It has been more than 13 months since Joe Milton took a snap for Tennessee, but on Sunday, he managed to deliver a gift to football fans in the Volunteer State.

In his first career NFL start, Milton, now a rookie quarterback for the New England Patriots, guided his team to a 23-16 victory over the Buffalo Bills in the regular-season finale.

In the victory, Milton impressed, completing 22 of 29 passes for 241 yards and a touchdown. He also ran for a rushing touchdown.

Perhaps more notable than Milton’s performance, though, was that the Patriots’ win improved them to 4-13 and moved the Tennessee Titans up to the No. 1 spot in the 2025 NFL draft. New England would have secured the top pick with a loss.

After a 3-14 season — their worst winning percentage in a season in 10 years — the Titans will likely have a decision on whether to select a quarterback, with Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders widely viewed as the best options, or go with Colorado wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter, the 2024 Heisman Trophy winner.

Tennessee was plagued by poor quarterback play throughout the season, with starter Will Levis throwing for just 2,091 yards, 13 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. He entered Sunday with the lowest quarterback rating of any qualifying passer in the NFL.

Despite Milton’s heroics, or perhaps because of them, former Tennessee linebacker Jerod Mayo was fired after just one season as the Patriots’ head coach.

A Michigan transfer, Milton was a sixth-round pick of the Patriots in the 2024 NFL draft after spending his final three college seasons at Tennessee. In 2023, his lone season as a starter with the Volunteers, he threw for 2.813 yards, 20 touchdowns and five interceptions, along with 299 rushing yards and seven touchdowns.

Sunday didn’t mark just Milton’s first start, but his first NFL regular-season action of any kind at quarterback. He was competing against a Bills team that had already secured the No. 2 seed in the AFC for the NFL playoffs and rested many of its best players, including quarterback Josh Allen.

The Patriots sat some players as well, most notably starting rookie quarterback Drake Maye, the team’s No. 3 pick in last year’s draft.

Still, the game could be an indication that Milton may have more of a future at the NFL level than he was projected to have coming out of Tennessee. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing that has happened to a Patriots’ sixth-round draft pick who spent part of his college career at Michigan.