QB Corner: A final look at Jalen Milroe's Weighted On-Target Percentage profile
One of the more questionable declarees, let's take a look at Milroe's charting profile
There has not been a more hotly contested 2025 NFL Draft declared than Alabama’s Jalen Milroe.
I’ve written up ball placement and accuracy profiles on both Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Miami’s Cam Ward to this point, so why not hit on Milroe’s next?
While his 2024 season started with ablaze, lighting up the Georgia defense for a total of 480 yards and four touchdowns, that flame quickly went out down the stretch. This cultivated itself in some rough tape against the likes of South Carolina, Tennessee, and even the final game of the season against Michigan.
The Redshirt Junior decided to forgo his final year of eligibility anyway and declare for the draft. Teams will love his physical gifts. He is 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds, carries the football with the vision and patience of a running back, and even possesses a ton of arm strength.
However, he lacks the arm talent to manipulate windows by throwing from different platforms and arm angles, and he is routinely late getting his eyes where they need to be after dissecting the difference between what he is shown pre-snap and post-snap.
Another issue? Well, his accuracy and ball placement.
Looking closely at the charting profile of Jalen Milroe
Let’s put it bluntly. Milroe is not up to par as an accurate passer at the college level. Starting with his ability to work the short game on time, a crucial need at the quarterback position to do the small boring stuff well, Milroe’s on-target percentage is the worst in the class of throws under 10 yards.
And it’s by a substantial margin.
This season, Milroe was on-target on just 78 percent of his throws under 10 yards in depth. The next lowest was Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke, who still sat a good six percent higher at that level of the field. This is alarming. Only Anthony Richardson was worse off in the short game over the last three years than Milroe.
Throwing at the intermediate and along the boundary yielded similar results for Milroe in 2024. He was on-target on just 51 percent of his passes there, second-worst to only Texas’ Quinn Ewers. The average over the last three years is 66 percent.
While Milroe’s overall profile is spotty at best, this is where Milroe’s profile gets a bit more interesting.
He’s throwing over the middle at the intermediate level of the field at a 72 percent clip. This is above average and proves some ability for Milroe to rip throws up the seam and layer the football over defenders with a bit of touch.
This is a higher clip than the likes of C.J. Stroud coming out of Ohio State, Caleb Williams, and Michael Penix Jr. a year ago, and is comparable to Drake Maye from last year and Sanders this year.
His ability to hang around (slightly above) 50 percent on his throws of 25 yards or more does add an element of creating explosive plays to his resume. We know that Milroe has angle-breaking, lighting-in-a-bottle ability with his legs, but his deep ball at least finds the mark at a 51 percent clip as well.
While Milroe’s deep ball was second in this class of guys charted thus far (all but the Day 3 guys) behind only Sanders, it still sits below the average of all quarterbacks charted over the last three years and a good six percent under the average of first rounders (this part may not matter as the discussion of Milroe as a first rounder may have passed).
If Milroe can hang around average as a deep ball thrower, find holes over the middle of the field, and create with his legs, can an offense build on that early on? How much time will it take for the rest to fall into place (if ever) for the Alabama quarterback?
While Milroe has to learn how to operate the short game at a much higher level and play on time as a passer (these are no easy tasks and will take monumental coaching and time), his profile at least has elements to hang your hat on.
His final Weighted On-Target Percentage, however, comes out to just 59.46 percent.
What quarterbacks closely align from a WOT% perspective?
The Weighted On-Target Percentage of Milroe is second-worst in the class, with just Ewers trailing him (who could go back to school still, albeit a different one). In this class in particular, however, there is not much that separates him from an on-target perspective from Ward, who is a projected top-two pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
Holding Milroe out of the microscope of this particular class, which is a bad one, and comparing it to the last three tells a better picture. This Weighted On-Target Percentage is lower than Anthony Richardson’s, drafted as an extremely raw passer with alien-like tools.
Will Levis is the only quarterback with a lower Weighted On-Target Percentage to be drafted in the top 50. Of course, the only quarterback we have talked about that has better physical tools than Milroe is Richardson, but we can see how rocky of a road it has been for the former Florida gunslinger over his first two seasons in the NFL.
This makes it difficult to invest a top-32 pick into Milroe.
Let’s wrap it up
Milroe’s profile comes with questions. Whenever a player with as high caliber tools with him comes out teams are going to be tantalized. However, is what Milroe lacks attainable over time?
Would his accuracy in the short game improve with a head coach who can put up bumper rails early in his career with play-action looks and RPOs? If Milroe gets coached up and can get his eyes to the spot quicker, would that help him distribute the ball accurately at a higher level? How much of his short game woes are second-guessing and aiming as a result?
If a team thinks they can get Milroe on schedule or build up a structure around him, then he’s got an extraordinarily high ceiling. However, with guys like Richardson who have not quite figured it out yet, the floor is extraordinarily low as well.
Is that worth a first round pick? A top-50 pick? Perhaps the latter. All bets are off as the guaranteed money attached to a pick outside of the first round is minimal. Besides, some NFL teams have running back grades on Milroe anyway, so can you miss on a quarterback in a 6-foot-1 and 220-pound frame if there is a safe-ish fallback for him elsewhere?
While the pathway from a non-first round pick to a starting NFL quarterback is a rarity, the track of Jalen Hurts is the most realistic best-case scenario for Milroe. It’s unlikely he will get picked in the first round. However, if he lands with a team on Day 2 with the ability to build up a structure around him like Philadelphia did Hurts, then we could be talking ourselves into an explosive playmaker.
It’s an uphill climb for Milroe, but not an impossible one. And if he reaches that peak (that is far away at this point) then one team could land him at a bargained rate.