The Joe Milton hype train is rolling full steam ahead. Next stop: the NFL, where he made his New England Patriots debut in Thursday night’s preseason win against the Carolina Panthers.
Milton only got around a quarter of work and followed in the footsteps of fellow rookie Drake Maye and third-year former starting signal caller Bailey Zappe, but the sixth-round pick did enough to set social media ablaze. At one point, “Bazooka Joe” — a nickname that he’s accrued thanks to his supernatural arm talent — was trending on social media.
As of Friday morning, over 12,000 tweets feature Joe Milton’s name. Many are accompanied by highlights from the preseason game, including a 12-yard scramble where he avoided many would-be sacks and his 38-yard touchdown dart to fellow rookie JaQuae Jackson.
It was an overall effective premiere for Milton, who completed four of his six passes for 54 yards — more than No. 3 overall pick Maye — and led all passers with a 134.7 quarterback rating. He also produced New England’s only touchdown through the air.
Thursday was the first real showcase for all the buzz that Milton has generated behind the scenes through New England’s training camp sessions. While NFL fans are absorbing every moment, those who are more attuned to college football have seen this movie before.
Talent and pure athleticism have never been an issue for Milton. His 6-foot-5 and 240-pound frame is more akin to an edge rusher, he has a howitzer attached to his right shoulder and he can perform standing backflips with the same ease that an average human rolls out of bed.
Social media fanfare isn’t even a new experience for Milton. In December 2022, ahead of Tennessee’s Orange Bowl showdown against Clemson, Tennessee’s X (Twitter) account posted a video of Milton throwing an orange well over 100 yards.
That very same video has garnered 1.8 million views and over 4,000 likes since it hit the internet. Even predating his time at Tennessee, when he was a newly-minted signal caller at Michigan, Milton drew comparisons to the likes of Cam Newton and Daunte Culpepper before even taking his first collegiate snap.
It’s under the gameday lights that some of the mystique starts to fade. Joe Milton is not a bad quarterback by any means. He wouldn’t have been drafted at all if he was. That being said, there is a sense that he’s never quite lived up to the sheer awe that his offseason feats have inspired.
He didn’t even make it through a whole 12-game slate as Michigan’s starting quarterback before he was benched in 2020. That led him to transfer to Tennessee in 2021, where he won the starting job out of camp. He made it through a game and a half before suffering an injury against Pittsburgh.
Hendon Hooker entered the game in Milton’s stead and never looked back. Hooker had a solid 2021 campaign and a tremendous 2022 season that saw him lead the Vols to nine wins while coming within shouting distance of the Heisman Trophy — before he tore his ACL in the second-to-last game against South Carolina. That gave Milton, who had spent over a year on the bench to that point, an opportunity to finally settle into Tennessee’s offense.
And he did well. He led the Vols to a blowout win against Vanderbilt in the pouring rain and followed that up with an Orange Bowl MVP performance against Clemson, throwing for 251 yards and three touchdowns — fulfilling that viral orange-tossing video.
Milton came into the 2023 season as Tennessee’s unquestioned starter, despite the presence of five-star freshman phenom Nico Iamaleava. He managed to hold Iamaleava off the entire year, though it wasn’t necessarily a year to write home about.
Tennessee’s win total dropped by two games as it plodded to an 8-4 regular season. The Vols’ 243.2 yards passing per game ranked 50th nationally, a year after it finished fifth in the same category with Hooker leading the show in 2022.
Milton was the first quarterback under coach Josh Heupel’s guidance to throw for fewer than 3,000 yards in a full season since 2018. He did have his fair share of eye-opening plays, including an 81-yard touchdown run in a win against UTSA — the longest scramble from a quarterback in program history.
He also hit on plenty of deep balls. His 13 passes of at least 40 yards tied for seventh nationally among all quarterbacks.
But it’s between the margins that Milton tends to struggle. For every deep bomb he’d hit, he would also overthrow a screen or miss on a slant over the middle.
Sometimes, his strong arm would work against him. Finesse passes would have too much velocity, causing them to reach the receiver well off target.
Milton is a good decision-maker — he had 20 touchdowns to just five interceptions last season — but issues with consistency have plagued him at every stop. He had four games in 2023 in which he failed to complete at least 60% of his passes.
There’s also some questions about Milton’s ability to operate an offense. Tennessee’s play-calling seemed more simplistic, relying heavily on screens and other short passes to try and maintain some sort of stability and keep Milton in rhythm.
That obviously limited his ability to flash that superb arm talent. He only averaged 7.8 yards per attempt in league play, 44th among quarterbacks at the FBS level.
This shouldn’t read as a negative review of Milton’s college career, nor is it an indictment on his future. He did well to maintain some of Tennessee’s momentum under Heupel by sending the Vols to another prolific bowl and providing an effective bridge for Iamaleava, who will start in 2024, even if it feels like Milton left a lot on the table.
Maybe he can finally put it all together in the NFL. Thursday was a step in the right direction. Milton looked sharp in running the offense and, most importantly, hit those short to intermediate throws well. He was a more willing scrambler and navigated the pocket with fluidity.
NFL fans might still want to internalize a valuable lesson from the college football fans that came before them: Milton has all the tools to be special, and it’s hard not to get excited about him, but approach with at least some caution.
