It’s easy to let a naysayer know when you’re trying to tell them what they want to hear.
Jalen Milroe’s legacy at Alabama is centered around misplaced expectations. The LANK slogan the quarterback coined is a product of doubters who wrote him and the Crimson Tide off too early following a loss to Texas during the 2023 season. However, those extrapolations were equally as premature as the elite status heaped on him following a 374-yard passing performance against Georgia this past September.
Milroe now serves as the scapegoat for Alabama’s failed 2024 season, but the criticism he’s currently facing doesn’t stem from a fan base that was rooting for him to fail. If anything, the quarterback’s fall from grace is amplified due to a pedestal his play never warranted.
Milroe isn’t a villain, not even after a turbulent two-year stint at the center of Alabama’s offense. But in retrospect, he shouldn’t have been expected to play the hero role either.
Unlike Jalen Hurts, whose stellar 2016 offseason vaulted him into QB1 status as a freshman, Milroe stumbled into the starting role, struggling to beat out Ty Simpson and Tyler Buchner during the fall of 2023. Milroe also lacked the arm talent of predecessors such as Bryce Young, Mac Jones and Tua Tagovailoa, who orchestrated high-powered offenses by spreading the ball out to playmakers.
Those deficiencies were evident during the loss to Texas and contributed to Nick Saban benching Milroe the following game against South Florida. But Alabama didn’t have a better option, so the Tide’s naysayers became daydreamers.
And for a while, Milroe made them believers.
It was hard not to get caught up in the dual-threat quarterback’s hype. Following Alabama’s clunker against South Florida in 2023, a rejuvenated Milroe led the Tide to 10 straight wins, including an SEC title. The Katy, Texas product passed for 321 yards during his return to his home state in a win over Texas A&M. He outshined eventual Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels a month later against LSU. And his “Gravedigger” touchdown to save Alabama against Auburn is one of the biggest plays in Iron Bowl history.
Those feats ultimately saw Milroe finish sixth among Heisman voters, but they still didn’t make him the right fit for the job.
Don’t get me wrong, Milroe is in the realm of Derrick Henry, Julio Jones and Jaylen Waddle as the greatest athletes to wear crimson and white. As a pure college football player, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many who share his athleticism and playmaking ability with the ball in their hands.
But he’s not an elite quarterback — at least not the type needed to make deep runs in the College Football Playoff.
In 26 career starts, Milroe threw for 300 yards just three times. In 17 starts against SEC competition, he threw for a combined 20 touchdowns while tossing 14 interceptions. His passing performances regressed dramatically this past fall, as he threw for just 2,264 yards and nine touchdowns with 11 interceptions in 10 games against Power 4 competition.
Alabama has won titles with average passers in the past. Milroe doesn’t have any less arm talent than Jake Coker or Greg McElroy. However, the dual-threat quarterback failed to manage the Tide’s offense in a similar fashion to those two.
Coker and McElroy took a back seat to Heisman Trophy running backs in Henry and Mark Ingram. When they were called to throw, they often executed safe passes, allowing the Tide’s playmakers such as Calvin Ridley and Julio Jones to do the heavy lifting.
Conversely, Milroe’s skillset required a full takeover of the offense. While his running ability often caused opposing defenses problems, the quarterback’s designed runs took away carries from Alabama’s backs, often preventing them from finding a rhythm. That seemed to be the case in the bowl loss to Michigan when Tide backs managed just 33 yards on 12 attempts.
Alabama’s overreliance on Milroe was ultimately its undoing.
When he was humming, so was the offense. The Tide looked unstoppable during the first half against Georgia and cruised past LSU when Milroe piled up 294 total yards and four touchdowns. However, Alabama was seldom able to overcome a poor performance from its quarterback.
Milroe’s three worst showings came in losses to Tennessee, Oklahoma and Michigan. He completed 50.5% of his passes for 595 yards with two touchdowns and six interceptions in those games. Meanwhile, Alabama averaged just 269.3 yards in the defeats.
Once again, the point of this column isn’t to dunk on Milroe or diminish what he achieved at Alabama. If anything, he exceeded what most originally expected from him coming out of high school.
While Milroe is a former Rivals100 member, he wasn’t Alabama’s first choice in the 2021 class. The Tide only pursued the former Texas commit after it lost Drake Maye to North Carolina. Had the Yea Alabama NIL collective been further along two years ago, perhaps Maye might have spent his final season at the Capstone before becoming the No. 3 overall pick in last year’s draft.
Who knows what would have happened then. Would Maye have led Alabama to a title in Saban’s final season? Would that have allowed Kalen DeBoer to find a quarterback who better fit his offense than Milroe through the transfer portal last year?
At this point, those hypotheticals are frivolous. And so is pouting over the past two years with Milroe.
Alabama’s polarizing playmaker will now ride off into the sunset where he’ll set out to prove doubters wrong at the next level. Despite his struggles, Milroe is currently rated as the No. 4 quarterback on ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper’s Big Board. Given the state of passers in this year’s draft class, don’t be shocked if a desperate NFL general manager overlooks the Alabama quarterback’s flaws for his potential by selecting him with an early-round draft pick.
After all, it's hard to be a naysayer when hoping for unrealistic results.
Drink of the week — Air Mail
Here’s a toast to better passing performances for Alabama moving forward. As the Tide prepares to break in a new quarterback this offseason, it’s only fitting we turn to the Air Mail as our drink of the week. This cocktail is a refreshing spin on the French 75 and is a nice way to usher in a new future behind center.
The drink includes champagne as well as an ounce of aged rum, half an ounce of lime juice and half an ounce of honey syrup. Add the rum, honey syrup and lime juice in a tin shaker and shake with ice. From there, double-strain the mixture into a coupe glass and top with champagne. Garnish with a lime wedge and enjoy.
Cheers!
(Commercial break: My drink of the week section is now sponsored by my friends at Session Cocktails in Tuscaloosa. Session has been a mainstay in Tuscaloosa’s cocktail scene since 2019 and offers some of the tastiest drinks in town. Stop by and tell them I said hi!)
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