Jurkovec Playing Like the Dual-Threat Star He Was in High School
Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom)Publisher
During Pine-Richland’s 2017 PIAA State Championship victory over St. Joseph’s, Phil Jurkovec accounted for five total touchdowns. Four of them came on the ground.
A 25-yard touchdown pass practically secured Pine-Richland’s first-ever title, however, Jurkovec did the most damage with his legs on that snow-covered night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, four years ago.
It was a fitting end to a season in which he finished as the second quarterback in Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League history to throw for 3,000 yards and run for 1,000 more. Jurkovec rounded out the year with 1,211 yards on the ground, not to mention 24 rushing touchdowns.
He was the No. 5 dual-threat quarterback in the Class of 2018.
That was somewhat forgotten over the last few years when Jurkovec struggled to develop at Notre Dame and then thrived in offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti Jr.’s pro-style offense at BC last season.
Now, after dropping some weight and conditioning tirelessly during his six-game hiatus, Jurkovec is making people remember how good of a runner he is.
“Since coming here, Coach Cignetti has really taught me how to be a pocket passer,” Jurkovec said. “Whenever I came in, that’s all the training that he’s done with me.
“But he understands that a part of my game is being able to extend plays and run.”
Jurkovec is riding high off a 71-yard, three-touchdown rushing performance at Georgia Tech, where he became the second Eagles quarterback to throw and run for at least two touchdowns in an ACC game. The only other was Chris Crane, who put up a similar stat line against North Carolina State in 2008.
Earning ACC Quarterback of the Week and Pro Football Focus Offensive Player of the Week honors, Jurkovec also averaged 23.8 yards per completion and passed for 310 yards as well as a pair of scores, both of which were byproduct of deep balls to star wideout Zay Flowers.
Flowers burned the GT secondary on each of those plays, but he jokingly noted that Jurkovec looked faster than him out there at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
“He moving way faster than he was before,” Flowers said postgame. “So it might have been a good thing to miss a little bit of time. It gave him a little bit of speed.”
Jurkovec admitted that, after having surgery in September, he thought he would miss the rest of the season. Perhaps he could make it back for the regular season finale, maybe a bowl game, he considered. Still, he trained. And trained. And trained.
Jurkovec said he couldn’t use his right wrist and, as a result, wasn’t able to work on his upper body. But he teamed up with strength and conditioning coach Phil Matusz to build up his legs with lifting and running. Almost always one of the first Eagles on the field in warmups, Jurkovec would run sprints before games, both home and away. He said he cut between five and 10 pounds while he was sidelined.
At practice, he would spend time standing behind the quarterbacks, “taking it all in and seeing it from different perspectives,” he said.
“I came back, and I feel more comfortable now than I did at the beginning of the year,” Jurkovec said.
Against Virginia Tech, Jurkovec’s first game since he suffered a season-threatening fracture to his throwing hand in Week 2, he rushed for 65 yards and the game-opening touchdown. Jurkovec tested his recovery on his third play from scrimmage, rocketing up the middle on a scramble before going airborne and landing on his right hand.
He was fine and continued to call his own number, both on the zone-read and when plays broke down.
“Phil looks faster,” head coach Jeff Hafley said Sunday. “He seems very hard to tackle right now. And that’s going to be a part of what we do.
“That’s stuff we were excited about with Phil. He’s not just a big guy who can throw. He can run. It makes defenses think. You’ve gotta stop him from running, and then he can throw the ball 55 yards down the field.”
Jurkovec’s running has enhanced a BC rushing attack that, despite significant improvement, was handicapped midseason by the lack of a complementary passing game. Teams can no longer stack the box and sell out on the run on early downs like they were when Dennis Grosel was under center.
And Jurkovec’s ability to not just extend plays but actually make them with his legs has increased the unpredictability of the Eagles’ offense.
When Jurkovec transferred to BC, he instantly connected with Cignetti, a fellow Yinzer. It took some time for the 6-foot-5 gunslinger to get to know the pro-style offense, though. Huddling, for instance, was something he hadn’t done since middle school.
But the zone-read?
“I’ve been doing it since I was little,” Jurkovec said after demonstrating the mesh point before he reads defenders and determines if he should keep the rock for himself.
Running brings joy to Jurkovec, and he believes it stresses opposing defenses. It also shuts up some friends at home, he noted Saturday after the win at GT.
“It feels good because everybody was calling me fat last year—fat and slow—back home,” he said with a smile on his face. “So I’m gonna be able to tell them, ‘Hey, I ran a few.’”
Jurkovec’s Pine-Richland career unfolded like a storybook. He piled up the second-most total yards of offense in WPIAL history and guided his school to its first-ever state title over a Philadelphia Catholic League power that had won 27 straight games and three of the previous four PIAA championships.
But his transition to Notre Dame was far from seamless. It wasn’t the dream he once had, and, at one point, Jurkovec even considered switching positions while he was stuck behind Ian Book on the depth chart. He had lost some of his love for the game.
Then he transferred to BC, forming what would have been an unlikely pairing four years before. And just after he broke out in 2020 with four 300-yard passing games and was set for what many believed could be a historic season this year, he fractured his throwing hand at UMass of all places.
It’s been a winding road, but Jurkovec is back to playing with the comfort and confidence he had in high school—not just throwing the ball but running it, too.
When asked if this is how he envisioned himself as a college quarterback, Jurkovec didn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” he said. “For sure.”
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