Considering that Davis Mills started just 11 games as a rookie, still has just two wins under his belt and was the 66th player, and eighth quarterback, taken in the 2021 draft, what he was saying could be construed as a more-than-presumptuous thought from a 23-year-old just 14 months into his NFL career.
Take a listen.
“The thing I put in my mind each play is that I’m the best player on the field and there’s nothing the defense can do to stop me,” the Texans’ quarterback says. “Obviously, that’s not really realistic every down, but going out there with that mindset has carried me this far, and I wanna continue to have that mindset, that chip on my shoulder each and every week.”
Digest that. Then listen to his history. History that includes an illustrious start to his career as an Atlanta-area prep star, a consensus five-star rating as the country’s top pro-style high school quarterback, scholarship offers from Alabama and Georgia, a decision to go to Stanford and, after that, a litany of injuries that changed everything. He hurt his knee at the start of his senior year of high school and tore his ACL at the end of it. He tore the ACL again as a Stanford freshman and wasn’t fully healthy until his third year on campus.
Then, finally, in 2020, he became the Cardinal starter, only to have COVID-19 take that season down to five actual starts.
So, using simply logic, it’s easy to see where there might be more to Mills than you could put on the back of a football card.
And maybe, just maybe there more here——than most people realize, in a gifted, classically-trained quarterback carrying the kind of pedigree a lot of guys who manage to make it to the first round in their draft year do. That’s the bet the Texans have made this offseason, anyway, in their first true post–Deshaun Watson year, with GM Nick Caserio’s organizational rebuild kicking into high gear.
If it works? Then, Caserio can keep building out the roster with the rest of the bounty he scored for Watson in March, without having to get desperate to find a quarterback. If it doesn’t, then a big percentage of that capital will surely get sunk into the position in a year or two.
Either way, Mills is getting his chance to prove he’s becoming the quarterback the Nick Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s of the world thought he could be, when he spurned them to play for David Shaw five years ago. And in this week’s GamePlan, we’re going to dive headlong into the fantastic opportunity Mills has in front of him, and what it could mean for Houston.
