Jalen Milroe’s path: From benched at South Florida to national semifinal

Now the path of Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe has led all the way from “benched at South Florida” through 10 ensuing wins, through one of the famous plays in college football’s lush history and through a masterpiece of a fourth-quarter drive against Georgia.

If he keeps budding like this, “benched at South Florida” could go all the way from funky to funny.

By Monday night, the night No. 4 Alabama plays No. 1 Michigan, 30 quarterbacks will have started in 20 College Football Playoff semifinals. Six will have done so twice, and two will have done so thrice (Jalen Hurts, Trevor Lawrence). Almost all 30 traveled their seasons as the obvious dude. To find something to rival Milroe’s 2023 for in-season impediments, you would have go to one of the two Joneses on the list, Ohio State’s Cardale. That Jones began the summer of 2014 at third string, spent the regular season at second, threw 17 passes in the first 12 games, inherited first string after J.T. Barrett’s injury and soared clear to the closing-Monday-night confetti.

Alabama’s year began with four quarterbacks and three official uses of the word “or” between them. Milroe started Alabama’s first two games but not the third. He had a debatable night in Game 2 in a thumping 34-24 loss to Texas, then didn’t play in Alabama’s apologetic 17-3 win at South Florida in Tampa. The nation stirred just a little. Commentators commented. Alabama Coach Nick Saban spoke of a general evaluation period and not of any glaring flaws. Milroe handled the middle weekend of September by telling himself, “God makes no mistakes,” he said Thursday here, and also, “I lean on the family acronym ‘Forget About Me, I Love You.’ ”

And so: “That was critical when I went into that week. No matter who was in, I prepared the same way, but at the end of the day, when it was an opportunity for someone else to play, I was just trying to be the best teammate I can be.”

In a country that evaluates its quarterbacks with irrational haste anymore, it’s a relief to learn setbacks still hold value.

“I would describe his path as resilience,” said wide receiver Isaiah Bond, forever bonded with Milroe after catching his 31-yard touchdown pass to win the Iron Bowl. “Could have been a lot of points in the season where a regular person could have showed different sides of themselves. He stayed the same leader, same passion about football. Went out there every single day still loving it. I will say I just show true respect for the way he handled the situation as well.”

From there, Milroe returned to the helm, just as Alabama beat Mississippi, 24-10, and the country barely cared. Milroe went from nine touchdown passes and four interceptions across his first five games to 14 touchdown passes and two interceptions across his past seven. He didn’t climb the charts in passing yards per game — his 226.5 rate 46th — but look who’s shining there at No. 4 in passer rating (at 177.48) behind only Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels of LSU, Heisman finalist Bo Nix of Oregon and Kaidon Salter of Liberty.

He still runs, including to 12 touchdowns, and his running still carries a hint of Kylian Mbappe in that it can seem to make the ground tremble. He has become the seventh Alabama quarterback to pilot a team to the eight playoff berths and the second Houstonian (after Hurts). His team has leaped from 1-1 to a shaky 2-1 to a reconstructed 12-1. And he still strives at perfecting the art of passing.

“Yeah, when you look at me, you don’t think I play quarterback,” he said. “You think I play DB, tight end. You don’t think I play quarterback. Growing up, when I went to camp, they labeled me as a receiver or they saw me as not playing the quarterback position.” That misjudgment appears to have stuck around clear into college, given Milroe’s revelation Thursday that one voice suggesting a position change belonged to former Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien, nowadays of the New England Patriots.

“So who gets the last laugh?” Milroe said.

“I beat all odds by playing quarterback,” he said, “and that is something I try to do as much as possible, be an efficient quarterback, be the best version of myself playing the position. … I think passing is the biggest thing because, as a quarterback, it’s a lot of elements of your game that need to be clicking. Number one is playing quarterback — throwing the football because the ball can get there quicker than my legs can.”

That’s questionable if you ever see him run, of course, but as he reminded: “In the offseason, I do zero running. All I do is throw the ball. That’s something that I train to do.” And at two urgent late-season moments, his passing thrived.

One came in the SEC championship game in Atlanta against No. 1 Georgia, which had just crept within 20-17 with 10:16 left and had just loosed its fans into loud delirium as the band played and even the clarinets looked scary. Alabama started at its own 25-yard line. Up the field it went in nine plays with Milroe’s aplomb and polish and 5-for-5 passing behind a grown-up offensive line. All five passes went to Bond, a feat of know-how stirring even if four of the passes, including one shovel of improvisation, were short.

What preceded them the previous Saturday wasn’t short. It was, of course, Milroe’s legend, his fourth-and-31 pass to Bond with 32 seconds left in the Iron Bowl at Auburn. That pass screamed across the southeastern sky. It looked as if it might develop contrails.

“It looked like money,” Bond said of that ball in flight.

It became a flashing light on the path from benched at South Florida to bright lights here. It got Milroe across the country in more ways than one, to saying of his path, “I think the biggest thing was embracing ‘hard.’ ”

Even old South Florida wound up 7-6 with a 45-0 bowl win against Syracuse. And there went Bond to a new realm of recognition, realized during his visit to a subsequent Alabama basketball game, where he became deluged with football-addled Crimson humanity. “That was like my first, I would say, big-time moment,” Bond said, but he didn’t adore it. “I’m more reserved, a to-myself type of person.”

He had to leave — the premises. “Yes,” he said, “because it was interrupting the game. The game going on, it’s like a hundred people in line trying to take a picture. And I’m on the court. It was kind of distracting to the game. ‘I’m going to get out of here before it gets bigger’ ” — and even further away from benched at South Florida.