For Jalen Milroe’s sake, I’m relieved that his final college play wasn’t an unsuccessful quarterback run into the teeth of the Michigan defense.

Blame the play-call, blame the snap, blame the blocking, blame the vision of Milroe, blame whoever you want. It won’t change reality. Milroe’s visible frustration was felt by the Crimson Tide faithful. The guy who turned his season around had visions of national championship confetti and immortality.

Fortunately for Milroe, that vision can still be his reality.

We know that the Alabama quarterback is set to return in 2024. Regardless of what happens with the transfer portal in the spring window, Milroe’s presence alone will make Nick Saban’s program one of the national championship favorites next season. He earned that.

Milroe also earned the right to have a different final chapter after his underwhelming Rose Bowl performance.

To be clear, that evaluation of “underwhelming” was not based just on that last play. In a Playoff game, a starting quarterback who throws for 5 yards per pass attempt with 6 sacks taken is going to end up on the losing side 9 times out of 10. Alabama was in that game because of special teams and some nice halftime adjustments on both sides of the ball. Milroe looked more like the indecisive guy we saw early in the season than the guy who was unstoppable down the stretch.

I know, I know. The offensive line has to get better in pass protection and it would help if Milroe had a clue where those snaps were going. It still baffles me that this was where Milroe fielded that final snap:

I do believe improved center play will allow Milroe to get into his reads quicker. Let’s assume that happens for the simple fact that it just can’t be any worse than it was this year.

But at the same time, Milroe has to become more comfortable as a runner moving out of the pocket instead of stepping up into the pocket. He’s fast enough to turn the corner on edge-rushers. Too many times this season, it felt like Milroe left yards on the table because he wasn’t decisive enough on those rollouts. Early on, he had issues drifting behind the line of scrimmage and taking a loss on plays when he could’ve either thrown it out of bounds or decided to run sooner.

Yards are valuable. Even when it’s a matter of taking a loss. There’s room for improvement.

For all the talk about Tommy Rees over that final play-call, let’s not forget the praise he got for adjusting the offense to Milroe’s skill-set. Another offseason should help in that department. Milroe will get all those first-team reps, which he didn’t last year even through fall camp when Ty Simpson and post-spring transfer Tyler Buchner were in the mix. Shoot, Milroe didn’t even get all the first-team reps in September after the USF “benching.”

Milroe never really found his go-to receiver. That has to change. At moments, it looked like Isaiah Bond and Jermaine Burton could be those guys. Burton had 39 catches all season, and he only had 5 receptions in a game once, when Texas A&M’s depleted secondary couldn’t cover him. Bond was the Iron Bowl hero on “Gravedigger,” but a go-to receiver has more than 1 post-October touchdown, and he hits 80 yards more than once. They combined for 8 catches for 68 yards against Michigan.

Yet they were the only 2 Alabama receivers who averaged at least 2 catches per game or 25 receiving yards this season. The depth was lacking for the second consecutive year.

Sure, it was a different offense from the one that Bryce Young ran. Alabama only averaged 23 pass attempts per game. That’s 10 fewer than in 2022 with Young. Milroe threw 23 passes in the last 2 games, and in the last 7 Power 5 games that the Tide played, he threw between 21-24 passes.

Alabama doesn’t need to turn into the Air Raid; it needs to be able to adjust when it faces a team like Michigan that has dominant interior defensive linemen with disciplined linebackers. The Tide didn’t have an advantage to turn to in the passing game, in part because it didn’t have receivers who could consistently separate, but also because Milroe is still developing as a precision passer.

Milroe didn’t rank in the top 50 in FBS in completions of 10 yards. Hence, the herky-jerky offense at times.

Against Michigan, Milroe was 1-for-3 on passes that traveled between 11-20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and on the season, he only completed 38 passes on 69 attempts in that range. That’s essentially an average of 3-for-5 in that spot, and with 38 of those passes being deemed off-target, it’s not hard to see why that wasn’t a true strength of the offense (via SECStatCat).

Maybe it’s not in the cards for Milroe to develop into a guy who can pick apart a defense that way, but that area has to be more consistent in 2024. It would make that Alabama passing game tougher to defend, and perhaps it could better set up the deep passing game — an established strength of Milroe’s — in a way that we didn’t see in 2023.

What we did see in 2023 was a borderline starter transform into a guy who finished No. 6 in the Heisman Trophy voting. Don’t let Milroe’s struggles against an elite Michigan defense — one that Alabama OL Tyler Booker declared was the best in the nation — overshadow what he became.

Lessons were learned in Pasadena. At least they should’ve been. Milroe has work to do to become the most unstoppable player in the sport.

The Rose Bowl can fuel that reality in 2024.