Before Jalen Hurts Was a Super Bowl Quarterback, He Was a Powerlifter

The Eagles quarterback developed his lower body strength as a lifter in high school—and that has helped him carry Philadelphia to a Super Bowl

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts. Picture: Getty Images

Josh Opiela didn’t expect much the first time he saw a kid who weighed almost 45kg less than him step up to the platform at a high school powerlifting meet nearly a decade ago.

Opiela had heard only a little bit about Jalen Hurts. He knew Hurts played quarterback and that he was known for being quick, so Opiela doubted that Hurts possessed the sheer strength required to be among the best powerlifters at the competition.

Then when he watched Hurts perform his first squat, he was utterly astounded.

“I wasn’t aware of just how good he was at playing football,” Opiela says. “I just knew him as an amazing powerlifter.”

Philadelphia Eagles fans are fully aware of Hurts’s phenomenal abilities on the football field. He’s the quarterback who hoisted them to this Super Bowl.

When the Eagles take on the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday in a game that features two of the NFL’s best quarterbacks, it will be up to Hurts to try to outmuscle Patrick Mahomes for the Lombardi Trophy. And the time Hurts spent as a high-school powerlifter happens to explain why he’s capable of doing exactly that.

Hurts emerged as the NFL’s breakout star this season, and the 24-year-old’s brawn is one of the main reasons.

He’s a nightmare to bring down when he’s on the run. He routinely delivers crucial yards and even touchdowns on plays that look like rugby scrums. He’s a quarterback who plays like a powerlifter, and that’s because he used to be one.

“When guys try to tackle him, they find out that he’s as strong as any of them in the lower body,” says Averion Hurts, Jalen’s father, high-school football coach and high-school powerlifting coach.

Jalen Hurts didn’t wake up one day wanting to become a powerlifter. He suffered an ankle injury as a sophomore, so he quit the high school basketball team.

When his father asked him why he gave it up, Jalen responded that he didn’t think it was helping his development as a quarterback. Averion suggested baseball in the spring and got the same response.

Then the father didn’t give his son much of a choice. He thought it was important that Jalen compete at something when he wasn’t playing football. So he strong-armed him into joining the powerlifting team.

But what began as something of a chore quickly became something Jalen embraced.

At his first meet in January of 2014 his father thought he might squat 180kg. He reached 200kg.

He squatted 213kg at his second competition, when he finished first in the 90kg weight class. By his third meet, he was up to 225kg.

“He just kept on going,” Averion says.

One of the most remarkable parts about Jalen’s success as a powerlifter – he finished first in his weight class at several competitions – is that he didn’t train to be one. He just did the normal off-season workouts he would be doing anyway, Averion says.

The only difference was that on some Saturdays during the powerlifting season, from January through March, he woke up early to head to meets.

At one of those, Travis Anderson once experienced a bitter outcome that Patrick Mahomes desperately wants to avoid: He got beaten by Hurts in epic fashion.

By the end of the regional championships in 2015, Anderson and Hurts had both squatted, benched and deadlifted the same exact amount: 650 combined kg over the three events.

Hurts in particular excelled at the squat and dead lift, the two events that test your legs.

The tiebreaker at the time was the result of the weigh-in, determining who was stronger pound for pound. When Anderson stepped onto the scales, he checked in at 89.1kg. Hurts placed ahead of him by being 135g lighter.

Anderson, who works as a professional trainer these days, isn’t upset. He was just amazed as everyone else about how much Hurts could lift.

“His legs were ridiculous,” ­Anderson says.

What people also noticed about Hurts was his unusually calm demeanour at events. Powerlifting is an adrenaline-fuelled sport where competitors can get a bit crazy in order to amp themselves up. They scream, beat their chests or even sniff smelling salts to get going.

But just like he does these days on the football field, where Hurts isn’t known for being flashy or trash-talking, he coolly stepped up and defied everyone’s expectations.

“He’d walk up there almost stone-faced,” says Opiela, who was in the 125kg weight class. “Effortless. It was like another day in the office.”

Hurts spent just two seasons as a powerlifter because everyone knew his calling card was in another sport: football.

He went to Alabama and then Oklahoma, where it became clear he had only gotten stronger when a video went viral of him squatting 272kg. The Eagles eventually drafted him in the second round.

And it has been impossible to watch Hurts’s star turn this season without noticing his leg strength. When he runs, he’s the rare quarterback who can embrace contact, instead of avoiding it, because he can power through. He’s also an outlier because he looks perfectly at home executing one of the most punishing plays in football.

Quarterback sneaks are a play that require gumption and a vision for small holes to push through, but Hurts has turned it into a feat of strength. When he continues to churn his legs even as a line of enormous defenders try to stop him, he turns a scantly used play into a tactic the Eagles can deploy routinely.

Over the course of this season, Hurts attempted 33 quarterback sneaks and got first downs on 29 of them, according to Stats. No other player tried more than 20.

Ten of Hurts’s sneaks came on fourth downs, but what’s more telling were the 23 others that weren’t on fourth down.

It’s just a regular part of their offence to move the chains — and get into the end zone. Six of his 13 rushing touchdowns came via the sneak.

It wouldn’t be surprising if this Super Bowl comes down to if the Chiefs can figure out how to stop him on one of these plays, whether it’s on a fourth down or at the goal line.

Hurts ran as many as seven sneaks in a single game this season. That’s seven more than Mahomes did all year.

Hurts is the sneakiest quarterback in football. That’s because he may be the strongest.

The Wall Street Journal