With his degree in hand and his bona fides as a quarterback solidified, Milroe could have made the jump to the NFL or another title contender. Instead, he’s staying in Tuscaloosa to try to get rid of the bitter taste left by his final play of last season.
Season over, hearts broken, the Alabama Crimson Tide football team flew home from California on Jan. 2.
“It hurt,” Milroe says. “But one thing I took away that was bigger than the moment was appreciation, because we could have thrown the ball, handed the ball off, somebody else could have had the ball. So that means they truly had confidence in me and believed in me in the last play of the game, which was for our season.”
Milroe rushed for 63 yards against Michigan in Pasadena, but he threw for a season-low 116 yards and averaged just 5.0 yards per attempt. / Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated Milroe spent two years backing up Young without looking elsewhere. He endured a surprise benching after a lackluster performance in an early loss to Texas last fall—which nearly backfired on the Tide in a 17–3 slog over South Florida with him on the sidelines—without public complaint. Then he fulfilled a promise to his parents by graduating cum laude in December with a degree in business administration.
Things were hard earlier this year. In addition to the transfers out, there was a brief period where DeBoer’s offensive coordinator at Washington, Ryan Grubb, was in place at Alabama. Then Grubb was hired away by the Seahawks and replaced by another former Huskies staffer, Nick Sheridan. On his way to becoming a top-10 draft pick, Penix was the launching pad for a dazzling vertical passing game the past two seasons at Washington. What quarterback wouldn’t want to plug into that scheme? With a howitzer for an arm and DeBoer’s offense—which is buttressed by the arrival of former Huskies wideout Germie Bernard—Milroe could be the next deep-shot king of the college game.
“Everything he stands for is what I would like the representation of the modern student-athlete to be,” Williams says. “Jalen allows us to have a footprint in the college space. He’s carrying the weight of continuing the standard of excellence for one of the biggest brands in college sports as it’s going through a reorg, for lack of a better term.”
Milroe is working to polish his passing skills and defensive reads, relying less on his elite athleticism to make plays and acknowledging the occasional need for checkdown plays to keep drives alive.
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