NFL Draft Profile: QB Davis Mills
Could the Stanford quarterback be an option for Washington on day two of the draft?
The quarterback position has been the topic of conversation in Washington all offseason. Ryan Fitzpatrick was signed to be the starter in 2021, but the team could look to draft a young quarterback to sit and learn behind him. They’ve been heavily linked with Trey Lance, Justin Fields and Mac Jones in the first round, but all three would likely require a trade up into the top 10 to land.
Alternatively, Washington could look to draft a more developmental quarterback in the second or third round, someone with good traits and upside but isn’t ready to start in the NFL yet. Ben Standig of The Athletic, along with others, has reported Washington has interest in Stanford quarterback Davis Mills. Mills is projected to go in the second round after injuries prevented him from playing regularly at Stanford, but he was a former five-star recruit that clearly has talent.
The standout traits when watching Mills is his timing, anticipation and accuracy. He’s a quarterback that fully understands his offense, knowing where his receivers are meant to be and using smooth footwork that allows him to anticipate breaks and deliver accurate passes that maximise separation.
This is the most basic example of timing. The tight end runs a basic stick route in between two underneath defenders. Mills catches the snap, rocks back onto his back foot and almost immediately delivers the throw. If you pause the clip at the time Mills is delivering the throw, you’ll notice the tight end hasn’t even broken off his route yet and his back is still facing Mills. This allows Mills to maximise any separation from defenders and get the ball to his receiver before the defenders are able to break on the route.
The accuracy Mills possesses can be fantastic too. He’s not afraid to make throws into tight windows, which can get him into trouble sometimes, but also enables him to make some spectacular throws and fit the ball into spots many quarterbacks wouldn’t try.
On this play, Stanford combines a corner route from the slot with a double move from the outside receiver. That receiver initially fakes a spot route, which is a typical route to pair with a corner route from the slot, but after sitting down for a second, the receiver then takes off over the middle of the field. Off the snap, Mills checks the back side safety for any rotation, but once he reads it’s a two-high safety coverage, he flips his head back to his right for the double move. He locates the closest underneath defender, who spots the receiver sitting down and then adjusts his body and eyes back to the quarterback.
That’s all Mills needs to trigger his decision to throw. Once the receiver takes off, he knows the defender doesn’t have the leverage to flip his hips back outside and run with the receiver. However, the defender does sink back and work inside, closing the throwing window. Mills adjusts his throw for this, using plenty of velocity to zip it by the defender and throwing it deliberately high to get it over him. It’s a very tight window, but Mills managed to fit it in there.
The timing and accuracy are two great traits for a quarterback to possess, but his best trait is his anticipation. Mills has a strong understanding of both his offense and what the defense is doing to defend it. This allows him to anticipate which receivers will come open early in the play.
Here, Mills and Stanford face a third and five in the red zone. He knows he has a slant route to his right against a corner playing off-coverage. Just before the ball is snapped, he spots the deep safety to that side rolling up towards the line of scrimmage, potentially blitzing. Mills knows there’s a chance that slant route could come open in the space vacated by that safety, so after the snap, he immediately looks to his left to see if another defender replaced that safety or not. Nobody rotates over so Mills quickly sets up to throw.
If you pause the clip as he’s delivering the throw, you’ll see that the receiver hasn’t even cleared the underneath defender sinking back underneath the route. But Mills knows where the vacated space is and where his receiver is running, so puts the ball on a spot before pressure arrives. The ball is perfect and hits the receiver in his hands for what should be a walk in touchdown, but it’s dropped.
That kind of play is as good as it gets for a quarterback. He understood his route combinations, read where the hole in the defense was likely to be, checked no other defender was rotating over to cover that hole and then threw his receiver open with a perfectly placed throw before the receiver had cleared the coverage. However, the downside of quarterback’s that play at that type of mental capacity is that they can get caught out trying to be too clever and assuming coverage vulnerabilities.
On this play, Mills does a good job diagnosing the blitz from UCLA. The defense shows multiple linebackers on or near the line of scrimmage, but sends a blitz from the secondary to the right side of the offensive line. Mills recognizes this blitz early and spots the deep safety rotating across to replace the slot corner that blitzes from the right side. He then knows that a linebacker is having to bail out from a blitz look and then try to carry the tight end up the seam. That’s typically a winning matchup for most offenses, so Mills pulls the trigger. However, he failed to spot the outside corner on that side bailing deep to replace the safety that rotated over to the right side. That corner sinks back and undercuts the route, intercepting the pass before it can get to its target.
Diagnosing the blitz and understanding where the best matchup might be is a good thing for Mills to be able to do, but he can’t afford to assume it’s automatically correct. He has to check to ensure it’s there, even if it should be in theory. We saw on the dropped touchdown earlier that Mills checked to make sure no defender was rotating across to fill the vacated space. Mills checked the safety rotation but either didn’t anticipate the corner replacing the safety or felt he could beat him to the spot. Either way, it resulted in an interception.
Mills also had some interceptions that were just horrible and hard to explain.
Here, Mills looks to throw his slant route to the outside. However, as he sets up to throw, the outside cornerback playing off-coverage steps up and into the throwing lane. For some reason, Mills decides to throw it anyway and is rightfully punished, with the defender intercepting the pass and taking it all the way back for a touchdown.
That type of interception obviously can’t happen and there were a few like that where it was hard to understand what he was thinking when he threw the ball. That is something that holds him back and will need to be addressed as he matures before getting onto the field in the NFL.
But the upside is still there with Mills. His command of the offense is compelling and there are certainly plays where he looks like a very capable NFL starting quarterback.
At first look, this play might just seem like a good throw. He has a tight end running a post route up the seam against a split-safety coverage and he layers the ball nicely over the underneath linebacker to find his target. However, the end zone replay angle, along with the situation in the game, shows there’s far more to the play.
The situation in the game was second and 10 with 4:55 remaining in the fourth quarter. Mills had just thrown the pick-six on the previous drive to put Stanford down 14. Clearly, he needed to move quickly and pick up some chunk plays if Stanford were to get back in the game.
From the end zone angle, we can see Mills operating in a no huddle situation. He’s directing receivers and calling plays, not looking to the sideline for guidance. He initially points to a defender (number 40) and identifies him as the Mike linebacker to set the protection. That defender then walks outside and up to the line of scrimmage as a potential rusher off the edge. Mills then adjusts his protection to slide that way and account for him. All of that is done pre-snap so that once Mills snaps the ball, he knows he’s protected, the blitzing linebacker is picked up and Mills can focus on layering a beautiful throw over the sinking linebacker and hitting his receiver in stride for a 24-yard gain.
For the record, Mills would go on to lead a scoring drive, then tie the game up on the next drive before winning it in overtime. It was a clutch play in a clutch moment, which is the final part of Mills game I want to look at. Often in the biggest moments of games, Mills had his best plays. Late in the fourth quarter, third and fourth down situations, red zone plays. Those were the situations Mills had some of his best throws. One of his best came against the Washington Huskies.
This was a critical situation in the game for Mills. Stanford were up by five with three minutes left in the game, trying to run out the clock. However, Mills faced third and 11, an extremely tough to convert situation. But that doesn’t prevent him from playing aggressive with intent to go and win the game, rather than just playing safe. As he drops back, he spots a two-deep safety look. He knows he has a go route outside to his right and likes that matchup, so he holds his eyes in the middle of the field for a second just to hold the deep safety before quickly triggering the throw to his outside receiver. He drives the ball to his receiver down the sideline, putting enough velocity on the throw to beat the safety and placing it high enough for the receiver to make a play over the cornerback.
The receiver makes the play and Stanford picks up the first down, allowing them to go back to running the ball to kill the clock and win the game. Making clutch throws like that in key situations is huge. Mills has plenty to work on before he’s ready to start in the NFL. He has to make sure he doesn’t try to do too much based on pre-snap assumptions and he won’t necessarily get away with all the tight window throws he made in college. But he has the mental capacity to run an offense, anticipate throws with good timing and accuracy, and make clutch throws in key situations. That makes him an intriguing developmental option for Washington after the first-round.
Thanks. Sorry Washington didn’t draft him