BREAKING Alabama QB Jalen Milroe to return for senior season
- Thread starter MikeInBama
- Start date
No question.
I think LJ is a better runner in the open field...especially eluding going east to west.
JM jokes he doesn't work on his running, but he could improve in that area.
I noticed after the fact that the poster had Bryce twice. Your list is correct IMO
Better make a bigger mountain, you guys are forgetting Namath and Stabler.
We are seeing guys like JM succeed in the NFL but the key is getting faster at reading defenses and that takes live reps. If he can make continual progress through next season I expect he will get his shot in the league. I would not have thought that earlier in the season, but when he cut back on the interceptions and started knowing when to use his legs it changed everything.
Jalen Hurts was always a good passer. But he tended to limit himself. He wanted to run too much when he should have passed. And he favored one side of the field. Dan Enos helped him with all that.
NFL Scouting Evaluation -- dated Nov. 25, 2023.
The Yanish Report
Solid, well-built, athletic body. Rhythmical footwork. Explosive speed and acceleration. RAW. Patient, gifted runner. Dangerous and deceptive on his feet. QB draws, designed runs, and run-pass option (RPO) are superior to most NFL QBs right now. QB first. Day-one at the next level, he will automatically be one of the most dominant and dynamic athletes at the position. The ball needs to come out quicker. Throwing motion needs to be honed to benefit accuracy. Does not see the field well at times. Needs to live to fight another down. Takes too many hits and sacks. Fiery, imposing team leader. Methodical.
firstroundmock.com
The Yanish Report
Solid, well-built, athletic body. Rhythmical footwork. Explosive speed and acceleration. RAW. Patient, gifted runner. Dangerous and deceptive on his feet. QB draws, designed runs, and run-pass option (RPO) are superior to most NFL QBs right now. QB first. Day-one at the next level, he will automatically be one of the most dominant and dynamic athletes at the position. The ball needs to come out quicker. Throwing motion needs to be honed to benefit accuracy. Does not see the field well at times. Needs to live to fight another down. Takes too many hits and sacks. Fiery, imposing team leader. Methodical.
The Future: Jalen Milroe, QB, Alabama
Watch five games of Alabama QB Jalen Milroe embedded into this article.
firstroundmock.com
This is recency bias. Folks had the exact same concerns about JH in 2018-2019 as they have about JM today.
2019 NFL Draft (dated Jan 18, 2018) -- Link
2020 NFL Draft (dated Oct 28, 2019) -- Link
2022 Article -- Former NFL Scout on Jalen Hurts: 'Maybe We Can Teach You the Accuracy'
I said he was a good passer. Not a great passer. I was going on my eye test from watching him. Just seemed like he was afraid to throw, and instead took off running. And defenses caught on. Georgia did. And Tua had to replace him. But when he did throw, he did a good job. Not as accurate as Mac or Bryce, but a decent job. He got better after Enos worked with him.
some of the same concerns, yes, but it's a magnitude thing. I won't go find it, but at the start of this season, I said that Hurts as a true freshman taking his first snaps, had better accuracy and mechanics than Milroe (who was starting his third season). Even with some improvement from Milroe this season, I think that's still the case. At the end of his 3rd season, Hurts was several orders of magnitude more accurate and more mechanically sound than Milroe now, even if Hurts didn't have prototypical NFL accuracy. Can Milroe continue to improve and close some of the gap to where Hurts was when he went to the NFL? probably/possibly/maybe close some, but it's a long way to go.
Even the NFL eval on him says as much. He'd be the best running QB in the NFL day one, but pretty much all the passing related stuff in that eval points to him needing to continue to improve. I really hope he can, as he appears to be willing to put in the work and it'd be a great story.
Here's the risk and it's the biggest skill gap Milroe has (even more than the mechanics and accuracy). In Hurts second season as a starter, he wasn't really making as much progress as needed on reading the field and getting the ball where it needed to go. We had a host of very talented WRs, TEs and RBs who were also putting in the work, executing plays correctly, and were getting open often or should have gotten the ball on a read, but were not getting the ball b/c Hurts would run instead of passing to them or handing off. It almost became a revolt. Watch some of our skill guys now, and some of that same body language is starting to show. Guys are OPEN, A LOT, and the ball isn't coming out, and it's not that Milroe doesn't have time, he's just not seeing it for whatever reason.
The Milroe and Hurts comparisons are over done IMO. They are different QBs in a number of ways. Some of their struggles are similar but many of their strengths are actually pretty different.
For example Milroe is a much better deep ball thrower than Hurts ever was at Alabama.
For example Milroe is a much better deep ball thrower than Hurts ever was at Alabama.
The potential for a receiver revolt will definitely grow if there’s only one or two favorites throughout the year, especially with the way the transfers are handled now.
You're making it out to sound worse than what it is. Yeah, there's the occasional misread. But he has improved on that a lot. And will continue to improve, with the help of Rees. Rees is a good quarterback coach. If it were as bad as you make it out to be, he wouldn't be in the Heisman talk. And Pro scouts wouldn't be praising him. I think he's done a phenomenal job the last few games.
Milroe has mostly gone to Burton and Bond, also with throws to Prentice, Law, Benson, and Hale. Not to mention the TEs and RBs. He spreads it around ok. So it's not that. There is no revolt. Nor will there be. And we knew early on, CNS wanted to run the ball more. Or at least with more success. And the play calling is likely up to Rees. But you're saying if WR Mr X doesn't get enough touches, he'll revolt and hit the portal. And it will be Milroe's fault. I don't buy that at all.
No clue. I think JM has done well. He's had work to do in a few things, but he's much improved. As far as I see it, his biggest issue has been indecision.
I agree with a lot of what you said. I would mention that this is JM's first season as a starting QB. If you compare JM's stats with JH's stats at Bama (not OK), JM is arguably more accurate (fewer INTs, higher completion percentage, etc.). Anyhow, JM is not a polished, NFL-ready QB and it's absolutory valid to objectively evaluate JM based on his current strengths and weaknesses.
My larger point is that some folks (others, not you) are attempting to sound "objective" in order to support their underlying implication that JM is not talented enough to start at QB for Alabama. They don't say that directly, but it's clear that's their message. For instant, they equate JM's talent profile/ceiling to Blake Sims. That's not an objective observation. Blake Sims, who was recruited as a half-back, was never projected to play QB in the NFL, while JM has been projected to eventually play QB in the NFL since high-school. See 257 Recruiting Profile ("Possesses long-term NFL Draft potential, possibly to the top half of the draft.").
As another example, the below posters suggest that JM is too old to correct his "long throwing motion." JM does not have a "long throwing motion." It's pretty evident from the following video. BY vs JM Throwing Motion. JM's mechanical issues stem from relying on arm strength, rather than proper mechanics (e.g., body rotation), to generate velocity. See, e.g., Article ("[JM] relie on elite arm strength when throwing. ... His feet [a]re nearly next to each other when passing, thus creating spotty results.").
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Not really. It happens very often. Not a majority, but very often. Now sometimes Milroe will make another pass downfield, or run for a decent gain, but watching the all-22 and there are guys in the mid-range a lot and he just doesn't pull the trigger for some reason.
This point is interesting to discuss. I've watched the side-by-side a couple of times and see the point that at least in that video, it's not really the length of the motion, but the motion is still not great. BY's (and also TM's) release point is pretty high at the arc of the arm, where JMs does appear to be later, although it's hard to see. To your point, in HS his arm was always strong enough to make the throws, but as the game gets faster, the mechanics become more important. We've also seen where the NFL scouts say the ball needs to come out faster, so whether that's the length of the motion or some other factor, he needs to work on it. IMHO, I think the primary driver in the ball not coming out fast enough is that he doesn't start to pull the trigger quick enough. There was a lot of early season video of JM and TS on the field throwing the same routes to different sides at the same time, and in almost all of them, JM started to throw later - it was almost like he had to see the WR make the break, instead of throwing on timing, so JMs passes were always later arriving to the WR than TS. I think this is also a factor of the point above, where JM doesn't get the ball out to open guys. By the time he's thinking throw, sometimes the window is closing
Last point for now, is that AlexanderFan isn't wrong about it being hard to correct mechanics. By the time they are in college, these guys will have hundreds of thousands or even millions of reps doing it wrong, and that is a lot of muscle memory to break to correct their mechanics. it's not impossible, but it is hard. I've had late middle school (so not as far along as JM) guys take almost a full year, doing 1500-2000 reps a week outside of practices (throwing and catching in lacrosse isn't going to wear out an arm like football or baseball) still revert back to some bad mechanics once we go live reps because the muscle memory is so ingrained. It seems the QB mechanics in FB have an even more narrow path to follow, so I can see that being a pretty difficult process to break old habits and instill new ones.
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