The New England Patriots went back to the quarterback position 190 selections after taking North Carolina’s Drake Maye.
The war room in Foxborough did so for Joe Milton III. The sixth-year senior got the call in the sixth round after a long, winding collegiate road that began at Michigan and ended at Tennessee.
At No. 193 overall, the reasoning was straightforward.
“We’re in the business of trying to get good football players through the door, and Milton happens to be one of them,” Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo told reporters during his Saturday video conference as the 2024 NFL draft concluded. “Obviously, he understands we took a quarterback at three in Drake. One thing that we preach is competition. Everything is about competition and nothing is given. All of it’s earned. That’s how we thought about the process.”
The pick had been acquired from the Jacksonville Jaguars in the March exchange for previous starting signal-caller and team captain Mac Jones. As it became a name, Milton became the ninth quarterback prospect off the board this April.
“It is amazing,” Milton said during his post-draft call with the New England media. “I am blessed by the best. My family is very proud of me, but the moment is especially about me just overcoming adversity twice. So, it’s a blessing for sure.”
Milton stood as the strongest arm in the draft class, effortlessly launching the football from one end zone toward the doorstep of the other and clocking 62 mph with his fastball at the NFL Scouting Combine.
It’s part of the project that the Patriots took a flier on.
“I know growing up, my arm was not that strong,” added Milton. “My mom used to say it was because I used to throw the ball over the top of buildings and try to go run and catch it on the other side. Other than that, I’ll say like, growing up it was probably like 50 to 60 [yards], but you know, as I got older and stronger and kept working at my craft, it got way better, for sure.”
Appearing in 43 games between his stops with the Big Ten’s Wolverines and SEC’s Volunteers, Milton made 21 starts. The former Orange Bowl MVP completed 400-of-650 passes for 5,353 yards with 37 touchdowns and 11 interceptions over that span. He added 661 yards and 12 touchdowns across 174 rushing attempts and finished with an 8-4 record with the Vols last fall after Hendon Hooker’s departure for the NFL.
An invitation to the Reese’s Senior Bowl followed. So did an introduction, a wait and a surprise by the final afternoon of the draft.
“I talked to them a couple times at the Senior Bowl,” Milton said of the Patriots. “I also had their offense at the Senior Bowl. Then, I had to do a Zoom call with them not too long ago, probably like two or three weeks ago, before I left Tennessee to come home. Ever since then, other than that, it has been nothing.”
Timing, touch and ball placement remain erratic for the righthander at age 24. Milton threw five interceptions in three years at Tennessee. Pro Football Focus charted him for a big-time throw rate of 3.3% last campaign, however, as he accrued 691 screen yards, 753 deep yards and an average depth of target of 10.4 yards.
But the tools to work with are there to see. At 6-foot-5, 235 pounds with 10 1/4-inch hands and 33 3/8-inch arms, Milton leaped for a 10-foot-1 broad jump and a 35-inch vertical at Lucas Oil Stadium. Each of those measurements placed him between the 85th and 93rd percentile among quarterbacks, per MockDraftable.
Milton later ran the 40-yard dash in a reported 4.62 seconds at Tennessee’s pro day.
“We’ll have to see how that plays out once we put the pads on, but we drafted him as a quarterback,” said Mayo, a fellow Tennessee product.
The Patriots move forward with a quarterback room of five.
Veteran Jacoby Brissett, who returned to the organization that drafted him on a one-year, $8 million contract in free agency, projects as the initial starter. The future is in the hands of Maye. And with Milton set to take the field alongside the 21-year-old Tar Heel at rookie minicamp, 2023 holdovers in Bailey Zappe and Nathan Rourke round out the crowded depth chart.
“We’ll see how all the dominos kind of play out, but at the same time, you want to have a strong group,” Mayo said. “You want to have a strong room. I would say the way it looks now, we have a very strong room.”
