Barring something unforeseen happening between now and the beginning of the season, Davis Mills will be the Houston Texans‘ starting quarterback in 2022. New Texans coach Lovie Smith, who served as the team’s defensive coordinator last season, liked what he saw from the former Stanford product in his debut year in the league.
“If you look at all of my comments about Davis, I am a believer in him and what he’s going to do,” Smith said Monday, per NFL.com. “Eventually, he’s got to do it all on the football field consistently where everybody loves him, every snap and all of that. Before a guy has played enough to do all of that, he shows up every day. Availability, he is available, and he has recruited other players to come here, and what the guys see him doing is just working.”
The team’s third-round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, Mills started 11 games last season, completing nearly 67 percent of his passes at an average of 6.8 yards per attempt while throwing for 16 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, though he compiled just a 2-9 record as a starter along the way. Still, he showed improvement over the second half of the year, much of which has been credited to offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton.
“I believe in him, Pep Hamilton, second year in system, so many good things that he did,” Smith said, per Pro Football Talk. “And that’s as a rookie. The improvement you see from year one to year two is normally a big improvement and that’s what we’re going to see from him.”
The Texans surely need to provide Mills with a better infrastructure if they want him to take a step forward, and the good news on that front is they have additional draft assets with which to do so, thanks to the Deshaun Watson trade. The additional assets Houston has will also allow the front office to quickly pivot in another direction if Mills does not show the desired progress this season.
