Jalen Milroe is already forcing the Seahawks into a tough conversation, and Sunday’s game against the Titans only sharpened it.
Seattle used a third-round pick on Milroe, and that investment comes with real risk because of how little he threw in college. Milroe left Alabama with 663 pass attempts, a number that sits in a pretty unusual pocket for quarterbacks taken in the first three rounds since 2018. Josh Allen, Kyler Murray, Dwayne Haskins, Trey Lance, Justin Fields, Mac Jones, Anthony Richardson and Malik Willis are the only others in that span who had fewer college attempts.
Ty Simpson, taken this year by the Rams, also had fewer attempts, though there’s obviously no NFL book on him yet.
The group is a mixed bag at best. Allen looks like a future Hall of Famer.
Murray and Willis are current starters. Fields and Jones have starting experience as backups.
And Haskins, Lance and Richardson are among the biggest draft busts in recent memory.
That’s the danger zone Seattle stepped into with Milroe.
There’s no simple formula that says a quarterback with more college throws will become a better pro. Dillon Gabriel, drafted shortly after Milroe, more than tripled Milroe’s college passing attempts, and the source material notes that Gabriel is not likely to ever be a star. But the other side of the equation is hard to ignore: quarterbacks who don’t get many reps in college are less likely to succeed in the NFL.
The broader numbers back that up. Other first-round quarterbacks from the same period who finished with fewer than 900 college passes include Zach Wilson, Kyle Trask, Davis Mills, Will Levis and JJ McCarthy.
There have been successes from that range - Sam Darnold, Tua Tagovailoa and C.J. Stroud among them - but even those players have dealt with their own struggles.
The eight quarterbacks named above have combined for a career quarterback rating of 83.9, which would have ranked 31st in the NFL last season, between Geno Smith and Cam Ward. Their combined winning percentage is just over 50%, and if Allen is removed from the equation, that number drops to 40%.
That’s not the profile you want when you’re spending a Day 1 or Day 2 pick on a quarterback.
Milroe’s issues in college - decision-making and accuracy - are the exact kinds of problems that usually need more reps to clean up. He passed on the chance to use a redshirt year and play college football in 2025, so those reps won’t come there. They’ll have to come in the NFL.
Against Tennessee, the rough edges showed up late. Milroe threw a couple of interceptions, and those mistakes stood out because before them he looked better than he had before.
The performance also came with context: he was operating behind an inferior offensive line and with limited help from the skill-position group. Seattle didn’t help him much in the second half, either.
The Seahawks committed offensive penalties on three of his five drives, and on the other two he threw interceptions.
That’s the problem in a nutshell. Milroe is too inconsistent right now, but Seattle already spent the pick, and that matters. John Schneider used a valuable selection on him, while players like Xavier Watts and Upton Stout were taken a few picks later.
If Sam Darnold or Drew Lock goes down, the Seahawks will need a veteran journeyman to step in as the primary backup, because Milroe isn’t ready for that job yet.
Still, this doesn’t mean Seattle should bail on him. The odds are stacked against him, and the source material makes clear the pick was a gamble. But Milroe has talent, and even after the ugly interceptions on Sunday, there’s a belief he’s better this year than he was last year.
So for now, the Seahawks are stuck with the bet they made. Jalen Milroe is part of the roster, and the only real move left is to hope the development keeps moving in the right direction. It may not be likely, but it’s not impossible.
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