4 Philadelphia Eagles 2020 NFL Draft prospects from Oklahoma

When the college football season began, Jalen Hurts was among the favorites to win the Heisman Trophy. Then, as the season progressed, familiar issues began to pop up.

At six-foot-one and 218 pounds, the theory that Hurts seems a tad small for the NFL game has been following him around for a while. Not only that, he’s limited in some of his techniques and has a tendency to shrink in big games.

Too many pedestrian showings on his part and Herculean efforts by Joe Burrow and some of the other signal-callers at the collegiate level allowed a few guys to pass Hurts on the food chain, whether fair or unfair and neutralized any chance of him winning the Heisman. Some gave Hurts first or second-round grades at the beginning of the regular-season campaign. Now, he’s seen as someone who may go in Round 3 or sometime after.

Burrow is the valedictorian of this class and has been seen as such all season, but now Hurts isn’t just staring up at him. He also seems to be staring up at Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert, Jordan Love, Jake Fromm, Jacob Eason, and Steven Montez.

We have to be fair though. It wasn’t all bad for Hurts. Actually, it was quite the contrary. There were more positives than negatives in his 2019-2020 run. He did experience some letdowns from his defense, and he completed 70 percent of his passes while throwing for 3,851 yards and 32 touchdown passes.

For whatever reason though, it just always seems like people feel like something is missing from his game, even though few have been able to describe what that something is. He obviously can play. No one starts at two of the best programs in the history of college football for two of the game’s best coaches if they can’t.

If Hurts slides, he could wind up in Philly as a backup that the ‘Birds’ can bring along. The only question is will that be good enough for him or does he feel as though he’s earned the right to compete for a starting position somewhere? You probably don’t need to be told this, but Hurts’ name is one that will cause debate all the way until April and afterward. We’ll have to wait and see how things turn out.