TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Before he ever played a game under Alabama‘s new coaching regime, Jalen Milroe said this preseason that he felt as relaxed, prepared and empowered as he has as a quarterback.
“Even going back to high school. I feel free to be me out there,” Milroe told ESPN.
It’s one thing to make such a proclamation. It’s another to deliver, and Milroe has done that repeatedly for the Crimson Tide through four games, most recently with a dazzling performance Saturday night in a thrilling 41-34 win over then-No. 2 Georgia to vault Alabama to No. 1 in the latest AP poll.
Milroe passed for 374 yards and two touchdowns, including the game-winning 75-yard toss to Ryan Williams, and rushed for 117 yards and two more touchdowns. In all four games this season, he has passed for at least two touchdowns and rushed for at least two touchdowns. He has completed 72.9% of his passes with just one interception and is second nationally with a 204.7 passer rating.
“He was, I think, exceptional,” Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said of his redshirt junior quarterback. “I didn’t want to jump the gun, but I just really felt like that the last couple of weeks, and it started with the Wisconsin game, where he got into a little bit of rhythm and made those plays. … It doesn’t mean he’s perfect, but man, he’s a weapon out there and he’s doing it both through the air and with his feet.”
DeBoer isn’t the only one who feels that way.
Milroe is quickly moving up NFL teams’ draft boards, and while the calendar is just now flipping to October, he has also placed himself at the forefront of the Heisman Trophy conversation.
“He’s always been a dynamic athlete, but he’s grown as a quarterback under this staff,” one NFL scout told ESPN. “He looks more comfortable and connected. Last year, he was a great athlete running around and making plays at quarterback. Now he looks a lot more like a quarterback who happens to be a great athlete and is still making winning plays.”
Milroe isn’t one to boast that he called his shot, but he did. He saw this coming after working all offseason with DeBoer and offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan, who calls the plays for the Tide, and hasn’t been shy about what it has meant to him to play for coaches “who truly believe in me.”
He said that’s not a dig at former coach Nick Saban, who benched Milroe last season in Week 3 against South Florida after a two-interception performance in a home loss to Texas. Rather, Milroe said it’s an endorsement of the current coaches and the way they’ve given him the reins to go play his way while continuing to polish his game.
“I have a great coaching staff that believes in me,” Milroe said. “I have teammates that believe in me, and that’s all that matters.”
The Milroe-to-Williams connection has been electric for the Crimson Tide, and Williams said all he has had to do is follow Milroe’s lead.
“He’s a tremendous player. He gets better every single day,” Williams said of his quarterback. “I can’t stress it enough. He literally gets better every single day, and that’s everybody because we have that type of environment where if you ain’t getting better, you ain’t looking at the person next to you.”
Milroe finished sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting a year ago, and Saban said his transformation the last part of the season was the key to Alabama’s march to the College Football Playoff.
But with 18 total touchdowns through four games, Milroe has made strides in areas a quarterback needs to in order to go from being very good to being elite, such as accuracy, trusting his receivers and knowing when to run and when to hang in the pocket and throw. Plus, the plan Sheridan had for Milroe against Georgia was about as good as it gets. Alabama scored touchdowns on its first four possessions. Milroe completed his first 11 passes and carved apart the Bulldogs on the edge with his speed.
“We took the next step,” said DeBoer, whose quarterback last season at Washington, Michael Penix, led the country with 4,903 passing yards and had 36 touchdown passes. “Guys don’t always have to be wide open right now. You saw [Milroe] throwing to guys that were open and the receivers anticipating that, ‘Hey, I’m going to get the ball,’ and that’s progress in our passing game, and if we can keep doing those things, we’ll be tough to defend.”
Georgia coach Kirby Smart said the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Milroe “could be the best running back in the country … and he throws the ball.”
It’s a combination that gives opposing defensive coordinators fits.
“You have to pick your poison,” Smart said. “Do you want the guy to take off and beat you running? Do you want to play loose coverage and try to keep eyes on him so he doesn’t take off?”
Georgia’s plan was to make Milroe throw the ball once Alabama moved into the red zone.
“We didn’t have to. He ran around us,” Smart lamented.
No play exemplified Milroe’s explosiveness more than his 36-yard run around the right side, beating Georgia’s Malaki Starks to the edge, that gave Alabama a 28-0 lead early in the second quarter.
“We had our best player on him on fourth-and-1, and he outran him to the sideline and then turned it up and scored,” Smart said. “If you could just stop him and not worry about him throwing it, I think you could do it. But when he’s throwing it well and they’re catching it well, it’s really hard to stop.”
Milroe’s poise and humility in talking to the media late Saturday night didn’t go unnoticed by anybody in the Alabama football complex, coaches and players alike. DeBoer said Milroe’s growth as a leader — and not being up and down with his emotions — has only strengthened the bonds in Alabama’s locker room.
Milroe was sporting a Jalen Hurts’ shirt after the game. Their stories are similar in that they were both benched at one point during their Alabama careers. Milroe nodded reverently when asked about the former Tide quarterback, who finished his college career at Oklahoma.
Hurts, now the Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback, remains extremely popular among the Alabama fans. He was replaced at halftime of the 2017 national championship game by Tua Tagovailoa after the offense stalled in the first half, and Tagovailoa threw the game-winning touchdown pass in the final seconds to beat Georgia. Hurts elected to return to Alabama for the 2018 season, and when Tagovailoa was injured in the SEC championship game, Hurts came off the bench to rally Alabama to a dramatic 35-28 win over the Bulldogs.
“Jalen Hurts is a great person to look at when it comes to handling adversity, when it comes to playing the position,” Milroe said. “I’m a Texas kid. He was a Texas kid, and he was one of the reasons I came to the University of Alabama. If we look back when Alabama played Georgia [in 2018], Jalen Hurts stepped in at the end of the game, so I wanted to represent him today.”
Milroe then looked at the cameras and saluted.
“He’s out there watching. Hey, Jalen Hurts,” Milroe said. “But, nah, I love Jalen Hurts. I think he’s a great quarterback and I just wanted to represent him.”
If Milroe keeps this up, he’ll do more than just represent him. He’ll soon join him in the NFL.
NEW YORK — Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said he discussed Pete Rose with President Donald Trump at a meeting two weeks ago and he plans to rule on a request to end the sport’s permanent ban of the career hits leader, who died in September.
Speaking Monday at a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors, Manfred said he and Trump discussed several issues, including concerns over how immigration policies could impact players from Cuba, Venezuela and other foreign countries.
Manfred is considering a petition to have Rose posthumously removed from MLB’s permanently ineligible list. The petition was filed in January by Jeffrey Lenkov, a Southern California lawyer who represented Rose prior to the 17-time All-Star’s death at age 83.
“I met with President Trump two weeks ago … and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred said. “He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”
Trump posted on social media Feb. 28 that he plans to issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.”
It’s unclear what a presidential pardon might include. Trump did not specifically mention a tax case in which Rose pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of filing false tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence.
The president said he would sign a pardon for Rose “over the next few weeks” but has not addressed the matter since.
Rose had 4,256 hits and also holds records for games (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890). He was the 1973 National League MVP and played on three World Series winners.
An investigation for MLB by lawyer John M. Dowd found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team. Rose agreed with MLB on a permanent ban in 1989.
Lenkov is seeking Rose’s reinstatement so that he can be considered for the Hall of Fame. Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997 and met with Commissioner Bud Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on Rose’s request. Manfred in 2015 denied Rose’s application for reinstatement.
Manfred said reinstating Rose now was “a little more complicated than it might appear on the outside” and did not commit to a timeline except that “I want to get it done promptly as soon as we get the work done.”
“I’m not going to give this the pocket veto,” Manfred said. “I will in fact issue a ruling.”
Rose’s reinstatement doesn’t mean he would automatically appear on a Hall of Fame ballot. He would first have to be nominated by the Hall’s Historical Overview Committee, which is picked by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and approved by the Hall’s board.
Manfred said he has been in regular contact with chairman Jane Forbes Clark.
“I mean, believe me, a lot of Hall of Fame dialogue on this one,” Manfred said.
If reinstated, Rose potentially would be eligible for consideration to be placed on a ballot to be considered by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era committee in December 2027.
Manfred said he doesn’t think baseball’s current ties to legal sports betting should color views on Rose’s case.
“There is and always has been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, can do on the one hand, and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling,” Manfred said. “The fact that the law changed, and we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises, I don’t think changes that.
“It’s a privilege to play Major League Baseball. As with every privilege, there comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that they not bet on the game.”
Manfred did not go into details on his discussion with Trump over foreign-born players other than to say he expressed worry.
“Given the number of foreign-born players we have, we’re always concerned about ingress and egress,” Manfred said. “We have had dialogue with the administration about this topic. And, you know, they’re very interested in sports. They understand the unique need to be able to go back and forth, and I’m going to leave it at that.”
It was old faces in familiar places for the Atlanta Braves on Monday after they activated right-hander Ian Anderson to the active roster and signed outfielder Eddie Rosario to a major league contract.
In corresponding moves, outfielder Jarred Kelenic was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett, while right-hander Davis Daniel was optioned to Triple-A after Sunday’s game.
Both Anderson and Rosario emerged as 2021 postseason heroes in Atlanta as the Braves went on to win the World Series.
Anderson, who was claimed off waivers from the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday, went 4-0 with a 1.26 ERA in eight postseason starts for the Braves over the 2020 and 2021 postseasons.
In the 2021 World Series, Anderson famously pitched five no-hit innings in Game 3 to lead Atlanta to a 2-0 victory over the Houston Astros. The Braves defeated the Astros in six games.
Anderson, who turns 27 Friday, was traded by the Braves to the Angels on March 23 for left-hander Jose Suarez. He struggled badly with his new club, going 0-1 with an 11.57 ERA in seven relief appearances. He allowed 17 hits and seven walks in just 9⅓ innings.
Rosario, 33, signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in February and played in two games with the club, going 1-for-4. He was designated for assignment and became a free agent when Shohei Ohtani returned from the paternity list just over a week ago.
Rosario was the 2021 National League Championship Series MVP, when he powered the Braves past the Dodgers with three home runs, nine RBIs and a 1.647 OPS in six games.
Over parts of 11 seasons, Rosario is a career .261 hitter with 169 home runs and 583 RBIs in 1,123 games with five different clubs, including five seasons with the Minnesota Twins (2015-20) and four with the Braves (2021-24).
Kelenic, 25, was batting .167 with two home runs in 23 games and is a career .211 hitter with 49 home runs and 156 RBIs in 406 games with the Seattle Mariners (2021-23) and Braves.
Daniel, 27, made his only appearance for the Braves on Sunday with a scoreless inning and has appeared in 10 games (six starts) over the past three seasons with a 4.95 ERA.
Mike Sullivan, who led the Pittsburgh Penguins to back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017, is out as the team’s head coach, it was announced Monday.
Sullivan was the longest-tenured coach in Penguins history after just completing his 10th season. The 57-year-old, who also coached Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off, was under contract in Pittsburgh through 2026-27.
In a statement, Penguins GM Kyle Dubas said the decision was “the best course forward for all involved” as Pittsburgh navigates a transitional period.
“On behalf of Fenway Sports Group and the Penguins organization, I would like to thank Mike Sullivan for his unwavering commitment and loyalty to the team and City of Pittsburgh over the past decade,” Dubas said. “Mike is known for his preparation, focus and fierce competitiveness. I was fortunate to have a front-row seat to his dedication to this franchise for the past two seasons. He will forever be an enormous part of Penguins history, not only for the impressive back-to-back Cups, his impact on the core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Bryan Rust, but more importantly, for his love and loyalty to the organization. This was not a decision that was taken lightly, but as we continue to navigate the Penguins through this transitional period, we felt it was the best course forward for all involved.”
The Penguins have missed the playoffs for three straight seasons as Dubas works to retool the team into a contender while Crosby is still competing at a high level. Crosby just completed his 20th straight season in which he posted a point-per-game scoring pace, and he was voted by his peers in the NHLPA as the league’s most complete player. The captain is under contract through next season on a two-year extension he signed prior to the 2024-25 season.
Sullivan was elevated to Penguins head coach in 2015 after leading the organization’s AHL team in Wilkes-Barre. With 409 wins in Pittsburgh, he leaves as the Penguins’ all-time wins leader.
Sources also said Sullivan is keen on coaching again next season and will be a top candidate for several of the vacancies. Sullivan worked as an assistant coach with the Rangers and as both an assistant and head coach with the Bruins earlier in his career.