Former Michigan coach once made an extremely bold claim about QB Joe Milton to ESPN's Adam Schefter

When Josh Heupel took over as the head coach of the Tennessee Vols in 2021, one of the first things he did was bring quarterback Joe Milton in as a transfer addition. 

Milton, who started his college career at Michigan, subsequently won the starting quarterback job at Tennessee in 2021, beating out Virginia Tech transfer Hendon Hooker. 

A couple weeks into the 2021 season, Hooker took a stronghold on the starting job after Milton suffered an injury against Pittsburgh. 

Former Vols offensive coordinator Alex Golesh, who is now the head coach at USF, admitted last fall that naming Milton the starter over Hooker in 2021 was the wrong decision. 

"I don't know that you really know until you know," said Golesh while discussing identifying a starting quarterback last August. "I went through it at the previous place where I thought I knew and I was wrong, so I'm humble enough to admit that."

It's hard to blame Heupel and Golesh, and the rest of Tennessee's coaching staff, for initially going with Milton. 

The Florida native has all the attributes that coaches look for in an elite quarterback -- size, strength, speed, arm, charisma, etc. 

Former Michigan assistant head coach/passing game coordinator Pep Hamilton was one of the first coaches to be entranced by Milton's elite physical skills. 

ESPN's Adam Schefter told a story this week on The Adam Schefter Podcast about a comment that Hamilton made about Milton at a golf tournament during the pre-COVID era. 

Hamilton told Schefter that he thought Milton had the skills to eventually be the No. 1 overall selection in the NFL draft. 

"Here's an interesting Joe Milton story," said Schefter. "I was at a Jim Harbaugh golf tournament, a charity tournament, in Ann Arbor. It had to be four or five years ago -- it would have been pre-pandemic. So I'm gonna guess five years ago. But I remember being in this room where they were auctioning off a bunch of items for charity and I was standing with Pep Hamilton, who was on the Michigan staff at the time, and we're talking about the current roster. And he told me at that time, and I never forgot it, that he thought Joe Milton could be the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft. 

"That's how much talent he thought Joe Milton had. And I kept waiting for Joe Milton to pop at the NCAA level and it never really happened. There were little rumblings about him,  people were aware of him and that rocket arm. But he never developed into that number one type of pick type guy."