Eagles QB Jalen Hurts is a star. The ex-racehorse Jalen Hurts … not so much.

leading the Philadelphia Eagles to the brink of a championship is going to be among the biggest storylines next week at Super Bowl 57.

But 1,500 miles from Glendale, Arizona, you can find another Jalen Hurts whose athletic career did not follow the same glorious trajectory.

Out on a farm in Picayune, Mississippi, the other Jalen Hurts is a 7-year-old former racehorse who lives out his days munching on grass and hay and providing companionship to other Thoroughbreds who are recovering from injury. That’s about all Jalen Hurts the horse can do anymore, given that he was gelded early in life and wouldn’t have had any breeding prospects anyway. 

You see, Jalen Hurts was pretty much a dud on the racetrack. In football terms, you could say he was a four-star recruit who started in the Power Five and ended up playing Div. 2.

“He was kind of a mediocre horse at best,” said J. Patrick Lee, who ended up buying Jalen Hurts out of a claiming race for $10,000 at Delta Downs in Vinton, Louisiana, then retired him after a handful of races and gave him away. After discovering that Jalen Hurts was living in sub-standard conditions, Lee bought him back.

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According to Horse Racing Nation, King’s daughter is married to a former Alabama football player, which made it easy to get Hurts’ consent as required by The Jockey Club when a horse is named for a human. 

“The kid was delighted,” Patrick Biancone, the horse’s original trainer, told Horse Racing Nation. “We sent photos and videos of the horse to the real Jalen Hurts.”

But it became apparent pretty quickly that the equine version was not going to ever match the achievements of the human. In fact, Jalen Hurts was an outright disappointment and had to be dropped in class with pretty much each race.

After seven starts in Florida, where he only won once, the horse ended up on the Louisiana circuit, where the competition should have been easier. That didn’t get the job done, either, and he descended into claiming ranks, where anyone can buy the horse if they pay the listed race-day price. That’s where Lee comes in.

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