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Kerryon Johnson finished ninth in the Heisman voting.
UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton finished eighth in the Heisman voting.
So, this guy’s pretty good, right?
Yeah, actually he is.
The above video’s just a snippet of what McKenzie Milton can do. He’s a pretty mobile guy, more of a sneaky runner, but he can make things happen through the air as well. The passing attack is the bread and butter of this UCF team, just check out the line for Milton on the year.
249-360 (69.2%), 3795 yards, 35 touchdowns, 9 interceptions, 184.8 quarterback rating.
That’s pretty good no matter who you’re playing against. He can run a little bit too.
93 carries, 497 yards, 5.3 yards per carry, 7 touchdowns.
What’s interesting is that the later we got in the season we saw that Milton ran more and more. Over the first six games, he had double-digit carries in two of those contests, but over the last half of the season, he had four double-digit carry games. That includes the crazy wins over USF and Memphis over the last two games, where he put up nearly 1,000 yards of offense in those two combined.
That’s all to say that the offense pretty much runs through McKenzie Milton. He’s the guy that makes everything work, and he buys enough time with his legs to let those receivers get open for the big play. He also poses just enough of a running threat (similar to Jarrett Stidham) so that the running backs have a bit more of a lane to run through when they get the handoff.
The fact that he’s Hawaiian does not get by many, as he’s drawn comparisons to the job that Scott Frost did with Marcus Mariota at Oregon. He’s also similar to many of those former Duck players that may not have been the biggest and strongest, but were quick and just plain old good football players.
All in all, we’ll have ourselves a tough test defending Milton, but the key will be to get after him with Jeff Holland, Marlon Davidson, Nick Coe, and the rest of the Tiger front line. Do that, and don’t give him time to extend the play so that they can hit the big ball in a one-on-one situation. Milton’s going to hit one or two dazzle plays to be sure, but we have to see those limited, and Auburn will be fine.
War Eagle!