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Jalen Milroe will be a Combine superstar for Alabama. But is he an NFL-ready QB?
By David Wasson
Published:
The annual NFL Scouting Combine is motoring along at full steam in Indianapolis right now, with 329 of the best draft-eligible players descending on Lucas Oil Stadium to be poked, prodded, observed and deconstructed in an attempt to divine their professional futures.
Listen, I continue to be mystified how anyone running a straight-line 40-yard dash in track shoes is any more of a defining factor as to how you’ll play in the NFL than how many horseradish-heavy shrimp cocktails you can endure at St. Elmo’s Steakhouse.
Nevertheless, there they are – kickers and defensive backs and offensive linemen and linebackers all running the 40 and trying not to stumble in the 3-cone drill and bench-pressing 225 pounds for as many repetitions as they can handle.
Quarterbacks will be there too, of course. Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward are the marquee names of this year’s draft class – though Sanders’ participation at the combine will be limited to interviewing with prospective teams blessed with early first-round picks.
Alabama’s Jalen Milroe will be in Indianapolis, too, and appears to be all systems go to throw and lift and vertical jump and shuttle in front of scouts and breathless fans watching on NFL Network.
Therein lies the central problem with the NFL Scouting Combine – it has precisely nothing to do with defining how football players actually go about playing football.
There is little doubt that Milroe will wow the assembled with his athleticism. At 6-2 and 225 pounds, Milroe could well be the most physically gifted player at his position in the country. And his strengths at his position are obvious – a game-changing electrical charge of a player when running the football and capable of connecting on deep balls.
Those are the strengths, and usually, when a quarterback makes it to this point in his career and can boast those particular traits, said player can pretty much bank on being a bona fide first-round selection.
The problem with Milroe, which observers from Tuscaloosa to Knoxville to Norman can attest, is this: it is the basics of playing quarterback that Milroe has struggled with ever since bursting on the scene as a Tide junior in 2023. That season, former coach Nick Saban’s last with Alabama, saw Milroe maddeningly game-changing and maddeningly middling sometimes all within the same game.
Still, there was Milroe in the College Football Playoff semifinals, leading the Crimson Tide to within a whisker of knocking off the eventual national champion Michigan in overtime. And heading into 2024, even with a new coach in Kalen DeBoer taking over after Saban retired, Milroe was primed to take a major step forward.
Instead, 2024 felt like the rest of the SEC’s defenses had the answer key to just about everything Milroe could ask of them. He threw 7 fewer touchdowns (16 in 2024 to 23 the season prior) and uncorked 5 more interceptions (11 to 6). Interestingly, Milroe turned in an even better running performance as a senior, rushing 168 times for 726 yards and 20 touchdowns (compared to 161 carries for 531 yards and 11 scores as a junior).
But the eye test on Milroe’s 2024 season told a story of an uber-talented athlete who struggled at times to actually play quarterback. And even in the current NFL age of Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen thriving as multi-threat QBs, NFL scouts, GMs and coaches are typically looking for all the pieces of the quarterback puzzle that Milroe seemingly lacks.
“He makes hard things look really easy,” FOX TV analyst Joel Klatt said on his podcast. “Like really easy, too easy. Like ‘Hold on a second. You’re not supposed to be able to do that.’ … He’s immediately the most dangerous player on the field as soon he steps foot on the field. … Milroe is a guy that’s going to be polarizing in this setting because people are going to get mad if you call him ‘Just a running quarterback.’ And then if you say ‘He’s got to work on throwing the football,’ people get all upset.”
Essentially, any NFL team picking Milroe – whether it is in the first round or down more toward the middle of the second round – will have to reconcile that they will have to teach him how to play quarterback. Essentials like footwork, rhythm in the pocket and accuracy in standard dropbacks have to be considered works in progress for Milroe… which is all stuff that game tape shows more than combine drills.
So be ready for Jalen Milroe to wow camera-ready pundits and stopwatch-holders in Indianapolis this weekend. In so many ways, he was purpose-built for the NFL Scouting Combine. But just like the combine missed on Tom Brady when he was drafted with the 199th overall draft pick in the sixth round by the Patriots back in 2000, judging a quarterback simply by his combine stock is an oddly common mistake.
An APSE national award-winning writer and page designer, 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.
