Dane Brugler has released his 2024 NFL Draft Big Board

On the shores of Lake Okeechobee, down in “The Muck,” they run toward fire to keep from getting burned. This is where Joe Milton was born. Where he learned how to see through the smoke.

The legend of the Pahokee rabbit chasers deep in the Florida Everglades is well-documented. Young football hopefuls — and anybody else with spare time — spend parts of the fall and winter in sugar cane fields that have been set ablaze ahead of harvest. There, they sprint through the thick, hot mud after terrified rabbits, which dart out of the fields in search of freedom.

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The boys who live for football are running for the same thing.

Kids who can catch 20 to 30 rabbits in a day — like Milton’s older cousins, former NFL receivers Anquan and D.J. Boldin — typically play skill positions. The rest tend to wind up on the line. But the commonality that links so many from Muck City is simple: When it comes to football, no dream is too big.

Milton never broke any rabbit-catching records. Nobody cared, though, primarily because Milton was bigger and stronger than most of his peers. But also because, if you stood close enough, you could hear it when he threw a football.

“Nobody in the world looks like you,” a coach once told Milton. “You look like a goddamn action figure.”

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The 2024 NFL Draft features the deepest quarterback class we’ve seen in years, highlighted by stars Caleb Williams and Drake Maye. And though he’s certainly taken the long way, it also features Milton — a 6-foot-5, 235-pound, sixth-year Tennessee QB by way of Michigan, by way of Orlando, by way of Muck City, with a right arm made of diamonds and dynamite.

Oh, and he’s made exactly nine starts in five years as a college football player. He’s lost his job twice, started over and refused to go away. He’s a guy who can throw a football (at least) 80 yards, before doing a backflip for good measure.

He could be the most interesting prospect in the 2024 draft class.

Joe Milton learned football in Orlando, at the desk of then-Olympia High School coach Kyle Hayes.

The oldest of seven children, Milton was born when his mother, DeShea Bouie, was still in high school. His identity as a big brother is perhaps his defining personality trait, and his tight bond with his mother anchors his life. If you want to find her at any Tennessee game, close your eyes and listen for the mom screaming, “Go Joe-Joe!” with unabashed glee over and over.

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Milton enrolled at Olympia as a freshman, after his family moved from Pahokee to Orlando — partly in search of better exposure for Joe’s arm, partly to get away from hurricanes in the Everglades. In those days, Milton knew how to throw … and not much else about playing quarterback at a high level.

However, there was one natural gift he took with him from Pahokee: From the second Hayes inserted Milton at QB, he noticed how unbothered the kid was by a pass rush — or any other kind of pressure. Milton showed great quickness at his massive size and truly stood without fear in the pocket. But Hayes also says he never saw Milton lose his temper on a football field, no matter how rough things got.

Milton could, in a football sense, see through the smoke.

“He was always a listener, and that was always one of my favorite attributes. Right away,” Hayes says. “Now, he didn’t always do what you said. But he did listen.”

Hayes and Milton lived near each other. Milton took to staying with his coach after practice, sometimes as late as 10 p.m., doing homework, watching film, and talking about life before hitching a ride home.

Trust is earned. It’s also a process. Donovan Dooley, a private QB coach who has worked with Milton since Milton’s time at Michigan, echoed Hayes’ sentiments. Milton, he confirms, is a great listener and, to a degree, has always been coachable. He took notes, studied film, asked questions. But he also challenged coaches. He heard their instruction, even if he might have considered it optional.

He could be insistent on the hard path, too. In the most challenging moments on the field, Milton trusted his arm — which meant, really, that he relied on his own instinct over his training. The results? Deep-shot attempts on critical downs that weren’t necessary, no matter how close Milton came to landing them.

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“Way too many foul balls,” Dooley says.

I once asked Joe Milton if he'd ever pitched, or been clocked with a fastball on the gun — he hadn't spent much time with baseball, focused on/liked FB too much.

However I will say again: There has to be a pitching coach somewhere who could do a thing or two with all that.

— Nick Baumgardner (@nickbaumgardner) November 20, 2022

Milton had Division I interest before landing with Hayes at Olympia and was recruited nationally throughout his prep career. The best fit he found was with Pep Hamilton, then part of Jim Harbaugh’s offensive staff at Michigan.

Hamilton fell in love with Milton immediately, comparing him to Steve McNair. (Hamilton was a freshman quarterback on the 1993 Howard team that beat McNair’s Alcorn State team in a regular-season game.) Milton, in turn, completely trusted Hamilton. The coach talked to his QB about life and other topics in ways Hayes often had. Milton’s cousins, the Boldins, had worked with Harbaugh in the NFL, too, and vouched for him to Milton and his mother.

On paper, the fit looked exactly how it should have.

Then, two things happened: 1) Michigan fired Hamilton after Milton’s freshman season; 2) The Covid-19 pandemic hit.

Everything was microwaved during that shortened, strange 2020 season, including the QB competition Milton won over Dylan McCaffrey. There was no normal training camp, because nothing was normal, and Harbaugh had fired Hamilton in favor of Josh Gattis the previous year. Milton simply was not ready to run Michigan’s new offense — certainly not backed by a young depth chart, with an unproven coordinator, during a pandemic.

He also suffered a serious thumb injury during the opening series of the second game that year (a 27-24 upset loss to Michigan State), an injury that later required surgery. The rest of the season featured an awful lot of those “foul balls.”

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Things spiraled and never recovered. Midway through its fifth game of 2020 (a win at Rutgers), Michigan replaced Milton with Cade McNamara, and that was a wrap.

Outside observers were surprised and skeptical when Milton passed McCaffrey in the first place. However, had you polled Michigan’s players at the time, you would have gotten a totally different response. Milton’s teammates adored him. When that year started, Milton stood as easily the locker room’s most respected QB.

Inside a football building, Milton is magnetic. He shows up early, stays late, supports everyone and usually can be found smiling. Teammates and coaches describe him as a player who is totally and genuinely in love with being part of a football team and everything that comes with it.

Milton enrolled at Michigan in January 2018 as a kid from Florida who knew no one. Four months later, on Michigan’s offseason team trip to France, he and (older) teammate Nico Collins held court — with players of all ages — in their Parisian hotel-issued bath robes during a swanky lunch.

Milton can hold a conversation with anyone. He can get along with anyone.

His combination of effort, energy and a willingness to root for his teammates has kept him in the conversation for every job he’s chased, even the ones he wasn’t ready to win. During his freshman year at Michigan, for example, when Harbaugh brought in QB Shea Patterson and appealed for Patterson’s immediate eligibility, coaches spent most of spring telling reporters in quiet moments that they were blown away by nearly everything Milton was doing.

His arm talent overwhelmed people, which generally did nothing but ramp up the voice inside Milton’s young head that his on-field instincts were correct — and that dedication to the process remained optional.

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“He was still learning how to live the quarterback position,” Dooley recalls of Milton’s time at Michigan, “versus just playing it.”

The same thing happened when Milton transferred to Tennessee. He beat out Hendon Hooker — a more seasoned passer at the time — and was named the team’s starter ahead of 2021. However, water leveled and Hooker eventually won the job back, bumping Milton to the bench. That flip also pushed Milton into one of the longest looks in the mirror he’s ever taken.

His flashes have always been brilliant, enough to blind coaches from areas of his game that were lagging. In training camp, his arm would look like the ultimate mistake-eraser. Then, games would start, defenses would adjust and Milton would revert to old habits.

Milton knew football. He just didn’t always understand it.

“By then it was, ‘If you don’t go out there and (dedicate yourself fully to football) and get this s—- done, then shame on you,” Dooley told him at the time. “Shame on you. Either you’re going to be making first downs or rebounds, but your ass is playing in somebody’s professional league.”

According to just about everyone in his circle, Milton has answered the bell every day since.

For his college career, Joe Milton has 2,540 yards passing and 17 touchdowns. (Eakin Howard / Getty Images)

Milton’s biggest issue as a college passer has been two-pronged: Inconsistent accuracy and not a deep enough understanding of how a defense reacts to what an offense is doing.

Early in his career, Milton played the quarterback position with force. His tape from those days features mechanical breakdowns and almost zero anticipatory ability. All of that remained through the initial stages of his time at Tennessee, and it often worked against him — and in the worst possible moments. In football, a fastball doesn’t always get you out of a jam. Milton’s arm could look like a $500,000 sports car without brakes.

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Eventually, Dooley squared it to him with a simple metaphor.

“We treated it like an airplane,” Dooley says of offseason throwing sessions with Milton designed to help improve the QB’s anticipatory passing. “The only way an airplane can take off is if the nose is up. The nose of the football has to be up. If it’s down, it’s going to die.

“After that, it’s about trust — throwing the ball to a dark hole that doesn’t seem like it exists, and trusting that process.”

In football, the concept of “throwing with touch” is more or less equal to being able to anticipate and process. It’s learned through time on task and intense, relentless repetition. For Milton, trusting that the process would be worth it was a hurdle — one, by all accounts, that he cleared. Perhaps no one deserves more credit than Tennessee coach Josh Heupel.

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A better fit between player and program didn’t exist when Heupel, who’d doggedly recruited Milton out of high school as Missouri’s offensive coordinator, landed the former Michigan QB from the transfer portal in 2021. Heupel’s “Deep Choice” offense is literally designed to make life easier on big-armed quarterbacks, because it takes the entire width (and, in Milton’s case, length) of the field and fills it with speed to widen throwing windows.

If it clicks for a quarterback, the game slows down. Hooker reached that point first. He took over after Milton suffered an injury in Week 2 of the 2021 season and never looked back.

Milton’s first two games that year looked a lot like his play at Michigan. By the time he got extended snaps again, in fourth-quarter duty of a November 2021 game against a loaded Georgia team (that had not yet pulled its top unit), he looked different. Less rushed. His third throw of that game was a beautiful 53-yard go ball to Cedric Tillman. Three minutes later, he hit Tillman with a laser on a 12-yard slant for a touchdown.

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If you take Milton’s reps in a season-opening blowout win against Ball State last season and compare them to his 2021 start against similar competition in Bowling Green, you’ll see the difference. In glimpses last year, he started throwing the ball with more touch, more consistently, regardless of competition.

He was living the position rather than playing it. And his fastball lost none of its zip.

Milton’s reputation as an elite teammate also held — grew, even — after he lost his job to Hooker. Search high and low for people who have been on teams with Milton, and it’ll take you a long time to find someone who doesn’t like him.

“One thing about Joe,” Hooker told The Athletic recently, “he’s going to approach the team and talk to everyone exactly how he’d want to be talked to. Whether something’s off or it’s on. No matter what.”

The hardest thing in any sport is unconditionally rooting for and helping a competitor. At Tennessee, Milton proved to be a master in this area.

Hooker and Milton first met on a basketball court in Knoxville ahead of the 2021 season. They knew nothing about each other, except for the fact they were in each other’s way in a looming quarterback battle. For an hour, they went at it as hard as they could — two alphas trying to prove something to the pack.

A week later, Hooker and Milton were friends. By fall camp, they were basically best friends.

Joe Milton (left) and Hendon Hooker celebrating Tennessee’s Orange Bowl win. (Eric Espada / Getty Images)

After grinding for more than a year, giving himself to the game and backing Hooker (who emerged as a Heisman candidate last season), opportunity knocked for Milton again when Hooker suffered a season-ending knee injury in November. It was a brutal situation for Tennessee and Hooker, but also for Milton, who — despite seeing a door open for him personally — had become very close with the Vols starter.

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Hooker, however, repaid the support. He told Milton to let it rip, then became his biggest cheerleader. For the first time in a long time, Milton found himself overloaded with trust in a football environment.

Tennessee won his first start, 56-0 against Vanderbilt. But it was Milton’s Orange Bowl performance against Clemson — a sparkling 19 of 28 for 251 yards and three touchdowns against a defense with legit NFL talent — that officially revived the NFL world’s interest in him.

“We talked it out after he got hurt (in 2021),” Hooker says. “We had an understanding of: ‘OK. We’ll just go back-to-back.’”

The 2023 college football season will be the third big opportunity of Joe Milton’s young football life. Most players are lucky to find one.

There’s still much to prove for the rocket-armed righty, including that he can replicate last season’s Orange Bowl performance over an entire season. There are no certainties either, except this: Milton has earned every one of his chances.

Now, once and for all, we’ll see if the action figure with the big dreams can make it happen.

(Top photo: Jason Mowry / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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