Jalen McMillan
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Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Jalen McMillan.
By the end of the 2024 regular season, there were few NFL wide receivers playing as good as Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie Jalen McMillan.
McMillan, a 2024 third round pick (No. 92 overall), had 37 receptions for 461 yards and 8 touchdowns in his first season, but put up the bulk of those stats down the stretch with 24 receptions for 316 yards over the final 5 games of the regular season — a stretch in which he led the NFL with 7 touchdowns.
All of that momentum came screeching to a halt when the Buccaneers announced McMillan will miss the start of the regular season — and then some — after he suffered a severely strained neck in a preseason game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on August 16.
The shocking part came with the number of games McMillan might miss. ESPN’s Jenna Laine reported on August 19 that McMillan might not return until after Tampa Bay’s Week 9 bye.
“McMillan fell awkwardly on the back of his head and neck area while leaping up to make a catch in the Bucs’ second preseason game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday night. McMillan’s body folded in midair after he collided with defensive back Daryl Porter Jr.,” Laine wrote on August 19. “After being attended to by the medical staff, McMillan was able to walk off the field under his own power before being taken to a local hospital for evaluation, a source said. He was cleared to fly home with the team in a neck brace. Further testing back in Tampa revealed the extent of the injury, which Bowles said ‘shouldn’t be’ career threatening.”
Third Consecutive Season Missing Games
For the third consecutive season dating back to his final year at the University of Washington, McMillan will miss games due to an injury. That raises the question as to whether or not the Buccaneers should consider him damaged goods at this point.
In his final season with the Huskies in 2023, McMillan missed 4 games with an MCL strain. In 2024, he missed 4 games due to hamstring injuries.
In the 6 seasons dating back to his freshman year of college, McMillan has had just one year where he didn’t miss games due to injury, when he had 79 receptions for 1,098 yards and 9 touchdowns as a sophomore in 2022.
Simply put, if McMillan is on a football field for any extended period of time, it’s almost a certainty he’s going to get hurt. That’s the type of player it might be hard to count on moving forward.
Bucs Have Serious Depth, Serious Injury Issues
The Buccaneers start 2025 in the same way they spent most of 2024 — dealing with serious injury issues at wide receiver.
In 2024, the Buccaneers watched their 2 best wide receivers both suffer serious injuries in a Week 7 loss to the Baltimore Ravens; NFL All-Pro Mike Evans missed 4 games with a hamstring injury and NFL All-Pro Chris Godwin missed the rest of the season with a dislocated left ankle.
The bigger problem now is that Godwin isn’t healed from his ankle injury yet — he had to have 2 surgeries to fix it — and McMillan is now out. That leaves the crux of the passing game sitting on the shoulders of Evans, veteran tight end Cade Otton and rookie first round pick Emeka Egbuka.