It took the most critical situation for Dan Enos to fully recognize the evolution.

Fourth quarter. Trailing Georgia by a touchdown. Third-and-12. No one open. Tua Tagovailoa was out, injured. So much more than a pocket threatened to collapse for Alabama.

But Jalen Hurts waited until the last possible second, then rifled a pass over the middle. First down.

“That, to me, was the epitome of everything he had been working on and talking about getting better at,” says Enos, who was Alabama’s quarterbacks coach last season. “It showed up.”

After a season spent on the bench, the former two-year starter and star showed up when Alabama most needed him, rallying the Crimson Tide to victory in the SEC championship game. A couple of months later, Hurts touched down at Oklahoma, sliding into the space occupied by the last two Heisman Trophy winners and setting up an especially compelling story line.

Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray won the coveted award because of their ability to operate college football’s most potent offense, which is what makes the subplot at least as intriguing. Hurts, who was 26-2 as a starter and the SEC’s offensive player of the year as a freshman in 2016, was benched halfway through the 2017 national championship game and eventually lost the starting job at Alabama because of passing deficiencies.

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Can he thrive in an attack that relies far more on the pass than the one he ran as a starter at Alabama ever did? Will Lincoln Riley morph the Sooners’ system to fit Hurts’ dual-threat skills?

But here’s maybe a more interesting question: Is it possible that Hurts developed into a significantly better passer while he was a backup?

“Absolutely,” Nick Saban says. “And that was the goal.”

Hurts became Alabama’s starting quarterback in 2016, a wonderful dual-threat quarterback who led the Crimson Tide to the cusp of a national championship (he engineered a late touchdown drive for the lead, only to watch from the sidelines as Clemson rallied for the winning score with one second left). But by late the next season, it became clear Hurts had not progressed much as a passer; he might have regressed.

After completing nearly 63 percent of his passes for 2,780 yards and 23 touchdowns in 2016, Hurts completed 60 percent in 2017 as the Crimson Tide relied more and more on the run. He struggled to read defenses and was criticized for bolting the pocket too early.

In the first half of the national championship game in January 2018, with Georgia shutting down the Tide’s running game, Hurts was 3-8 passing for 21 yards. Alabama had 94 total yards and four first downs – and trailed 13-0. The rest of the story is familiar. Saban inserted Tagovailoa in the second half, and though the freshman’s performance was uneven, it was occasionally spectacular.

When Alabama won it in overtime on Tagovailoa’s 41-yard dart to fellow freshman DeVonta Smith, a new star had been born. And when Tagovailoa supplanted Hurts as the starter last season, the results were routinely spectacular – and the difference in the quarterbacks’ passing skills seemed glaring.

But behind the scenes, out of the spotlight, Hurts was improving. When Saban named Tagovailoa the starter, he talked with Hurts.

“I said, ‘Look, you have the opportunity to get a lot better at the things you need to improve on,’” Saban says. “‘And you can do it in practice. We’ll give you every opportunity to do it in the game. And if you look at it like that, rather than focusing on your circumstance, you’re going to improve and get better’ – and he did.”

Credit goes to Enos, who joined the Alabama staff in February 2018. His initial assessment of Hurts was of a terrific athlete with a strong arm who was plagued by inconsistent footwork and eyes.

Early on, when Enos asked Hurts – “What do you see?” – the quarterback’s reply was dead-on: “I leave the pocket too soon at times.” Much of Enos’ thrust, then, was to train Hurts to make better reads.

“He’s such a good athlete, you default to running sometimes just because it’s been successful for you,” Enos says, adding that he told Hurts: “Everyone knows you can run and win a game and be successful. Think about how good a quarterback you can be when you can start beating people with your arm.”

To the surprise of few, Hurts couldn’t beat out Tagovailoa in the quarterback competition. Alabama morphed last season from run-first into a passing fancy we’d never seen from a Saban team. Tagovailoa became a breakout star. While Hurts looked pretty good, too, in the new offense, it came on the back end of blowouts and was mostly overshadowed by Tua’s transcendence.

Even in limited playing time, his statistics reflected progress. Hurts’ completion percentage improved to almost 73% (50 of 71); his quarterback rating soared to 196.7, almost 50 points higher than his sophomore season (150.2). Hurts has been available to reporters only twice since arriving in Norman. Last spring, he deflected a direct question about whether he has improved as a passer, saying “all of (his) experiences … helped me for the better.”

“I guess experiencing that success early, then kind of hitting a little adversity, that made me better,” he said. “I was able to see things differently, have a different perspective on things. I think that’s kind of led up to me being the person I am standing before you today.”

Another factor: In three seasons at Alabama, Hurts worked with three different offensive coordinators (and that’s not counting Enos, the quarterbacks coach in 2018). But he said he learned from each coach.

“I think I’m wiser, I’m better, I’m stronger for it, everything that took course last year and over the last three years,” he said. “Obviously I didn’t get the snaps (last season). I had limited time. But I’m at a new place. New opportunity.”

Last week at the annual Elite 11 quarterback camp, Hurts drew praise for a workout that resembled the pro-day session of a potential draft pick. There wasn’t any pressure – at least, not from a defense. But the throws were crisp and accurate; the performance was impressive.

Riley probably was not surprised. He says in Hurts’ short time in Norman, the quarterback has shown the ability to run the same offense – same throws, same reads – as Mayfield and Murray. He expected as much after watching Hurts’ performances last season while studying Alabama before the teams met in the playoff semifinal in the Orange Bowl.

“There was little to no drop-off (from Tagovailoa) when he played,” Riley says. “At times at the end of the year, they even played potentially a little better when he (was playing).”

Riley adds Hurts has grown through “natural progression.”

“I think he’s just maturing,” Riley says. “He was in a competition, which I think is always gonna make you better.”

From a closer vantage point, Georgia coach Kirby Smart saw something similar.

“He was better than he was the year before,” Smart says, adding: “You’re sitting in the meeting room every day watching Tua, who’s an elite passer, I think you grow as a passer. And I also think Dan Enos and their staff gets a lot of credit for saying, ‘Hey bud, if you’re gonna be the guy, you’ve got to do better at this.’ And man, he worked at it. And he got better.”

It was evident to Smart and everyone else on that December Saturday in Atlanta. Eleven months after he was replaced by Tagovailoa, the scenario was essentially reversed (though Tua was injured). When Tagovailoa went down with an ankle injury early in the fourth quarter, Georgia led 28-21. A running play lost two yards, setting up third-and-12.

Hurts dropped back. When no one was open, there was room to run left, but he waited. He slid away from pressure, reset and then, as two Georgia players crashed from his right side, hit tight end Irv Smith for 13 yards and the first down.

“If he had scrambled out and been tackled short, we might not have won the game,” says Enos, now Miami’s offensive coordinator.

Instead, Hurts led Alabama to a touchdown on that drive and the winning TD on the next. In the process, he probably cemented his status as an Alabama legend. But Enos believes that performance against Georgia foreshadowed what might be about to unfold at Oklahoma this season. It began with that third down.

“I told him that was the play I was most proud of him,” Enos says. “I think he has a chance to have a really good year. There was a lot of growth. I think he’s really improved, and he’s gonna continue.”