Kurtis Rourke, a Canadian quarterback, has experienced an incredible journey in college football, going from a torn ACL to leading his team into the College Football Playoff. In just one year, he has risen to become one of the most efficient passers in the nation, earning a top-10 Heisman Trophy finish and setting himself up for a potential NFL career.
On Friday night, Rourke will lead the Indian Hoosiers into Notre Dame Stadium to face the Fighting Irish on the opening night of the first 12-team College Football Playoff.Rourke and the Hoosiers enter the game coming off an 11-1 season, with the Oakville, Ont. native graded as the most efficient passer in college football , which helped him finish ninth in voting for the Heisman Trophy .
His coaches told anyone who would listen that Rourke had the skills and makeup to be an NFL quarterback. All he had to do was go out and replicate his previous season, or close to it, and he could become one of those rare MAC quarterbacks for whom doors to the NFL would open. Rourke has never conceded that his knee injury in any way affected his statistical slide in 2023, when he threw for 1,000 fewer yards, saw his completion percentage dip sharply, and went from throwing 25 touchdown passes in 2022 to just 11 the next season.
Becoming a late-round NFL draft pick would have been a longshot at the time, but a free-agent deal was a real possibility. At 6-foot-5 and with all that arm talent, someone would want to take a closer look. He also heard from a coach who’d recently left a spectacular five-year run at James Madison University to become the new head coach at the University of Indiana.
There were challenging times when he got to Bloomington in the new year, both in terms of the off-season grind and also finding the right mentality to compete in the Big Ten against programs regularly in the running for a national title.Rourke wasn’t there to save the program. He was there to distribute the football to the players around him in the best way possible. That’s been the focus ever since.No one could have imagined the transformation that would come to Bloomington this season.
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