Michigan State has spent the offseason hearing plenty of reasons to doubt Alessio Milivojevic, but one number cuts against the noise: he was the second-best quarterback in the Big Ten under pressure, according to Pro Football Focus.
That matters because pressure was the story around him and around Michigan State’s offense. The Spartans’ offensive line was not good last year, and Milivojevic still found a way to produce when things broke down. In PFF’s ranking of every Big Ten projected starting quarterback by grade under pressure in 2025, he finished behind only Washington’s Demond Williams and ahead of a long list of names that have drawn far more preseason hype, including Julian Sayin, Nico Iamaleava, Josh Hoover, Dante Moore, Jayden Maiava, and Bryce Underwood.
For a quarterback who has been slotted anywhere from 10th to 17th in the conference rankings this offseason, that’s a pretty loud rebuttal.
Milivojevic’s rise has come in the middle of a messy stretch for him personally. The sophomore is now Michigan State’s QB1 after a long offseason that included the firing of the head coach who recruited him and elevated him to the starting job in November of 2025.
He had to get used to a completely new staff, build fresh relationships, and deal with a wave of skepticism from outside the program. Still, his first real run as a starter showed why the Spartans are willing to believe.
As a redshirt freshman, after backing up Aidan Chiles for 1.5 years, Milivojevic completed 64.2% of his passes for 1,267 yards, 10 touchdowns, and just three interceptions over basically four games. His first interception of the season came on his first pass of 2025 back in September, which means he was nearly spotless after that rough opener, when he posted a laughable -200 QB rating by going 0-for-1 for zero yards and an interception.
The late-season stretch is what really stands out. Michigan State has had a hard time since the Payton Thorne year in 2021 finding a quarterback who can put together consecutive strong outings, but Milivojevic finally did it.
He came on late in the Michigan game and hit 5 of 6 passes for 60 yards and a touchdown. At Minnesota, he went 20-for-28 for 311 yards and a touchdown through the air and did enough to put the Spartans in position to win before they fell in overtime.
Against Penn State, he completed 17 of 27 passes for 128 yards while taking five sacks in a game where Michigan State was clearly outmatched. Then at Iowa, he kept fighting, going 25-for-42 for 255 yards and two touchdowns as the Spartans again came up short. He closed that five-game stretch with a win over Maryland, finishing 27-for-39 for 292 yards and four touchdowns.
That run gave Michigan State something it has been chasing for years: a quarterback who could stack games, not just flashes. If the team had found a way to close out more of those games, Milivojevic would have won three of his final four starts.
For now, the PFF pressure numbers offer a strong reason to think the Spartans may have more here than the preseason rankings suggest. And after the offseason Milivojevic has had, that kind of evidence is exactly the sort of thing Michigan State fans can cling to.
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