Motivation, Unlikely Mentor Fuel Always Underrated Allen Hurns' Rise to Stardom
Moments before the start of every game, Allen Hurns dons his headphones for about five quiet minutes at his stall in the Jacksonville Jaguars dressing room. The second-year wide receiver hits the play button and listens intently to the famous "inch by inch" speech delivered by Al Pacino's character in the Hollywood hit Any Given Sunday.
It's fitting, really, for a player who nearly saw his football career go up in flames before it started when a torn meniscus cost him his senior season at Miami's Carol City High. A player who battled injuries throughout his college career, and wasn't drafted despite big numbers in his senior season at the University of Miami. A player who might never have achieved any of this had his single mother not pushed him and his brother to stay straight while growing up in a neighborhood capable of swallowing them.
Allen Hurns has had to fight for every inch.
A 23-year-old man of few words, and seemingly immune to the sensationalism and bravado that we've become accustomed to from NFL receivers, Hurns doesn't tout his rise—dating back to the start of his rookie season, he leads the Jaguars in catches, yards and touchdowns—and he has an altruistic motive for listening to Pacino's emotional address.
"It just makes me realize that I'm here for my teammates," Hurns told Bleacher Report of his pregame ritual, "and I'll be giving them all I've got no matter what happens."
But director Oliver Stone and the fictional Tony D'Amato aren't the only wise men whispering in Hurns' ear. That's because another Sunshine State-born-and-bred receiver with a similarly humble demeanor has taken the young wideout under his wing.
Strangely, Hurns' mentor is also one of his key competitors: fellow AFC South wide receiver Andre Johnson.
"He's had a tremendous impact on my life," said Hurns of Johnson. "As a kid, I always loved the Miami Hurricanes. I would see him go out there and give it all he's got every time, so every time I talk to him it's a blessing. And he's just always telling me to stay humble. Every time we play them, we always have a good conversation and we talk a lot in the offseason."
The two are separated by a decade, but they share Miami roots from birth to high school to "The U." In fact, Hurns and Johnson are two of only four receivers in Hurricanes history to surpass the 1,000 receiving yards mark (joined by Eddie Brown and Leonard Hankerson).
When Hurns came into this world, his mother, Erica Wilson, was still a teenager. His father, also named Allen, spent the early years of his son's life behind bars. And while the senior Allen Hurns—a free man now—has remained involved in Allen Jr.'s life, Hurns views Johnson as another father figure.
"At Miami, all the older guys have always reached out to the younger guys and helped them out any way they can," Johnson told Bleacher Report. "So that's just what I try to do for him."
The two routinely exchange text messages, particularly following games. They hang out in the offseason, and, of course, they meet on the field two Sundays per year.
"Keep working," the 34-year-old Johnson told Hurns after his protege put up career highs with 11 catches, 116 yards and a touchdown in a close loss to Johnson's Indianapolis Colts last month. "I think you can be a great player."
That was the third matchup between the two in a 13-month span. Last season, Hurns caught seven passes and scored a touchdown in two losses to Johnson's Houston Texans. That means the older Miami sensation is 3-0 against his apprentice, but watching Hurns put on a show from the opposing sideline is still undoubtedly a strange feeling for Johnson.
"You hate to see that happen against your team," said Johnson, "but you love to see him do well."
And he's done well, not just against Johnson's teams, but against the entire league. Despite the fact he wasn't drafted last year, only two receivers from said draft—first-rounders Odell Beckham Jr. and Mike Evans—have scored more career touchdowns than Hurns.
| 1. Odell Beckham Jr. | 1st | 19 |
| 2. Mike Evans | 1st | 13 |
| 3. Allen Hurns | N/A | 11 |
| 3. Martavis Bryant | 4th | 11 |
| 5. Kelvin Benjamin | 1st | 9 |
He's one of only 10 NFL wideouts with five or more touchdowns through eight weeks, and all five of those scores have come in consecutive games—something no other Jaguars receiver has accomplished.
And when it comes to big plays, Hurns is your guy. He's one of 17 receivers with six or more 40-yard catches since the start of last season, and he's one of just four players with multiple 50-yard receptions this season. Unsurprisingly, he ranks second in football to only teammate Allen Robinson when it comes to yards per catch among players with at least 30 receptions.
| 1. Allen Robinson | 34 | 17.2 |
| 2. Allen Hurns | 31 | 16.6 |
| 3. T.Y. Hilton | 38 | 16.3 |
| 4. Rob Gronkowski | 40 | 16.2 |
| 5. Travis Benjamin | 38 | 15.8 |
What's more, Hurns makes big plays in big moments. Statistically, he's at his best late in games.
| 1st | 18 | 285 | 3 |
| 2nd | 21 | 254 | 2 |
| 3rd | 17 | 264 | 2 |
| 4th | 26 | 387 | 4 |
"Inch by inch, play by play"
But it's amazing how many inches Hurns had to fight for in order to merely get the chance to meet Johnson as a member of the Miami fraternity, let alone sign an UDFA deal with the Jaguars and earn an NFL starting job.
He wasn't exactly given a running start. With Allen Sr. locked up, a 19-year-old Wilson was forced to put her dreams aside and work multiple jobs in order to raise Allen and his brother Daryl.
"Growing up with that in a rough neighborhood, you see a lot of things, and it just motivates you to do a good job on the football field and in the classroom to get away from it," said Hurns. "There's a lot of violence you see, and your mother doesn't want you to see that, but she was just doing what she could to provide for me and my brother. As a child you don't understand and you just want, want, want, but as you get older you start to realize just how much she has to do."
Wilson made ends meet by running a home childcare service while also working at a local Winn-Dixie grocery store.
"She didn't graduate high school or college so she wasn't able to get good jobs, and that's tough nowadays if you don't have a good resume," said Hurns. "There were times where you could see that she was hurting but she wasn't showing it. For us it was tough seeing it, but at the end of the day she stayed positive and would go out and give it her all."
But Wilson's primary job was making sure that in an environment riddled with trouble, temptations and peer pressure, her youngest child didn't stray.
"I always stayed on top of him," Wilson told Bleacher Report, "making sure he did the right thing, got his education and stayed off the streets."
For a young Allen Hurns, that meant an adolescence laced with rules, restrictions and ultimatums.
"She was very strict as far as going to school and getting an education," he said of his mom. "I loved playing football, and she always told me that if I wasn't able to get good grades, I wasn't going to be able to play football. Just seeing how much your mom invests in you, it makes you want to [succeed] in return."
"We claw with our fingernails for that inch"
Does that upbringing sound familiar? It probably does to Andre Johnson, who grew up in the same city under the watchful eye of a strict single mom. In fact, Karen Johnson even had Andre move schools when she felt her son was falling in with a bad crowd.
"Everybody who meets my mom is like, 'Man, you have the coolest mom in the world,'" Johnson told the Houston Chronicle's Brian T. Smith last year. "And I always tell 'em, 'Yeah, you didn't have to deal with the growing-up stage.' She was very tough on me. … You appreciate it now. Back then you was just like, 'Man, she's on me about every little thing.' When you get mad, you suck your teeth: 'Why's she doing this?'"
But even before realizing that they shared similar backgrounds, Johnson—who, like many other Hurricane alumni, returns frequently to work with the footstep-followers in green and orange—saw a lot of himself in Hurns.
"One thing I noticed even before I got a chance to know him was he was always a quiet guy," said Johnson. "He's always just working out, never loud. But also pretty observant. And that's kind of the same way I was when I was in college."
"He's one of those humble kids, and he doesn't like attention," added Wilson. "But he's coming out now. Before, Allen didn't talk. He was very, very shy."
They had similar upbringings and share the same temperament, but there is one major difference between Johnson and Hurns: one was the No. 3 overall pick in the 2003 NFL draft, while the other was passed on 256 times in 2014.
Johnson was always a stud, while Hurns had to keep clawing for extra inches.
In fact, considering that he missed virtually his entire senior season of high school due to a torn meniscus in his knee, he's lucky his dream school didn't pull its scholarship offer.
"It was tough but he never once complained about it," said Wilson of the high school knee injury. "He was determined to get back out there on the field."
Injuries in college—he dealt with a broken thumb, a torn labrum and a concussion—combined with less-than-stellar measurables and unspectacular results at the NFL Scouting Combine might explain why Hurns wasn't drafted despite putting up a school-record 1,162 receiving yards as a senior.
| 1. Allen Hurns | 2013 | 1162 |
| 2. Leonard Hankerson | 2010 | 1156 |
| 3. Eddie Brown | 1984 | 1114 |
| 4. Andre Johnson | 2002 | 1092 |
"I was coming off a good season so I expected to get drafted," said Hurns. "And when I didn't get drafted—I can't lie—it hurt me. I'll never forget that day. Once it got to the seventh round I just got down. That was a tough time for me because as a kid it's your dream to hear your name get called on draft day, and that's one thing I'll never be able to experience. But at the end of the day I use that as motivation. Because that's something I'll never forget. I still wake up some days thinking, 'Damn, I'll never know what it feels like to be drafted,' and it just gives me motivation."
Wilson saw the glass half full, noting that everything happens for a reason.
"Even when he wasn't drafted," she said, "I kept telling him he was delayed but not denied."
Jedd Fisch, who was Hurns' offensive coordinator at Miami in 2011 and 2012 and held the same role with the Jags when Jacksonville signed Hurns following the 2014 draft, doesn't think his draft status had any impact on his future.
"Once you get on the practice field in the NFL, it's up to you," said Fisch. "You're no longer hyped, you're no longer four or five stars and you're no longer drafted or undrafted. And it's a matter of how you handle it, and he just came to work and would grind. And when you work and grind as well as he does, your production and your performance will usually represent that."
Considering the Jaguars were—and still are—a young, open-minded team, and that Fisch was there to help bring Hurns along, Jacksonville may have been the ideal landing spot.
"We knew what we were getting," said Fisch, who now coaches under Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan. "An incredible hard worker, smart, really dedicated to the game and he was one of those perfect guys to bring in because you could plug him in any position and he would jump right in. That was where the biggest value was for us with Allen, he was always ready, willing and able."
Indeed, Hurns proved he was ready, willing and able when he led the NFL with 232 receiving yards during his first preseason, and he proved that wasn't a fluke when he burned the Philadelphia Eagles for 110 yards and two touchdowns in his very first NFL game.
His first two NFL catches were touchdowns.
"It was a great fit," said Hurns. "Coming in as a rookie, you know the offense. So there wasn't a lot of thinking, you're just out there running plays and it takes a lot of pressure off you because you're not breaking the huddle nervous or thinking a lot."
Was his injury history a concern? Of course, but Hurns' No. 1 goal has always simply been to play in every game. He figures as long as he's on the field, the catches, yards and touchdowns will come.
So far, so good. He's played in 23 of a possible 23 career games.
Beyond that, Fisch notes that "he knows how to get open, he knows how to make big plays and he knows how to catch the ball in traffic. And those are three huge assets."
"We heal as a team or we're gonna crumble"
But Hurns also knows he needs to continue to get better, which is why he and young teammates Robinson and Blake Bortles—all of whom entered the league together—remained in Jacksonville for virtually the entire 2015 offseason in order to take the next step as an offensive core.
"Just building that chemistry as far as us competing in the weight room or going outside and timing downs, and also just talking," said Hurns. "As you can see we're progressing, and it's exciting. We see that we can be very special and we still have a long way to go."
Hurns himself is on pace to go over 1,000 yards while nearly doubling his yardage and touchdown totals from what was a solid rookie season. And after dropping seven passes in the first 11 games of his career, he's dropped just one ball in his last 12, per Pro Football Focus.
Meanwhile, Bortles has already seen his passer rating jump by 13 points, and Robinson has already squashed his rookie numbers with a team-high 586 yards and six touchdowns. They're growing together, and they're well ahead of your typical sophomore trio.
"We knew the challenge that we were facing last year with us all being so young and having to adjust and learn on the fly," Robinson told Bleacher Report, "but we knew that being thrown into the fire early would only benefit us in the long run."
"The inches we need are everywhere around us"
Not long after Hurns became the first member of his family to go to college, his mom and his brother followed him. In fact, all three were in school at the same time, with Wilson finally pursuing her dream by acquiring her GED before taking a sports management course at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale.
The entire family—including Allen's grandmother—also eventually followed him 330 miles north to Jacksonville, where they get together on a daily basis. Hurns, who is earning a base salary of $510,000, says that considering all she's done, he doesn't want his mother to work another day.
Wilson isn't complaining, but like a true mom she has something to clarify.
"Well," she said, "I work for him."
"Now, what are you gonna do?"
One final rather interesting connection between Andre Johnson and Allen Hurns is they're both interested in getting into coaching when they're done playing football.
Considering how neither is particularly vocal—"Allen just started talking in like his senior year in college," said Wilson—that might strike some as odd.
"I love football," said Hurns, "and I don't think I'll be able to give it up when I'm done playing."
Like a good role model, Johnson will be the first to tell Hurns he doesn't have to.
"A lot of times people don't see it when you have that quiet demeanor, but I think if you really want to do something and put your mind to it you can go out there and do it," said Johnson. "If it's something he really wants to do, I'm sure he'll go out there and do it."
Plus, both Fisch and Robinson pointed out that as Hurns has gained confidence, he's established himself as a young leader.
"He's one of our leaders on offense," said Robinson. "But he's a leader by example. He's come around a little bit as far as being more vocal, but his main thing has been leading by example—going out there and making plays, challenging others to do the same."
So one day, against odds that can't be longer than those he's already defied, Hurns might find himself delivering a Pacino-style speech to 53 men seeking inspiration.
For now, though, he's using those words as fuel in order to make his mark as a playmaker, just as he did when he saved the Jaguars with the play of his young career last Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.
The Jags had choked on a big lead and trailed Buffalo by four points with just over two minutes to play at Wembley Stadium when Bortles rolled out of the pocket off play action and chucked a 30-yard throw toward Hurns with no margin for error.
And that's when Hurns did what he does best, laying out for the game-winning catch before landing in bounds by little more than about one-twelfth of a foot.
"I was close to being out," recalled Hurns, "but it's a game of inches, man."
Brad Gagnon has covered the NFL for Bleacher Report since 2012.
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