Jalen Milroe: Final play of Alabama's season 'truly made me love the coaching staff'

The Alabama Crimson Tide had their season end on the final play of the Rose Bowl, where quarterback Jalen Milroe was tackled trying to score late and move on to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.

It was a devastating final play. However, as Milroe explained on Bussin’ With The Boys, it was also one that made him love the Alabama coaching staff.

“That truly made me love the coaching staff,” Jalen Milroe said. “Because to see how much they believe in me. This is probably one of the most impactful plays of our whole season and the ball’s in my hands in the last play of the game. That speaks a lot about how our coaching staff is believing in me. So, I took it as a positive, although we came up short.”

The play itself had an option to throw the ball or for Milroe to run the ball up the middle. However, the snap was low, making it difficult to see if the pass was open and Milroe ran before being stopped short.

“But after the game, I went back to the hotel room and reflected on the season, reflected on the game, that made me truly really see how confident they were with me. From that, I actually called Coach [Tommy] Rees and told him, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we lost man, but thank you. I appreciate you.'”

Jalen Milroe is now getting adjusted to a new coaching staff. Nick Saban retired and was replaced by Kalen DeBoer, who brought in his own staff. Tommy Rees ended up in the NFL, as an assistant with the Cleveland Browns.

“When I went to the press conference after the game, I had my head up high because they believed in me. That ain’t the last snap I’m gonna take of football. So, yeah, we want to win. We wanted to win the national championship. We had goals set for ourselves, of course, and this is me speaking after the game. I had a lot of emotion. I wanted to score, I wanted to push our team to where we all wanted to be at toward the end of the season. Unfortunately, we didn’t do it.”

At one point in the season, the coaching staff likely wouldn’t have trusted Jalen Milroe at quarterback. After all, earlier in the same season, he was benched for the game against USF.

“But it’s the positives. That’s the positive that I saw from it. They believed in me so much. The whole team. Not just them. When Coach Rees gave us that play call, no one was like, ‘Why you calling that?’ Everyone said, ‘Alright, bet.’ No one. Not the offensive line, not the receivers, not the running backs. No one had any hesitation on that play. We just came up short. That’s all it was because no one — I looked everybody in the eyes and they all were confident,” Milroe said.

“That’s all a part of the game. You win some. You lose some. Unfortunately, we lost that one.”