Top 10 quarterbacks in the 2021 NFL Draft

#7 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Davis Mills (Stanford)

6' 4", 220 pounds; SR

Davis Mills

The number one overall quarterback recruit in the country in 2017, over Tua Tagovailoa among others, Davis Mills redshirted his first year at Stanford and then was a barely used backup, attempting two and completing zero passes the following season.

In year two, he started six games once K.J. Costello got hurt and set the school record with 504 passing yards against Washington State. After Costello transferred to Mississippi State during the offseason, Mills kept that starting gig, missing the season-opener due to COVID protocols. After starting the other five games. Over his 11 total starts, he completed 66.4% of his passes for 3353 yards (304.8 per game) and 18 touchdowns, compared to eight interceptions. He was a team captain and honorable mention All-Pac 12 selection last season.

This young man is a quick-rhythm passer, who has a plan before the snap and takes what defenses give him by alignment, to go along with maybe the most rapid release in this class. Mills displays excellent anticipation, to routinely release the ball before receivers get out of their breaks on curls, digs and out routes, and he is very in sync with the timing and drops of the Stanford offense, getting the ball out right as that back-foot hits.

That does not change, when he has to turn his back to the defense on play-action, as the ball arrives at the target, just after that guy plants that outside foot on dig routes for example. Mills quickly plants his feet in the ground and grabs a ton of turf with his cleats, to set his base when the ball needs to come out early or he is still in the movement off play-action.

He has enough zip to fit the ball in there to his wideouts on quick in-breakers, with a linebacker drifting out that way, but also usually protects his targets on throws over the middle, by putting it on their chest or even slightly behind them, to not lead them into big hits.

Mills can also deliver with touch, to make those layered throws over a linebacker gaining depth, as well as over the head of trailing defenders down the field, often times by an inch or two. There’s some perfect go-balls right in stride on tape, even with a defender right there in the receiver’s hip-pocket, and some of those back-shoulder balls, where an underneath defender just can’t get a hand on it, which are just beautiful.

When he has to come back later on routes back towards him, he aims the ball at the feet of receivers, in order to not allow defenders to make a play on it. According to PFF, Mills had an adjusted completion percentage of 78.8 percent last season.

Coming from Stanford, Mills has experience operating in a pro-style offense, with different depth of drops from under center and play-action, to where he shows the fluid flip of the hips, to rapidly bring them around on throws to the left, after faking the run that way initially. Mills recognizes when a corner is squatting in cover-two and the safety doesn’t widen quickly enough, in order to punish them on routes down the sideline, which he can really rip.

He routinely attacks voids in zone coverage with stick routes and you see him work in those next-level type of look-offs. When he is forced to move off the spot, Mills doesn’t forget where his receivers are supposed to be and comes back to them, and he’s very aware of where the sticks are, depending on down and distance. Plus, when you look at his raw numbers, they could have looked quite a bit better, if you consider he had one of the highest rate of dropped passes last season, at 11 percent.

Mills has some elusiveness in the pocket, reducing the near-shoulder and sliding through creases, to find a new platform to throw from. He makes some impressive throws with his shoulders parallel to the line of scrimmage, as he runs up to it. And when he decides to tuck it, he has some shiftiness and pretty good straight-line speed to him. You saw that in the fourth quarter of last year’s Washington game, where he banged a defender out of bounds, when it originally looked as if that guy was going to take a fumble by running back to the house.

With that in mind, we have to consider that Mills still has very limited experience, having logged only 12 career starts and just under 500 dropbacks. Moreover, he has committed 17 turnover-worthy plays over that relatively short stretch. He is inconsistent with his releases and position of his feet, when he just feels a little bit of pressure or push up the middle, either fading away and having the ball nosedive on him, or raising up and kind of pushing the ball out, which leads to overthrows on targets over the middle.

There were some troubling misses and forced balls in the UCLA game last season and he had a really bad pick against Cal in 2019, when he overthrew his tight-end on a crosser by like five yards and the safety behind it, in a two-high look, made a diving grab on it. His brings his arm back pretty far and balls tend to sail on him at times, which leads to misses on some routine screen passes and stuff like that.

Mills can be a bit of a statue back there, who lacks the burst to escape the rush more often than not, and on deeper concepts, he is not nearly as willing to pull the trigger, while allowing safeties to cover multiple routes in the end. While he hasn’t in one of those college-y spread offense, with a ton of bubbles and RPOs, Mills did throw a lot of screen passes to his backs and some tight-ends.

The fact that Davis Mills is receiving some first-round buzz is absurd to me. If anybody outside the top-five should, it’s Texas A&M’s Kellen Mond – and that’s very rich for me. However, there are certainly things to like about the Stanford QB, in terms his quick release, the accuracy from a clean pocket and some of the manipulation of the defense he has flashes in very limited time on the field.

I believe he certainly needs some time to clean up his mechanics and improve his play under pressure, but I could see him starting down the road, if put in the right situation. For me, Mills’ best fit would be in an Erhardt-Perkins offense, where they attack defenses horizontally and kill them with paper-cuts, because he can just recognize where to go and get the ball out right away.