We might have won the SEC, but had we went against ND, Ohio State, or Oregon then we probably would’ve been an early exit with how they play defense. Milroe was the direct reason for 3 of our 4 losses but at the same time our offensive line wasn’t suddenly going to be a better unit with a different guy behind center.
in many cases I think there is a link between the two, but the fact that DeBoer is starting to take a hammer to Saban’s big body offensive line I think there was still alot of blame on them as well. I think a defensive line like ND and Ohio State would live in our backfield even if we had a different quarterback.
QB play to the level that we should expect to get can take a lot of pressure off the OL.
UM in 23 felt perfectly comfortable rushing 7 guys and only having 4 in coverage because they knew NILroe was not going to hit the inside quick/hot route. It's such an outlier of absolutely awful QB play that it's hard to estimate exactly how much his inability impacted the OL.
I mean he was literally calling protections and alignments for the OL wrong all year.
Then add to that he was giving away run v pass with this foot alignment taking the snap so the DL knows to either rush hard or not.
teams also knew how to force the zone reads to stay in his hand forced outside with both LB and S contain over the top because their was no PO in our RPO, he was just gonna run.