All Joe Milton Needs Is a Chance

At 1 p.m. today, Joe Milton will walk out of the tunnel at Lincoln Financial Field and start a football game for the Philadelphia Eagles. It will be the first start of his NFL career. He is the third quarterback the Eagles have started this year. He was signed off the Dallas Cowboys practice squad three weeks ago. Tanner McKee got benched on Tuesday. Jalen Hurts is out for the season. The Eagles are 2-6, they have lost six straight, and they are 3-point underdogs at home to the Giants. The season is over. So here is the case, plain and simple: give the kid a chance. There is nothing to lose.

The arm is not a rumor

Let us start with the part that is not up for debate. At the 2024 NFL Combine, Milton threw the ball 62 miles per hour. That tied Josh Allen's combine record. On his final deep throw, the ball traveled 73.5 yards in the air, longer than any throw in an NFL game in the previous seven years. At his pro day in Knoxville, Tennessee had to move his final throws outside, because he would have hit the ceiling of the indoor facility. He once threw an orange an estimated 100 yards across the Vols' indoor facility. In Madden, he is the only quarterback in the league with a 99 Throw Power rating. The arm is real. It is spectacular. It is the kind of arm that makes you stop what you are doing and watch.

And it was not just a combine trick. At Tennessee in 2023, his one year as the full-time starter, Milton threw for 2,813 yards and 20 touchdowns against 5 interceptions, won the Orange Bowl MVP, and completed 24 passes of 40 yards or more. The deep ball was the whole offense. Here is one of them, a 67-yard throw in the air to Squirrel White against Missouri.

We might be wrong

Now the honest part, because we are not going to pretend the doubts do not exist. Milton was a sixth-round pick for a reason. The accuracy has always been the question. The short throws, the touch, the consistency, that is what kept him on practice squads and behind other quarterbacks. He might not be the answer. He might go out there today and throw it into the stands three times and confirm everything the scouts said. We might be wrong about him. That is the whole point. You do not know until you find out, and at 2-6, finding out costs you nothing.

Because here is what else is true. In his one start for New England, on the final day of last season, Milton went 22-for-29 for 241 yards and a 48-yard touchdown, and the Patriots beat the Bills. With Dallas this year he threw a 35-yard touchdown to Jalen Tolbert. He is 6-foot-5, 235 pounds, and he runs a 4.56. The tools are all there. The only thing he has never gotten is a real chance, a stretch of games to show whether the arm and the athlete add up to a quarterback.

If he plays well, there is a real conversation

And that is where this gets interesting. If Milton plays well today, and in the games after it, then going into next season there is a real quarterback conversation in Philadelphia. Jalen Hurts is coming back from blood clots that cost him the entire 2026 season. Tanner McKee is the backup. Milton, if he shows something over these last eight games, forces his way into that conversation. Not as a feel-good story. As a quarterback the Eagles have to make a decision about. That is the controversy. Not a shouting match. A real decision, about the most important position on the team, and it starts today at 1 p.m. against the Giants.

The season is lost. Everyone knows it. The only thing left to find out is whether the guy with the cannon can actually play. Give him a chance. We might be wrong. But we might be right, and that is worth finding out.