When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherf—r in the room, accept no substitutes. – Ordell Robbie
I have an admission to make: while I love a well executed power sweep or double-A gap blitz, and I’m a sucker for a well timed shallow cross or screen pass, and while I even get a little tingly when I see a run fit that stuffs a runner or when triple option quarterback fakes the pitch before cutting upfield, there is absolutely nothing — nothing — in football that I love more than a perfectly thrown deep post that hits a streaking receiver in stride for a touchdown. If there is one play — one image — that is totally unique to the sport, this is it: the play that would be illegal if not for the game’s early rule changes to permit the forward pass; the play that would be unfathomable without the game’s early innovators; the play that looks at the scrum at the line of scrimmage — the part of the game most tied to football’s past — and essentially says, screw it, we’ll just throw the ball over the top of all that. It is, in short, the play that makes the sport what it is.
“Let’s see if we can pitch and catch a post”
But like everything in football there’s a science to chucking it deep, and it’s only in the rarest of circumstances that the instruction from the sideline is simply to throw the ball deep, regardless of the consequences. The trick to throwing the ball deep down the middle past all eleven defenders is (a) find a way to bring up the defense’s deepest defenders so you can throw the post behind them and (b) if those defenders stay deep, don’t throw the post. The way to accomplish both of those goals is to construct a sound concept around the deep post that can provide answers versus a variety of coverages — and strike like lightning whenever the opportunity is right. And for my money, there’s no better way of accomplishing those goals than the Mills concept.
In 1990, Steve Spurrier took over at Florida, vowing to not only turn around the Gators but also to bring an entirely new brand of football to the Southeastern Conference, namely an aggressive, pass-first system that had its roots in the offenses Spurrier ran as an NFL quarterback, as updated and refined during his years as a head coach in the USFL and at Duke. Before hs first game against Oklahoma State, Spurrier elevated a young QB named Shane Matthews from fifth on the depth chart to starter. Just before the game, Spurrier approached Matthews:
“Coach Spurrier always liked to come around and talk to guys in the locker room while they were getting ready,” Matthews said. “He finally comes to me and asks, ‘Shane, what play do you want to start with?’”
“I’d never started a college game before. A lot of people were giving him grief already for naming me the starter. So, I said: ‘Maybe a screen or a draw?’ “
And Spurrier responded: “Shoot, they didn’t hire me to come down here and run the football. We’re going to throw it.”
That first play was a 28 yard completion from Matthews to receiver Ernie Mills, who had run a post route behind a ten-to-twelve yard square-in, or dig, route. Florida scored a touchdown four plays later en route to a 50-7 victory. The rest was, well, history, as Spurrier’s run at Florida would be one of the most successful — and influential — tenures of any coach in football history.
But it was also the start of something special for Mills, who is currently the receivers coach at Florida A&M University, and, eventually, offensive football itself. “His [Mills’s] senior year he caught [ten] touchdowns from me,” Matthews later recalled. “And I would say about eight of them came on that same deep post play. So after he graduated, Spurrier called that play, ‘The Mills Play.'” The Mills Play would arguably became the defining play not only of the Spurrier era at Florida but also of the offensive revolution that has, over the past twenty-five years, rippled throughout the Southeastern Conference and ultimately football more broadly.
Spurrier didn’t invent The Mills Play, which would eventually come to be known simply as “Mills,” but he called it so often and so aggressively — and was so successful with it — that you’ll see the same set of pass routes labeled as “Mills” (or “Florida” or “Gator”) in playbooks of coaches who never coached under or played for the Ol’ Ball Coach.
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