Jalen Hurts can squat roughly the weight of a black bear

This is not a new thing for Oklahoma’s QB, but it is amazing.

Jalen Hurts, the Alabama-turned-Oklahoma QB, is built more like a running back than a typical college passer. Exhibit A could be any number of power runs he executed over his three years in Tuscaloosa, and Exhibit B could just be this video of him squatting:

I’m counting six 45-pound barbells on each side of what’s probably a 45-pound bar. That’d be a 585-pound squat by a quarterback, which is maybe not unprecedented but also not something I can come up with a parallel to as I sit here writing this blog post.

For Hurts, this massive squat is not new. During spring workouts at Alabama in 2018, he squatted what looks like the same amount. Media outlets reported it was 600 pounds:

An adult male black bear weighs around 600 pounds, though it can exceed it, according to the National Wildlife Foundation. He’s squatting a normal male black bear.

Before Hurts even played a college down, he was squatting 500 and pairing that with at least one bench rep at 275 and at least one deadlift at 565:

Hurts was listed at 6’2 and 218 at the end of his Bama career. Muscle weighs more than fat, and so that listing feels a bit light. But he’s roughly as powerful as a truck anyway.

He’s a much different guy than the roughly 195-pound Kyler Murray, which will cause OU to run a different system than it ran when it had the Heisman winner. Murray did a lot of his best running on scrambles, though he was also a nightmare on certain option plays. With Hurts, Lincoln Riley might call more designed QB runs and just opt to mash people.