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Jalen Hurts unselfish at Alabama was glimpse into soul

Five years later, it remains the gold-standard good-teammate moment.

Five years later, even with all Jalen Hurts has accomplished, even as he stands a week away from leading the Eagles into Super Bowl 2023 against the Chiefs, it is still a defining glimpse into his soul, and perhaps explains why he has been able to develop, so rapidly, into one of the NFL’s most electric quarterbacks.

This was the night of Monday, Jan. 8, 2018. Jalen Hurts began that night owning one of the best spots in all of college football: quarterback of the mighty Alabama Crimson Tide, ranked No. 1, 12-1 on the season. Hurts had won the QB1 gig the year before as a true freshman, the first time that had happened in Tuscaloosa in 32 years.

His record heading into that College Football Playoff national championship against Georgia was 23-2. He could run. He could throw. There were Saturdays when he looked like the best quarterback in America. Life was good. Life was perfect.

And then he got benched.

The Crimson Tide trailed 13-0 at the half. The offense was stagnant. You figured that head coach Nick Saban was cooking up something in the halftime locker room, but it was stunning when Alabama’s offense came on the field and a freshman named Tua Tagovailoa came trotting on. And he was brilliant, leading ’Bama to a 26-23 win, including a 41-yard touchdown strike to DeVonta Smith that won the game in overtime.

Tua Tagovailoa (l.) celebrates a touchdown pass with Jalen Hurts of the Alabama Crimson in the 2018 CFP title game.

Getty Images

And all across the second half, the TV cameras went searching for Jalen Hurts. That was what they had to do. A star quarterback gets sent to the bench? Surely, at the least, there would be a few shots of eyerolls. Maybe, if they got lucky, they’d see Hurts actually pouting on the sidelines, or yelling, making a prima-donna nuisance of himself.

What the cameras found was remarkable.

But for different reasons.

For all the right reasons.

When Tagovailoa threw his first TD pass and gave the Tide life, it was Hurts who was first to greet him, pounding on his shoulder pads. When the kid had his second scoring throw, again it was Hurts who ran onto the field and hugged his erstwhile backup. And at game’s end, after his replacement had made one of the forever throws in college football history, Hurts ran around in spastic glee just like every other one of his teammates.

If you didn’t know he’d been benched, you wouldn’t know he’d been benched.

And it got even better.

Tua Tagovailoa #13 of the Alabama Crimson Tide celebrates with Jalen Hurts #2 after beating the Georgia Bulldogs in the CFP title game in 2018.

“It was important for me to stay true to myself and be the person I am, and the leader I am, regardless of the circumstances,” Hurts said in the locker room later on, as reporters replaced the cameramen fruitlessly looking for signs of bitterness or envy. “It’s my duty to do things like that, and to do all those things genuinely.”

That was an OG reaction from a 19-year-old kid, and immediately the reaction was palpable and visceral. I wrote about Hurts and the replies flooded in, folks taken by a strong picture of sportsmanship and selflessness at a time, especially in college sports, when both seemed in such short supply.

It was assumed that Hurts would transfer within a few days. He didn’t. He stuck around Alabama for another year, competed with Tua, but served as a backup. He did get one moment of glory, relieving an injured Tagovailoa during the 2018 SEC Championship game, guiding ’Bama into the CFP. He graduated that December, but still had a year of eligibility.

Jalen Hurts has the Eagles in Super Bowl 2023.

At first he thought about Maryland, where he could’ve put up some absurd numbers. But Saban — perhaps touched by Hurts’ own unselfishness — suggested Oklahoma would be a better fit, with better receivers and an offense-minded coach, Lincoln Riley. Saban did that knowing Oklahoma would be far more of a potential threat to him than Maryland ever could be. Hurts went to Oklahoma, had a great year, led the Sooners to the playoff. And now he sits one game away from a Super Bowl.

Sometimes, it turns out, Leo Durocher was dead wrong. Sometimes nice guys finish first.

Vac’s Whacks

Was on the FAN with Joe Benigno Saturday and he mentioned something that hadn’t occurred to me and is a little bit sobering. We used to treat the Rangers’ 54-year drought like a Biblical plague around here. The Jets last won the Super Bowl — yep — 54 years ago. Good thing “1969!” isn’t as rhythmic as “1940!” was.

Davey Johnson turned 80 this week, and it says here that if David Wright hadn’t commandeered No. 5 and made it his own eternally, it would soon be hanging in honor of the other Davey.

Former Mets manager Davey Johnson is 2016.

It isn’t often you can call a movie both “delightful” and “disturbing” but I would say “The Menu” qualifies.

Think it might be time we all started taking a harder look at Fordham, which is making a whole lot of noise in the Atlantic 10 this year thanks to Keith Urgo and a batch of scrappy and fun players.

Whack Back at Vac

John Visconti: So Kyrie Irving wants to be traded, eh? I have been a die-hard fan of this hard-luck franchise for 55 years and I say, good. Let this pathologically self-centered, emotional train wreck, with his insatiable desire for attention and his childlike grasp of world affairs, take his nonsense elsewhere.

Vac: I suspect when this happens, Nets fans will feel like they can breathe for the first time in forever.

Alan Hirschberg: Monday, LeBron James had “serious” soreness, so he (and Anthony Davis) didn’t play in Brooklyn. But on Tuesday, there they were on the Garden court. Two miraculous recoveries! When did the East River acquire the healing power of the Grotto of Lourdes?

Vac: I believe it also shows that the distance between MSG and Barclays Center remains far greater than the 8 miles as the crow flies.

LeBron James at Madison Square Garden last week.

@DigiElon: The Empire State Building has a good chance of being here 100 years after every single one of its critics are gone. I got the building -110.

@MikeVacc: Let’s hope so. And let’s hope the next time it goes green and white it’s to celebrate the Jets (speaking of 100 years) …

Frank Giordano: If the Jets get Aaron Rodgers (I hope not!), despite what the great Joe Namath has said … the Jets cannot give him number 12, can they?

Vac: It was a nice gesture, but I think the Jets would sooner open the gates at MetLife missing a goalpost than Joe Willie’s number off the wall.

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Original Source

Fran Tarkenton revived Giants when Jets were kings of New York

The Giants were desperate. You think things were bad the past few years? In 1966 they bottomed out, going 1-12-1 two seasons after they had been 2-10-2. They were surrendering the town, piece by piece, to the Jets — whose star quarterback Joe Namath was already a star off the field even as he worked to become one on it.

So the Giants pulled the trigger on a monumental deal on March 7, 1967. They sent the Minnesota Vikings two first-round picks, a second-rounder, and a player to be named for Francis Asbury Tarkenton, a 27-year-old quarterback who could run and pass with equal skill, who had made two Pro Bowls with the expansion Vikings, but had grown out of favor with their hard-line coach, Norm Van Brocklin.

“You give up a lot to get a lot,” Giants coach Allie Sherman said, beaming, at a press conference that day. “We happen to think that Fran can step in here and make this team make a run for it.”

Fran Tarkenton helped lead the Giants out of the wilderness when he was acquired in 1967, ending a 17-year playoff drought.

Kidwiler Collection/Diamond Images/Getty Images

The Giants and Vikings, who meet Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis in a wild-card playoff game, will forever be linked by that trade. The Vikings believed it would get them better in a hurry, and they were right — within two years they won the NFC under a most un-Tarkenton-like quarterback named Joe Kapp.

The Giants?

Well, the truth was, they immediately became watchable again. Tarkenton was a fearless player, and in many ways was the forerunner, by almost 60 years, of the kind of quarterback play we see routinely now — from Josh Allen to Lamar Jackson, Daniel Jones to Jalen Hurts. Van Brocklin called him, derisively, a “scrambler,” but Sherman was quick to say his new prize was more than that.

“That’s a misused word,” Sherman said. “Rollout is a better word. In Fran’s case, the rollout is a quality. He knows when to come out of that pocket, and he doesn’t come out without a reason. It’s an instinct. He can turn a busted play into a productive play.”

And the thing is, Tarkenton did exactly what the Giants hoped he would do. From the ashes of ’66, they went 14-14 the next two years, and Tarkenton made two Pro Bowls. In 1970, the Giants went 9-5 and weren’t eliminated from the playoffs until the last day of the season, their one fulfilling year in a 17-year desert of playoff darkness.

Of course, as great as Tarkenton was, he didn’t help the Giants make their intended inroads against the Jets. In 1967, while Tarkenton had a masterful year (29 TD passes), Namath threw for a record 4,007 yards. In 1968 Tarkenton was again terrific, but the Jets went 11-3 and won the Super Bowl. Tarkenton, despite his colorful personality and elite skills, was the clear Other Quarterback in town.

It obscures what was actually a terrific Giants career for Tarkenton — who from 1967-71 threw for 13,905 yards, ran for 1,126, had 103 touchdown passes (and 10 TD runs) and 72 interceptions. (Namath’s numbers in those years: 11,684 yards passing, 56 yards rushing, 70 TDs passing, four rushing and 80 interceptions.)

But Tarkenton was 33-36 for the Giants, with zero playoff appearances; Namath 32-17-1 for the Jets, with a win in Super Bowl III.

That, as much as anything, soured Tarkenton on his Giants experience. After a subpar 1971 season, Tarkenton declared that he would retire if he wasn’t traded elsewhere — “elsewhere” turned out to be his old home, at Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis. The Giants got a three-player haul, including quarterback Norm Snead. The Vikings wound up riding Tarkenton to three Super Bowl appearances in four years from 1973-76.

Tarkenton is remembered, properly, as a forever Viking.

But for a brief shining moment he also breathed life into Big Blue, managing to stake a claim to his own share of the quarterbacking market in this town at a time when it seemed Joe Namath was everywhere, selling everything.

“I loved New York,” Tarkenton said a few years ago, “but in those days it was pretty clear that New York was a Jets town. More specifically, it was a Joe Willie town.”

Vac Whacks

You never really know how these things are going to work out, but come the spring we may look back at Wednesday night at the Garden — Rangers tie the Stars with less than a second to go, then win in OT — as a turnstile to some better things.

“Your Honor” (below) is back on Showtime tonight, a splendid void-filler now that “1923” is on vacation for a few weeks.

Bryan Cranston as Michael Desiato in “Your Honor”

Heart 9/11, an organization comprised of police and firefighters who served at Ground Zero, will send 12 of its members later this month to Mobile, Ala., to help Cleon Jones renovate houses in his birthplace of Africatown. The 9/11 group became aware of Jones’ good work because of an article written in The Post by gifted young Howie Kussoy.

I do believe the Eagles might all be wearing purple Carl Eller and Alan Page jerseys Sunday in the comfort of their own homes, don’t you?

Whack Back at Vac

Steve Harris: For the Knicks, 40-45 wins seems right and certainly better and more entertaining than the 25 years prior to this coaching staff. Still, without a true superstar, they’re not matching up with elite teams.

Vac: If the NBA were like a golf-club tournament, the Knicks might do well in the first flight.

Left to right: Julius Randle, Jalen Brunson and Mitchell Robinson

Albert Carbone: Your column about the NFL season being too long was spot on. If I recall correctly, Pete Rozelle always said that his biggest concern was overexposure. He is up in NFL Heaven right now yelling “Stop!”

Vac: I’m pretty sure in NFL Heaven, the seasons are still 16 games long.

@therealSully66: After the 1997 Giants-Vikings playoff debacle, it took me damn near 1.5 hours to drag my brother from section 126.

@MikeVacc: For all their glory, the past four decades the Giants have three playoff losses — this one, the Flipper Anderson game and the blown lead in Candlestick in 2003 — that still cause some long-term migraines among the believers.

Marty Gavin: What a shame the Jets’ finale wasn’t in the Meadowlands as it was a perfect football afternoon for a flyover —SELL … THE … TEAM …

Vac: We are getting closer and closer to that, aren’t we?

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Original Source

There wasn’t always a postseason safety net

Well, you have to give us credit. New York is not a one-dimensional baseball city. In the space of a couple of weeks we can feel completely bulletproof and utterly impotent. We can ooze pure confidence and leak oil. Both sides of town. There was a time Yankees fans and Mets fans couldn’t wait for the next game — or as they might call it, “the next win.”

Now both sides pray for rain.

OK. Maybe it’s not quite that bad. But it’s close. The past few weeks, as the Braves and the Rays have continued to chase the Mets and the Yankees and have eaten away almost all of what was a combined 26 games worth of leads between the two (the Yankees’ highest was 15 ½, the Mets’ 10 ½), baseball has become something of a chore to watch.

Both teams.

Both sides.

Still, it could be worse, and fans of both teams know perfectly well it could be worse. This isn’t the Old Days — for the purposes of this column, “Old Days” is defined as 1962-92 — when it was an all-or-nothing proposition. If old-time baseball rules — meaning only first place gets to go on to the postseason — were still in place, then Baseball New York would already be lying in state, catatonic with disappointment.

But here is a cold, hard fact:

The Mets’ magic number for qualifying for the playoffs, entering Saturday, was 10. The Yankees’ magic number was 15. That is the prize to keep the eyes affixed to. Getting in. That might not be perfect. That might not be ideal. But there is barely a fraction of a chance the teams won’t do that.

Pete Alonso’s Mets and Aaron Boone’s Yankees have struggled in September, but they still have a wild-card playoff safety net, unlike some other hard-luck past New York baseball teams.

It’s worth remembering: It wasn’t always this way. Time was, there was no safety net. And both sides of town are still smarting from past disappointments, ones that resonate even now, so many years later. Here are a few of the worst of times.

1985

The Mets and the Yankees both suffered and bled, pursuing teams (the Cardinals and Blue Jays) that were resilient and persistent and, ultimately, uncatchable. There was one remarkable day — Sept. 12, 1985 — in which the Mets beat the Cardinals at Shea in the afternoon and the Yankees beat the Jays at the Stadium at night. The Mets were a game up, the Yankees 1 ½ back, and visions of a Subway Series were beginning to dance in all the boroughs …

But both fell short. The Mets won the first two games of a must-sweep series in St. Louis, but lost the third game, 4-3, so 98 wins was only going to be good enough for runner-up to 101-win St. Louis. And though the Yankees pulled a miracle in their own season-closing three-game series in Toronto — with Butch Wynegar hitting a game-tying homer in the ninth, followed by the winning run scoring on a dropped fly ball — even that wasn’t enough. The Yankees won 97 games. The Jays finished with 99. And that was that.

1984

The Mets had been so wretched for so long, and by rights shouldn’t have won 90 games since they were outscored for the season, 676-652. But Davey Johnson had arrived, and so had Doc Gooden, and the Mets enjoyed a fall-out-of-the-sky season as their lead in the NL East grew to as much as 4 ½ games on July 27.

But the Cubs were too much that year, and won seven straight over the Mets at one point. It was the first of six straight years when the Mets finished first or second, which with a wild-card would’ve meant more shots at the crown. But there was no wild card then.

1974

The Yankees hadn’t been in the postseason in 10 years, but they battled Baltimore right to the final weekend before a heartbreaking loss to Milwaukee on the next-to-last day of the season. That 89-73 team was followed by an increasingly successful group of Yankees, capped by the 1977-78 back-to-back champs.

But ’74 held a special place for a lot of Yankees fans because Bobby Murcer was still on the team then, and because even though they were playing home games in Queens, Yankees fans had come to embrace Shea Stadium as a terrific home-field advantage, and banners declaring “YES WE CAN” started appearing every game.

1954

Remarkable thing: None of the five straight Yankees champs from 1949-53 that coincided with Casey Stengel’s first five years ever won 100 games. The ’54 edition won 103 — and finished eight full games behind Cleveland, which went 111-43 and won the American League going away. The Yankees spent just five days that year in first place, the last on July 20, and though they were terrific, it never mattered because Cleveland never faltered.

Vac’s Whacks

OK. I did it. I really did. As I pledged last week, I found five wins for the Jets — I’m calling 5-12 — and five wins for the Giants — softer schedule, more winnable games, so we’ll make it 6-11. Now can we just fast-forward to the draft, aka the New York Super Bowl?

Our world changed forever 21 years ago Sunday. Al Leiter, John Franco and Todd Zeile, all members of the 2001 Mets, have pledged never to forget, which is why they continued their September ritual this week and visited Engine 33 in Manhattan.

On the day Queen Elizabeth II was born, Babe Ruth had hit just 310 home runs. Of all the fun facts compiled in the wake of her passing this week, that’s the one I enjoy most.

Barry Pepper played Roger Maris in “61*”.

In the spirit of the season, I rewatched “61*” the other day. And more than ever, Billy Crystal’s loving and painstaking attention to detail — plus the fact that both Barry Pepper (above) and Thomas Jane look just like the M&M Boys — make that movie hold up very, very well.

Whack Back at Vac

George Corchia: Giants fans are sooo used to the 0-and-something starts to the NFL season. It’s just a question of guessing the total number of losses before the first win: 0-2, 0-3, 0-4 … ?

Vac: You know what I miss? I miss confident Giants fans. I never thought I’d miss confident Giants fans (and confident Yankees fans), but I do. I really do.

Christopher Sheldon: Aaron Judge’s chase for the record is impressive, but I want him to hit 61 in 154 games. To me, that would be a record that even The Babe would tip his cap to.

Vac: I’m not here to diminish what Maris did, not a bit, and it was a disgrace to stick him with an asterisk all those years. But that doesn’t mean Babe Ruth getting eight fewer games than Maris shouldn’t at least be PART of the conversation, right?

@infinite1555: I get that both New York football teams playing at 1 p.m. slot is a demotion in this market, but as a fan I don’t mind it.

@MikeVacc: Giants fans will watch the Giants and Jets fans will watch the Jets, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I go back to my house as a kid where we watched every minute (barring TV blackouts) of both teams, which you can’t do when they’re head-to-head. Maybe mine is a lonely voice on this one.

Jeffrey Cohen: Often seen in the past where no-name players — including ones brought up from the minors — can spark a team, like Al Weiss. Do the Mets have anyone in the wings who might do the same?

Vac: Unfortunately the two most likely candidates — Francisco Alvarez and Brett Baty — are both on the IL now.

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Original Source

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