Wasson: Jalen Milroe flashes his Heisman bona fides in epic win over Georgia
By David Wasson
Published:
Ever have that feeling that you can’t miss?
That mystical moment when the world bends to your will, time slowing down and every decision you make is the perfect one?
Jalen Milroe knows that feeling – at least he did Saturday night against the No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs.
Until he didn’t.
For the first 30 minutes of the No. 4-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide’s game against the Bulldogs, Milroe was legitimately the perfect quarterback. He completed 19 of his 23 passes for 198 yards and a touchdown. He toted the ball 9 times for 106 yards and 2 more scores. And he made Georgia’s defense look positively silly.
“If you could just stop him and not worry about him throwing, I think you could do it,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said after it was all said and done. “But when he’s throwing it well and they’re catching it more, really hard to stop.”
But just like that, it all disappeared.
Maybe Milroe ate a suspect Denny Dog at halftime. Maybe some Gatorade went down the wrong pipe. Maybe the Bulldogs spent the entire intermission upending their entire defensive philosophy to counter his brilliance.
Whatever it was, Milroe went from the second coming of Lamar Jackson to the second coming of Spencer Pennington.
Going from being in that fabled zone to seemingly not being able to use your fine motor skills like that can, and will, frustrate elite athletes until the end of time. That’s how the zone works. You don’t know when it’s coming, and you try anything to make it last – whether it lasts a moment or 60 entire minutes of intercollegiate tackle football.
The pedestrian version of Milroe in the second half wasn’t the full cause of Alabama’s near-collapse. Instead, credit Georgia quarterback Carson Beck – who caught fire after seeing ghosts while making one questionable decision after another in the opening stanza.
All Milroe and the Tide could do was hang on for dear life as Beck and the Dawgs clawed back. After all, it wasn’t like Georgia – with a 42-game regular season winning streak and 2 national title rings in the last 4 years – could have possibly been expected to melt like an ice cream cone on a hot summer’s day.
Whatever the alchemy that kept said ice cream cone from dripping all over Bryant-Denny Stadium, Georgia had it … and Alabama didn’t. Uncle Mo (he shortened it from Momentum, because it was hard to say as a kid at school) had taken up camp on the Georgia sideline and wasn’t about to budge an inch.
And all Milroe could do was watch from the home sideline as that 30-7 halftime lead dissolved clean away to a 34-33 deficit late in the 4th quarter.
Just when you thought Milroe’s Heisman hopes were dashed – not to mention a removal of the Nick Saban-sized monkey that Smart carries around with him – the guy who had Superman tendencies early before he turned into Clark Kent made the same switcheroo in the most sudden fashion imaginable.
1 play. 75 yards. 4+2 = 6.
“Ryan (Williams) to the field, that’s a 1-on-1 advantage on our end,” Milroe told reporters. “It’s all about having eye discipline, reading the play properly and just giving our guy a chance.”
That’s the thing about Milroe, a player who was almost cast aside permanently last season before figuring it all out and leading a decidedly LANK-y team to within a play of yet another College Football Championship game. He has shown a nearly super-natural ability to summon whatever it takes – that ever-elusive zone that was there until it wasn’t Saturday night – to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Those jaws belonged to a chubby English bulldog named UGa on Saturday night, and Milroe went right up and snatched victory right away from Georgia.
“I have a great coaching staff that believes in me,” Milroe said. “I have teammates that believe in me. That’s all that matters. I try to do my best, every play call that’s asked of me, to maximize that play call as much as possible, and be the best version of myself every day I have the opportunity to snap a ball at the University of Alabama.”
The Heisman Trophy might end up going to the equally gifted two-way star Travis Hunter from Colorado, but no one who saw Milroe against the Bulldogs would keep him off their ballot.
Not after 41-34. Not after one of the most electrifying games you’ll ever see.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
