It’s been a long offseason for Michigan State QB1 Alessio Milivojevic. He saw the head coach who recruited him and promoted him to QB1 in November of 2025 get fired, he met an entirely new coaching staff and had to forge new relationships and trust, and he watched as almost every publication has basically said that he’s not going to be very good this year.
Milivojevic has been ranked anywhere from 10 to 17 in all the Big Ten quarterback rankings that I’ve seen this offseason and while top-10 seems fair, that shouldn’t be considered his ceiling.
The sophomore quarterback is returning as a multi-game starter as a redshirt freshman, assuming the starting job after 1.5 years of backing up Aidan Chiles. He even looked like the future when he took over for Chiles, completing 64.2% of his passes for 1,267 yards, 10 touchdowns, and just three interceptions over the span of basically four games.
And his first interception of the season was on his first pass of 2025 back in September. So he was pretty close to perfect after that opener where he had a laughable -200 QB rating because he was 0-for-1 for zero yards and an interception.
He can look back and laugh now because he’s gotten so much better, but a lot of the experts just don’t agree for whatever reason.
The grade below from Pro Football Focus should change a few minds, though.
Ranking every Big Ten projected starting QBs from best to worst under pressure in 2025, according to PFF grades pic.twitter.com/7Qaw8tFpGS
— The Big Ten Huddle 🎙️ (@TheBigTenHuddle) July 22, 2026
Out of all the quarterbacks in the conference, Milivojevic was the second-best in terms of PFF grade under pressure. He thrived when he was facing pressure which is probably why he was so effective during the final month of his redshirt freshman season. Michigan State’s offensive line was just not good last year. It was bad.
Milivojevic thrived, finishing second behind only Demond Williams of Washington and ahead of projected top-tier quarterbacks like Julian Sayin, Nico Iamaleava, Josh Hoover, Dante Moore, Jayden Maiava, and Bryce Underwood.
That’s the kind of stuff you like to see in the weeks leading up to the season when you’re reaching for any sort of optimism. This is going to hold us over for another couple of weeks as we envision an offense with a quarterback who thrives under pressure and completes 64 percent of his passes leading Michigan State back to the promised land.
Sigh. It’s been so long since we’ve seen good football.
Alessio Milivojevic strung games together in 2025
A major problem for Michigan State’s quarterbacks since the Payton Thorne year in 2021 has been consistency and stringing games together. We’d see a flash in the pan here or a breakout game there, but never anything consistent enough to really get excited about.
Milivojevic did that at the end of the 2025 season.
After taking over late in the Michigan game, he completed 5-of-6 passes for 60 yards and a touchdown. As the starter at Minnesota, he went 20-for-28 with 311 yards and a touchdown through the air. He did everything he could there to lead Michigan State to a win but it refused to beat Minnesota in overtime.
He did the best he could against Penn State with Michigan State looking clearly overmatched, completing 17-of-27 passes for 128 yards and he was sacked five times. Alessio then tried to will the Spartans to a win at Iowa, completing 25-of-42 passes for 255 yards and two touchdowns but once again, Michigan State found a way to lose.
And finally, he completed a string of four really solid games in a five-game stretch with a win over Maryland. He went 27-of-39 for 292 yards and four touchdowns, once again willing Michigan State to the finish line. If it weren’t for the team’s inability to close, he would have won three of his final four games as starter.
Yeah, I’m buying stock now.
Add us as a preferred source on Google