disseminated his junior year at Channelview High School: He squatted 570 pounds, bench-pressed 275 pounds and dead-lifted 585 pounds at a meet. Division I linemen post those numbers. He was a 16-year-old quarterback.
With the odds in favor of No. 1 Alabama (7-0) easily beating No. 6 Texas A&M (6-0) this weekend, those close to Jalen say the reason he can carry this load is because of another quarterback he watched do more heavy lifting.
“He’s always seen the mistakes that I’ve made and managed not to make the same mistakes,” said Averion Hurts, Jalen’s older brother by four years.
While Jalen absorbs the cacophony of more than 101,800 fans rattling Bryant-Denny Stadium, Averion simultaneously will try to stoke a homecoming crowd less than one-tenth that size for Texas Southern.
A senior quarterback for the Tigers (3-3) of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, Averion did not commit any crimes, flunk out or let down a legion of fans. What he calls “mistakes” refer to some typical on-field miscues but, more poignantly, to the difficulties he faced compared with a path that jettisoned Jalen to success.
Jalen grew to a sturdy 6-2 while Averion has his program embellish his slight 6-foot build. Jalen thrived in a high school offense that Averion briefly
got to enjoy. Jalen picked Alabama over 15 other scholarship offers and Averion needed a combine to get noticed by a junior college.
Even their father, also named Averion, who coached them at Channelview, admitted he was so much harder on his oldest son that it dampered the final year he coached him.
“I didn’t get to enjoy it,” their father said. “With Jalen, I tried to correct the mistakes I made with Averion.”
The younger Averion is not bitter about this, as some might expect he would feel when he sees his brother amass highlight reels for the best team in the country. He is proud.
“I don’t want to take his light,” Averion said. “I wouldn’t want it any other way, honestly. I mean, I want better for my brother. I don’t want him to experience the things that I had to experience.
“The fact that he’s doing what he’s doing, that brings me so much joy. I feel like I play quarterback at Alabama.”
Different personalities
The brothers were not so close as kids because of their age difference, but they both embedded in football. During summers, their father took them to his workouts, which served as daycare.
Although Averion emerged as the star athlete first, he said Jalen showed his potential very early.
“Outside juking ghosts, juking trees, juking our dog,” Averion recalled seeing out the window of their home. “It’d just be him. It’s funny because now it’s so natural, it’s just what he does.”
They eventually developed a sibling rivalry by the time Averion reached his teens.
Averion still laughs about the time they switched bicycles to race each other. Jalen led at first riding Averion’s sleek BMX bike. Averion churned his legs especially hard to catch up on Jalen’s tinier bike with bulky tires that until recently had training wheels.
As they reached a landing in the cul de sac, Averion overcompensated, crashed into Jalen from behind and flipped Jalen over the bars.
“That just goes to show you how competitive we were,” Averion said.
Their personalities diverged as they got older. Averion became extroverted and Jalen introverted. Teachers would send Averion to deliver notes to administrators just so he could burn off energy. Jalen took years to become vocal, even as the quarterback of several teams.
“He’s a laid-back guy,” Averion said. “The guys always talk about his demeanor and how cool he is. And me, I’m this whacky and loopy guy.”
In a family that seldom misbehaves, Averion caused the most trouble when he was accused of stealing a carton of milk. He merely forgot to grab it his first time through the lunch line.
“I got sent to in-school suspension and they called my dad,” he said. “Man, he didn’t even let me explain; he didn’t let me do anything.”
Although the memory seems laughable in retrospect, Averion said it defined his upbringing: “It sounds bad, but I was the experiment child.”
Any first-born child might say the same, but Averion felt this way playing for his dad at Channelview, too.
“Sometime as a coach you don’t get to enjoy everything as much because you’re trying to make a statement that your child is treated like everyone else, when in actuality, your child is probably getting treated worse,” coach Hurts said. “That’s what happened with Averion.”
Averion’s father minimized his son’s exceptional arm — “In eighth grade, he had the best deep ball of anyone I’d ever seen,” his father said — by deploying a pro-style offense for years that leveraged talented running backs. Averion’s stats were unremarkable. Playing in college seemed improbable.
By Averion’s senior year, his father switched to a nohuddle spread offense.
“I was off the leash,” Averion said.
Welcome to the spread
Working out of the shotgun gave Averion, a shorter quarterback, a better view up field. He nearly tripled his passing yardage from the previous season. The only downside was he played all road games to accommodate renovations to the Channelview stadium.
The change catalyzed Averion’s breakout year, but it benefited Jalen more. Their father kept the quarterback-friendly spread system.
“My brother got to come up in it,” Averion said.
Jalen initially wanted to be a wide receiver when he entered high school because he feared the pressure of having to best his brother’s stellar senior season. His father even held him off the varsity team as a freshman to avoid “the political backlash” of showing any favor to his own child. But Jalen’s talent quickly proved undeniable.
“With Jalen, we dealt with it early until he won people over,” coach Hurts said. “The difference is Jalen was probably the best quarterback we had as a freshman.”
He had two other advantages over Averion.
Jalen watched more game film thanks to Hudl, a website that easily collects footage, as opposed to the DVDs his older brother had to utilize. He also dazzled beneath the lights of a renovated stadium.
The next season Jalen began eclipsing his brother’s legacy. He won the starting job as a sophomore, a year earlier than Averion.
“When Jalen came in, he was one of the guys, one of the better players,” his father said. “His respect was earned from his peers at a younger age. Averion always had to prove himself.”
While his brother vaulted to the third-ranked dual threat high school quarterback in Texas, developed a staggering weightlifting reputation and solicited a full-ride offer from Alabama coach Nick Saban, Averion scrambled his way to Kilgore, a junior college in East Texas. He attended a combine there for high school kids looking to keep playing pretty much anywhere.
“He’s the type of person that it was meant for him to struggle and go through things to make him better,” his father said.
Averion played well enough to impress a TSU coach, who arrived at Kilgore to scout a defensive end but left wanting the loud quarterback flaunting leadership skills.
A coach in the making
While Averion navigated the fringe of college football, Jalen started reaching out more. Their brotherhood strengthened as they bonded over the position they shared.
“He could see through a quarterback’s eyes, whereas Daddy saw it through a coach’s eyes,” their father said. “The most memorable moment for me was Averion came for a game and started coaching him from the sideline.”
He made Jalen more vocal.
“I’ve always been big on him about being a leader,” Jalen said with the tender tone of a parent. “I remember when he didn’t want to say anything. He’s definitely grown a lot.”
It all led to a shared opportunity in 2015 that the Hurts brothers did not expect.
With Jalen entering his senior season at Channelview and Averion signing at TSU, they could regularly watch each other play for the first time.
“Once I went away to college, our relationship instantly gelled,” Averion said. “It was weird, like he calls me and tells me he misses me. Now we’re best friends.”
Their bond has withstood Jalen’s meteoric rise this season that overshadows anything Averion has accomplished.
Advice goes both ways now.
Averion has invited Jalen to open up about the awkwardness of his sudden fame. Jalen motivated Averion through his nagging plantar fasciitis during spring practices, which helped Averion win the starting job.
Feeling his pain
Jalen even got to see Averion play this season. After he lead Alabama to a 48-0 drubbing of Kent State on Sept. 24, Jalen headed two hours east to Montgomery, Ala., that night to watch his brother face Alabama State.
Before the end of the first half, Averion grabbed his elbow in pain and was worried he would have to miss the remainder of the game. He looked to the sideline.
“Get up,” Jalen barked back with encouragement. “Don’t show no pain, no weakness.”
Averion never came out and TSU prevailed 31-27.
Jalen has observed a team rule barring freshman from speaking with media. He left a stunning impression in his last interview. His father later called his brother about it choked up. He tried explaining why and then sent Averion a link to watch for himself.
“I got a link to my phone as I’m driving,” Averion said. “I started watching it and just listening and, oh, he mentioned me.”
‘I was his hero’
A reporter asked Jalen if he modeled his game after anyone, expecting to hear him say a pro like Cam Newton.
“My brother,” Jalen answered.
“He said that I was his hero,” Averion said.
He had to pull over his 2002 Acura MDX on Scott Street.
“I started crying,” Averion said.