Allen Hurns Shows Promise in 1st Regular-Season Game for Jaguars
For about 90 minutes, the NFL was getting acquainted with the new reality that the Jacksonville Jaguars were no longer pushovers. They held a 17-0 lead against one of the glamour franchises of the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles, on the road. By the in-game calculators over at Advanced Football Analytics, the Jaguars had a 92 percent chance to win this game.
Then they gave up 34 straight points.
But we don't have to look long to come up with a bright spot for the Jaguars. The play of wide receiver Allen Hurns was sublime. Hurns caught four passes for 110 yards and two touchdowns en route to building that big lead for Jacksonville.
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A film lookback of the game goes to show that while Hurns' touchdowns had some fluke elements in them, he shows some very important elements that the best receivers in the game have. In other words, I think he's got a chance to be a fixture for the Jaguars for a long time.
Charting the throws out, the average depth of his target was 20.1 yards. (I discounted one of his incomplete passes because it was tipped at the line of scrimmage.) The only target he had that I counted as a misstep for him personally was a dropped ball on a dig route over the middle.
A zone defender read Chad Henne's eyes on that ball, and he was able to lay a big hit on Hurns. While Hurns still should've kept the ball, that's a lot more honest of a mistake than just fumbling the ball at his shoetops would've been.
| 1 | 1 | 9:06 | 34 | 0 | |
| 1 | 1 | 6:55 | 11 | 10 | |
| 1 | 1 | 1:27 | 29 | 17 | |
| 1 | 2 | 14:23 | 0 | Tipped at Line | |
| 1 | 2 | 10:07 | 15 | Overthrown | |
| 1 | 2 | 7:59 | 10 | -1 | |
| 1 | 3 | 5:30 | 36 | Overthrown | |
| 1 | 4 | 7:27 | 11 | Dropped | |
| 1 | 4 | 6:52 | 15 | Defensed |
Here are three plays I want to isolate for you.
1. Hurns' first touchdown catch—a defensive breakdown
This is a touchdown that was essentially gifted by the defense. My read of things is that the Eagles are playing Cover 4 (four deep zone defenders), and Nate Allen eschews this to go help out with an underneath defender.
Hurns is lined up on the outside left and had inside position on his man on the outside, which meant that any ball with real velocity in the area was a sure touchdown. It was a throw so easy that even Chad Henne could make it.
The second touchdown pass had the same elements to it. Hurns was wide open because the Eagles seemed fooled by the screen action. Then, Hurns bullied his way over the safety near the goal line. Hurns gets full credit for that, but he was open because of an Eagles defensive breakdown.
2. Hurns jukes his defensive back
On his third big gainer of the first quarter, Hurns creates his own defensive mistake. He lines up on the outside left, executes a nice tilt-fake to the middle of the field, his defender bites on it and he's open down the sideline for another easy catch.
Unlike the first play, Hurns gets full credit here. It's one thing for the defense to mess up, but it's another for it to mess up solely because of your fake. Hurns showed one of my very favorite tendencies in this game: He was able to get off press coverage fairly easily.
The Philadelphia cornerbacks aren't super sharp or anything, but beating press coverage is a major sign to me that Hurns can stick in the starting lineup.
3. Incomplete down the sideline
Hurns is on the outside right. Again, he's facing a single man defender; Hurns goes in and out to create space down the sideline.
This is a tough ball to assign blame to because it was so close to being a completion. Hurns had to dive to get his hands on it. I wouldn't call this a bad throw, but it wasn't good enough.
Hurns was able to defeat the coverage all on his own, which speaks to his abilities.
While I don't know that Hurns is somebody who can be counted on in fantasy football, mostly because anyone tied to Chad Henne is going to have a hard time converting a lot of targets consistently, I do think his targets in this first game tell us he's not a fluke.
Hurns defeated press coverage, routinely showed the ability to get open and, outside of his drop, I would credit Henne with more of the blame for the incompletions than Hurns.
It was common knowledge among draftnik circles that this was one of the deepest crops of wide receivers in recent memory. The Jaguars dipped into it twice in the second round.
Their best receiver from this class may have been the one they didn't draft.
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