Nick Saban reveals what he learned about Alabama QB Jalen Milroe over last two weeks

Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe might have been benched after the Texas game, but coach Nick Saban has already seen some real signs of growth at the quarterback position in how he has returned from that benching.

Milroe took back over the starting job last week and led the team to a comfortable 24-10 win over Ole Miss.

“Jalen Milroe, I think he learned some things. We all learned some things by playing every quarterback,” Saban said on the Pat McAfee Show on Thursday. “We learned what they can do. We could make a good evaluation of what’s the best way for our team to move forward relative to who plays quarterback. Jalen understood that, exactly what we were doing.”

The sophomore quarterback bounced back nicely, throwing only four incompletions against the Rebels and going for 225 yards.

“He responded the right way to it. And it was obvious that he’s the best guy for us to be able to move forward as a team,” Saban said. “We have to do things that he can do because he’s a great athlete. He’s a good passer. But we have to do things that he can do in his growth and development so that he can be successful.”

Saban pointed out an exact moment in the Ole Miss game when he realized that he was getting through to Milroe and the talented 6-foot-2, 220-pound quarterback was making progress.

It came after a negative play.

“One of the things that he had to overcome, and he did in last week’s game, is when he threw an interception against Texas, the first one that he threw, that affected him in the game,” Saban said. “And when he threw the interception last week against Ole Miss, you know down in the red zone, it didn’t affect him in the game. And that’s one of the things that we’ve been trying to sort of instill in him is you can’t be effective — when you play quarterback you’re going to make a lot of good plays and you’re going to make some not so good plays sometimes — but you’ve always got to play the next play and you’ve got to refocus and you don’t have to press.”

Nick Saban wants Jalen Milroe to be a point guard

Saban has the perfect analogy for what he’s looking for out of his starting quarterback, though it’s an analogy from another sport.

“It’s almost like, and I’ve said this before, the quarterback’s got to have a sort of point guard mentality,” Saban said. “You don’t have to score 35 points in the game to be a great point guard. You get 13 assists, you play good defense, you don’t turn the ball over, then you’ve played a good game because you distributed the ball to the right guys and they’re able to score, and you don’t turn it over. That’s what we need to do.”

Too often one player is trying to do too much. Or worse, everyone around that one player is watching them trying to do too much instead of playing their role.

That can be equally devastating.

For the whole thing to function properly, everyone has to understand their role and then carry it out.

“We don’t have to be the shooting guard and be a hero and score 35 points in a game, don’t play defense, take chances that you don’t need to be taking, taking bad shots, being a hero because you want to score 35 points in the game but you don’t do anything else to help your team,” Saban said. “And everybody else is standing around while you’re dribbling the ball around, trying to figure out how I’m going to get a shot.

“That’s a part of the process, to me, of growing and developing as a quarterback. You distribute the ball to somebody every play, so no different than a point guard in basketball. The more we can get that accomplished, and guys that are great athletes sometimes think, ‘I got to make the play. I got to make the play.’ No, you don’t have to make the play, you’ve got to distribute the ball so that everybody can make plays. And you’re going to have plenty of opportunity to make plays.”