Field Gulls
It’s Jalen Milroe time, baby!
For the preseason finale, fans will finally get to see extended play by the newest quarterback on the Seattle Seahawks roster.
As we just covered on Thursday, Mike Macdonald announced that Milroe will play the entire game against the Green Bay Packers, as starters will not see action on Saturday in Lambeau.
Just for clarity, this means that the team’s intention is for Drew Lock to not see the field Saturday. Here’s what the implications of that are for the regular season, as well as how his development has gone thus far.
This announcement cements the obvious reality that the Seattle hier-quarterback-archy goes Sam Darnold – Drew Lock – Jalen Milroe. That holds up. As remarkable as Milroe’s progression has been in four short weeks – and it has been – Drew Lock has had a terrific camp. As of today, he is better suited to come into an NFL game and keep the team competitive should Darnold go down to injury.
However.
Milroe remains one of the three or four most athletically dynamic players on the roster. Macdonald didn’t even bother hiding the fact that he’d be the guy to for a the one-yard brotherly shove on 3rd/4th down, during the second preseason game.
Additionally, Klint Kubiak is calling the offensive plays, bringing deep familiarity with using Taysom Hill in goal line packages.
This is the path to a potentially unicorn scenario for Seattle, one in which Drew Lock is the clear backup quarterback but it’s Jalen Milroe who suits up on game day.
In this scenario, Lock would remain present with the team as the emergency backup quarterback. He would not be able to play with Milroe healthy, but would trade places the following week to take over quarterbacking duties.
Besides the athleticism, the additional evidence for this is simply that the team hasn’t seemed interested in hiding Milroe. They’re working him hard, exposing him to the whole playbook, putting him in real situations. This brings us to the second, far more underdeveloped takeaway from the first Summer of Milroe.
It’s hard to envision many better spots for the explosive yet developmental quarterback to have landed. And this really hasn’t been talked about that much.
Milroe got dropped straight into an elite coaching system, coupled with an immediate removal of expectations on his performance.
Not only does the team have a…proven(?) starter in Sam Darnold, but one of the better backups in the league. Furthermore, there’s been such a bevy of quarterbacks drafted this and last year that he’s been often forgotten.
This is great. Milroe gets the entire year to quietly learn under some capable mentors, in a Kubiak system that – finally! – makes the life of a quarterback easier not harder, away from the spotlight, surrounded by up-and-coming talent.
Now he’s getting an entire game at NFL speed, with no pressure whatsoever as to how his performance may impact the team’s regular season...
