Jalen Milroe was a first-rounder in my early mock drafts from November through early-January. That changed in my first post-Super Bowl version, following Milroe’s forgettable week at the Senior Bowl. With Milroe’s evaluation in flux, the NFL Combine later this month looms large.
Jalen Milroe
6-foot-1, 220 pounds
- College: Alabama
- Rank: QB4
- Comp: Malik Willis
On radio row during Super Bowl week, NBC Sports’ Chris Simms asked Alabama QB Jalen Milroe his stance on changing positions. Milroe responded: “You never ask a zebra to be a dog.” The 2021 four-star recruit has been asked a variant of that question many times – including by his own coaches. The idea even sneaks into compliments from opponents.
After Milroe lit up Georgia for nearly 500 total yards and four TDs in a wild September victory – one of the best quarterback performances we’ve ever seen against a Kirby Smart defense at Georgia – Smart told reporters that Milroe “could be the best running back in the country ... and he throws the ball.”
As Smart was speaking, Milroe was back across the stadium, in the home locker room. Milroe had changed into a Jalen Hurts shirt. Hurts was Milroe’s hero, and now is his mentor. Both are from Texas. Both were four-star dual-threat recruits. Both chose Alabama.
Surrounded by reporters, Milroe spoke about the symbolism of wearing the Hurts shirt for the Georgia matchup. Against Georgia in the 2017 national championship game, Hurts was benched for Tua Tagovailoa at halftime. One year later, in the SEC title game, Hurts came off the bench for an injured Tagovailoa to rally Alabama to a win over Georgia.
Milroe knows something about redemption. Former Alabama OC Bill O'Brien encouraged Milroe to change positions when Milroe was a freshman. "How would you feel if I told you [that] you suck?" Milroe said in December 2023 of his interactions with O’Brien. “He told me a bunch of positions I could have switched to, but look where I am right now. Who gets the last laugh?”
Milroe won the competition to become Bryce Young’s heir apparent out of 2023 camp. But he was benched in Week 2 against Texas, and he didn’t take a single snap the next week against USF.
Saban reinstalled Milroe after that. And for the rest of the season, Milroe was one of the very best players in college football. He led Alabama to the CFP and finished sixth in the Heisman. Chief among his season highlights was the last-second fourth-and-31 throw – referred to in Tuscaloosa as simply “Gravedigger” – to stun Auburn in the Iron Bowl.
Alabama replaced the retired Nick Saban with ex-Washington HC Kalen DeBoer. The hope was that DeBoer could polish Milroe as a pocket passer. DeBoer famously developed QB Michael Penix Jr. at Indiana and Washington.
Milroe appeared to be on that trajectory at the end of September. He threw for 374 yards on 27-of-33 passing with another 117 yards rushing in the victory over Georgia. Alabama was 4-0, and Milroe owned a sparkling 10/1 TD/INT rate. He looked like a top-5 overall prospect.
But Milroe went into the tank the rest of the season. Over the last nine games of 2024, Milroe posted a 6/10 TD/INT rate as Alabama limped to a 5-4 finish. It was hard to watch in losses to Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Michigan in particular.
Milroe followed that up with a poor showing at the Senior Bowl. At the NFL Combine later this month, Milroe is expected to run in the 4.3s with explosive jumps at 220 pounds. I mentioned in Jaxson Dart’s scouting report that Dart will be one of this processes’ most polarizing prospects.
Milroe will probably top that entire list. Over the next two-and-a-half months, these two former SEC quarterbacks will wage war for the QB3 designation in this class behind Cam Ward (profile here) and Shedeur Sanders (profile here) in this class. There are huge stakes on the line: The winner has a shot to hear his name called in Round 1.
Jalen Milroe 2025 NFL Draft Scouting Report
The bad news for Milroe at the Senior Bowl started during measurements, when it was revealed that he had 8 ¾-inch hands. No current starting NFL quarterback has hands under 9-inches (Joe Burrow’s are exactly 9). Median quarterback hand size is around 9 ¾ inches.
The last prominent quarterback prospect with serious hand-size questions was Pittsburgh’s Kenny Pickett. Pickett’s hand measured 8 ½-inches at the 2022 NFL Scouting Combine (and “grew” to 8 ⅝ inches when measured at Pitt’s pro day).
The best physical comp for Milroe is Michael Vick. Vick’s hands measured 8 ½ inches, but that didn’t ultimately hinder his slingshot left-arm in the NFL. Like Vick, Milroe is a tremendous deep-ball thrower. Milroe has the same kind of twitchy, elastic arm-strength that Vick did. Milroe’s rainbow deep balls are a thing of beauty, and they arrive with touch – he is a legitimate deep-ball assassin.
Milroe also flexes his arm-strength muscles with outside-the-hash lasers down the sidelines. Milroe’s skillset is a nightmare to defend when he’s connecting down the field. You can keep two deep safeties on the field to prevent him from getting one-on-one looks. But if you do, it’s difficult to spy Milroe, or to send extra pressure at him.
Milroe is a truly exceptional rushing threat. He’s built thick and strong, and he runs with rugged power. He was also usually the fastest player on the field in college, with angle-erasing top-end speed.
Milroe ran for 806 yards in 2023, and 879 yards in 2024. He got there in different ways. In OC Tommy Rees’ system on Nick Saban’s last team in 2023, Milroe scrambled 55 times for 521 yards. In 2024, Milroe scrambled only 24 times for 200 yards.
On passing concepts, DeBoer wanted Milroe to stay in the pocket and win as a thrower — Milroe’s struggles down the stretch were likely at least in part attributable to the push-and-pull that came out of his non-ideal fit for DeBoer’s pocket-passing scheme.
Where DeBoer made use of Milroe’s legs were on designed runs, notably a far bigger part of Alabama’s playbook in 2024. Milroe went from 285 yards off designed runs in 2023 to 679 in 2024.
Where I think it’s fair to ding Milroe for hand size is ball security as a run-heavy quarterback. Over 27 career starts, Milroe fumbled 24 times. He needs to take extra measures to cut down on the fumbles in the NFL.
And while Milroe is a tremendous deep thrower, he continues to be extremely inconsistent short and intermediate on the whole — badly enough in a few games last year that some believed he should have been benched.
Over the last two years, Milroe accumulated an utterly ridiculous 36/4 TD/INT rate on 20+ yard throws, with 42 big-time throws against only one turnover-worthy play on 123 attempts! Meanwhile, he had a dreadful 13/13 TD/INT rate on throws within 19 yards of the line of scrimmage!
At present, Milroe is a one-speed thrower. Between the hashes, Milroe struggles with rhyming his drop to receiver breaks on timing concepts, and he’s often late because he wants to see the receiver open. Milroe’s feet can get sloppy. His accuracy wildly wavers when he doesn’t reset them into a viable throwing platform before beginning his motion,
Milroe has struggled in the red zone, particularly in 2024. With the field condensing, Milroe’s deep ball and the way it affects defensive spacing goes away, and Milroe’s margin for error evaporates. Milroe can be confused by unexpected post-snap coverage looks, delaying his progressions. You can short-circuit Milroe by taking the fight to him – his 90.2 PFF grade in clean pockets last year plummeted to 55.1 under duress.
There are elements of the Milroe evaluation that evoke Anthony Richardson. Milroe is smaller physically, but he’s the more experienced (663 career attempts to Richardson’s 393), accurate (64.3% to 54.7%) and accomplished (45/20 career TD/INT rate to 24/15) passer. Milroe averaged 55.8 rushing YPG this season against Richardson’s 54.5 his last year at Florida.
Milroe’s dreams of a magical process — like Richardson enjoyed — crashed and burned in Mobile. He can re-ignite scouts’ imaginations with an enormous showing at the NFL Combine. Milroe is a high-variance, boom-or-bust prospect who needs at least one year of learning before he sees an NFL field.
