During a Super Bowl week interview with PFT Live, Jalen Milroe made it clear that he has no desire to play anything but quarterback. As he said, “You never ask a zebra to be a dog.”
The team that drafted Milroe agrees with his assessment. After Milroe joined the Seahawks via round three, coach Mike McDonald made it clear that Milroe is a quarterback first and a quarterback only.
The question arose from the fact that new offensive coordinator Klink Kubiak comes from a year in New Orleans, where Taysom Hill has contributed in various capacities in recent years.
“The way they used him was more in a tight end-fullback hybrid role, sometimes taking snaps,” Macdonald told reporters. “Jalen is a quarterback through and through. He’s going to be trained to play quarterback for us. When he’s in there, he’s going to be playing quarterback. But the athleticism is going to come to life when he’s on the field. That’s how he’s going to help us.”
Macdonald sees Milroe possessing the one trait that separates the great quarterbacks from the good — the ability to run both the play that’s called and the play that wasn’t called, when the first play fails.
“Quarterbacks that extend the play are incredibly difficult to defend,” Macdonald said. “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.”
That’s what happens when a guy runs the 40-yard dash in 4.37 seconds. And when he’s measured during games at running faster than 21 miles per hour.
The challenge will be to work to develop Milroe as a passer, and to get him to not rely on his legs as a crutch. It will work in the short term. Over the long haul, he needs to supplement his high-end running skills with high-end passing skills.
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