When the Seattle Seahawks traded Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders on March 7, they received the Raiders’ third-round pick, which amounted to the 92nd overall selection. And with that pick, Seattle took Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe.
This after the Seahawks signed veteran Sam Darnold to a three-year, $100.5 million contract with $55 million guaranteed a few days after the Smith trade. Darnold’s deal really maxes out in a bargain sense after the 2026 season, which is when the salary cap hit ($44.9 million) far exceeds the dead cap cost ($19.2 million). If the Seattle-Darnold marriage doesn’t quite work, that’s when the Seahawks can punt if necessary — through the scheme fit for Darnold in new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak’s system seems ideal.
Obviously, the Darnold deal didn’t prevent general manager John Schneider and head coach Mike Macdonald from taking a quarterback pretty high in this draft, and Kubiak obviously had to sign off on it. Both Schneider and Macdonald were pretty excited about the prospects of the prospect.
“I think you feel the urgency, the passion for his vision he wants for his career, where he wants to go,” Macdonald said of Milroe. “He’s incredibly determined. This guy is a tireless worker, highly respected by his teammates, highly intelligent. He’s just really determined to become a great player and a great quarterback. We all have a lot to learn and grow, in my career, his career, as a football team. We all see that. Just felt like it was a great opportunity to add him to the mix and be able to do it together.”
There is development in Milroe’s future — the Seahawks are aware of it — but that’s not an issue in the short term.
“It’s going to take a minute,” Schneider said. “Everybody is at different levels. He’s in a unique category with this group of quarterbacks because he’s like the explosive athlete, the speed. He just takes off and he’s gone. This is a natural runner with the ball. Mike was talking about [how] it puts so much pressure on defenses.”
So, that’s the thing the Seahawks are thinking about using right away, and you can see why.
“There’s always going to be an urgency in how we’re developing our players, how we’re training them,” MacDonald said. “Jalen is going to be right there with everybody else. Sam is going to take by far and away over 90% of our snaps this year. However, Jalen deserves and earns the right to go out there, then we’ll do that. If it’s going to help the team, and [it’s the best way] for us to move the ball, give these defensive coordinators some headaches, which I’m really happy it’s not going to be us, that’s awesome. I don’t want to put a timetable on it. It’s not an immediate need for him to go out there and be taking a bunch of snaps for us initially.”
So maybe in the short term, Milroe shows the rushing chops that allowed him to gain 879 yards, score 20 touchdowns, force 32 missed tackles, collect 12 runs of 15 or more yards, and convert 54 first downs on 150 carries last season.
Milroe as a runner? He’s NFL-conversant right now. The million-dollar question is, how can the Seahawks turn Milroe into the pro-ready passer he needs to be, and really isn’t at this point?
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and NFL+).
(Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images)
At his inaugural Seahawks press conference on Friday, Milroe was more than eager to dispel the motion that he’s just a run-around guy with little on the ball as a pure passer.
“My second passing touchdown against Western Kentucky, I went through a full progression and threw a passing touchdown, so I’ve done it before,” he said. “There’s nothing I can’t do on a football field. Are there things I can improve on? Absolutely. But, there’s nothing I can’t do on the football field. I’ve thrown every type of touchdown, stepped up in the pocket, thrown on the run, going through my progressions, I’ve thrown a check-down, I’ve used my legs. When you’re looking at it, whatever you want on the field, I can do it.
“I say that humbly, it’s not arrogant. It’s more just knowing what I bring to the table and knowing I bring a different dynamic when it comes to being on the football field that I know I’m going to utilize in the NFL.”
In Milroe’s favor, the Western Kentucky touchdown is not the only one where you see him working through the playbook in his head, displacing defenders with implied intent, and capitalizing on the chaos.
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There are some quarterbacks whose statistical splits with pressure and with no pressure are worrisome, because if you can’t throw under pressure in the NFL, you can’t throw. Muddied pockets are way of life in today’s NFL, and if you can’t navigate that, you’ve got some serious issues.
Last season, when he had a clean pocket, Milroe completed 167 of 238 passes for 2,270 yards, 12 touchdowns, nine interceptions, and a passer rating of 101.3. When disrupted, he completed 38 of 86 passes for 564 yards, four touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 72.0.
So, Milroe doesn’t completely collapse when he’s under pressure, and though there are some times he’ll try to play hero ball with his legs to his detriment when that happens, the offense won’t disappear. At his best, Milroe isn’t afraid to stand in the pocket and deliver the ball even though he’s going to get hit, and there are elements of pocket movement that can be developed.
That’s two “quarterbacky” things that Milroe has on point. Here’s what may need more work.
(BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
Nick Saban, who brought Milroe to Alabama after Texas (Milroe’s first choice) seemed to cool on him following a commitment, had a very good summary of Milroe’s duality after the pick was made.
“I tell you, he’s going to give the Seahawks an element of offense that nobody else in this draft can give anybody,” Saban said. “Because this guy’s fast, he’s explosive, and look, he can throw the ball. He’s got a strong arm, he’s a great deep ball thrower. He just needs a little refinement and consistency in the passing game, and he could be an outstanding player.
“He’s a great deep ball thrower. Here’s a little play action pass, resets his feet, launches his ball right on target. Big play. A lot of big plays. The thing that I always preach to him about is, Jalen, you make enough big plays. How about let’s eliminate some of the bad plays, the sacks, the fumbles, the interceptions? Because those are all drive-stopping plays, and you make enough good plays.
“Here he drops back to pass, and then takes off running. This breaks down the defense and defines what a defense can do playing against this guy, because you can’t play a lot of man-to-man. You can’t turn your back to him.
“Now, that’s the thing I’m talking about right there. He threw that ball into coverage. There were three guys there, so negative play.”
Milroe is highly unusual in that you don’t often see a quarterback who is by far at his most productive and efficient with the deep ball. Those are usually the highest-risk, lowest-reward plays, but not in Milroe’s case. Last season, he completed 22 of 56 passes of 20 or more air yards for 892 yards, 10 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 104.2.
On throws of 10-19 air yards: 41 of 69 for 734 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 88.7.
On throws of 0-9 air yards: 87 of 115 for 836 yards, four touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 88.9.
On throws behind the line of scrimmage: 55 of 63 for 372 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 89.9.
Milroe’s baffling blunders on throws that most quarterbacks would characterize as “easy” have their roots in inconsistent mechanics and what I perceive to be misreads and miscalculations as to the timing and velocity of the throw. It’s not an unfixable issue — I distinctly remember Justin Herbert wildly missing easy screens and other short passes when he was at Oregon — but it is something the Seahawks will have to help him with.
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Last season, Kubiak was the New Orleans Saints‘ offensive coordinator, and when that worked early in the 2024 campaign, it really worked. The Saints came out of the gate with the NFL’s most explosive offense before injuries and iffy quarterback play scuttled everything, and the components Kubiak had in place are both helpful specifically to Sam Darnold and to Jalen Milroe in different ways.
Based on his past, Kubiak would like to present a lot of ideas we’re familiar with from the Sean McVay/Kyle Shanahan tree: Under center dropbacks, and heavy use of play-action, pre-snap motion, and condensed formations. Kubiak was Shanahan’s passing game coordinator with the 49ers in 2023, and as a lot of these concepts came from Kyle’s father Mike and Klint’s father Gary, I wouldn’t expect this to change very much.
Condensed formations — with all potential targets inside the numbers — can be a positive thing for quarterbacks as long as they focus on the advantages regarding getting guys out from those smaller sets into open space. If you focus on the traffic over the middle, it can be difficult. Alabama used condensed formations on just 11% of their snaps last season, and Milroe completed 10 of 26 passes for four touchdowns, no interceptions, four explosive plays, and one sack. There were extra hitches and miscommunications some of the time, but you can see the start of something good there.
The Saints had their quarterbacks under center on 148 dropbacks, the fifth-highest rate in the league. And Milroe had something interesting to say about that in his opening Seahawks presser.
“Throughout my whole time playing football, I’ve gone under center,” he said. “Of course, rep-wise in games, it’s limited as it is to playing in the NFL, and you see max reps that any guy got under center throughout my timeframe. It’s not going to be too much of a crutch going into the league, so I’m prepared for it.”
Well, in 2023 and 2024, his two seasons as Alabama’s starter, Milroe took a grand total of five dropbacks under center, so that might be a bit of an adjustment.
Regarding pre-snap motion, Milroe completed 101 of 148 passes for 1,219 yards, nine touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 102.3, so that alignment with Kubiak (whose Saints used pre-snap motion 56% of the time in 2024) should be favorable.
Gary Kubiak was one of the NFL’s most prominent bootleg evangelists — he wanted his quarterbacks rolling out of the pocket to take advantage of mobility, to cut the field and the reads in half, and to set defenses on edge. Klint Kubiak has taken his father’s lead in that regard. The 2024 Saints called designed rollouts on 10% of their snaps, the third-highest rate in the NFL. I would love to see Milroe get the benefit of that more than he did last season. He was more of a stationary passer in that sense — most of Milroe’s rollouts were responses to pressure as opposed to design.
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Before he became the Seahawks’ head coach in 2024, Macdonald spent several years in the Baltimore Ravens‘ organization as a prominent defensive mind, and Milroe is a mobile quarterback, so of course Macdonald was asked if he saw Milroe as another Lamar Jackson.
“Yeah, is the short answer. Of course. I have so much respect for that organization. Lamar obviously is a tremendous player. But you have to respect their career trajectories as independent. We respect that. We have that vision of it. When you add people to your organization, you want to have a vision for these people. Sometimes it’s bigger than they have for themselves. Our job is to make it come to life over time when you work together on it. That’s how we see Jalen. That’s how we see all these guys. Anybody that’s on our team, it’s our job as coaches to have that vision for them. That’s what makes it so fun. When you see guys kind of do things that they didn’t necessarily think they had the possibility of doing, now the team is coming together, now we’re rocking and rolling. Man, that’s the stuff right there. That’s what you do it for.”
Macdonald also talked quite passionately about what mobile quarterbacks can do to a defense, and how he sees the mobile quarterback he just got becoming a real NFL factor.
“Quarterbacks that extend the play are incredibly difficult to defend. The worst feeling in the world is you play the first play of the play perfectly on defense, you defend it. ‘All right, sweet. We did it.’ Then the guy still has the ball. You’ve got to defend the next play, sometimes a third play. He can kill you in the first play, the second play, the third play. It’s not a fun existence to live consistently. He has that ability.”
Milroe tended to see the fit as more like a Jalen Hurts thing, which makes a bit more sense to me.
“It’s more of an intimate dialogue,” Milroe said of the conversations he’s had with Hurts, who preceded him at Alabama. “But that’s my guy. He’s someone that’s a supporter of mine.
“There’s something unique about the Jalens, for sure.”
There is, but in the ways Milroe could tie Seattle’s run and pass games together with him as the epicenter over time… well, maybe that’s what the Seahawks are hoping for in the post-Sam Darnold era, whenever the clock starts on that.
