Jaguars @ Redskins Week 2 Enemy: Allen Hurns

Allen Hurns

Position: Wide Receiver

Age: 20

Form

Hurns jumped into the spotlight last week against the Eagles. In the first quarter of the game, Hurns scored the first two touchdowns of his career. That's an NFL record. His stats for the first half of the game were two catches for 101 yards and two touchdowns. His second half was a different story: one catch for nine yards and no touchdowns. That's quite a debut for anyone, let alone an undrafted free agent from the University of Miami. Hurns presents an issue for the Redskins. He is 6' 3" and 195 pounds and due to hamstring injuries to Marqise Lee and Cecil Shorts, Hurns becomes a serious target for quarterback Chad Henne, even if both receivers play. With only one NFL game's worth of film to watch, he's not an easy receiver to prepare for. One of the reasons Hurns played so well was Philadelphia's ineptitude in defending him. They were clearly not ready for him. He exposed the weaknesses and scored. The biggest question is, can the Redskins learn from the mistakes made by the Eagles?

Skills

Hurns did not play like a rookie in his first game. He's playing like a rookie closer towards the end of the season. His routes were crisp. He was selling his fakes. Hurns displayed one of the qualities that rookies don't seem to find until late in year one, or maybe year two. He was PATIENT! Before running to the endzone, he made sure he had control of the ball. Jags head coach Gus Bradley told the Florida Time-Union, "He has good instincts and is really driven. We saw it in OTAs-some of the quarterbacks said they really like him. They felt like this guy is a diamond in the rough. Just trust us on this. He has some talent. I think the cool thing for him was it was against the ones. He went out there and performed at that level."

Potential Against the Redskins

This is the difficult part. How will Allen Hurns perform against the Redskins? His first quarter against the Eagles was historic. Literally historic. After that quarter, he didn't do much. The Redskins' secondary is a question mark. If Hall, Rambo (AKA Goo Ham Fudge) and company don't stop him, it won't take Hurns too many catches to do some serious damage. The Redskins didn't give up a lot of points last week, but they scored even fewer. If Hurns has a repeat performance, he, alone, could be enough to take the Skins to an 0-2 record. If the Redskins can play him like the Eagles played him in quarters two through four, he might not have much of an impact in the game.

Fun Facts

Hurns set a University of Miami record with 1,162 yards in his senior season. The record was previously held by Leonard Hankerson. Believe it or not, that makes Hurns only the fourth Hurricane to eclipse the 1,000 yard mark. Growing up, his role model was Andre Johnson. God that makes me feel old. In the first game of the year, Hurns has outperformed every wide receiver taken in the first two rounds of the draft.

Check out how Hurns performed in the preseason.

To buy tickets, visit the NFL Ticket Exchange.