Feed The Beast: Mills Thankful For Second Chance

For some 30 minutes, Dedrick Mills freely shared his past, his present and his future.
 
Throughout the entire conversation, nobody could wipe the wide smile off the face of the Nebraska transfer running back.
 
"I always smile," Mills said. "I can't let life get me down. This is my second chance, so I appreciate it every day."
 
To be sure, Mills has persevered through some tough times.
 
A childhood house fire in which he and his three brothers knocked down a sealed door to escape.
 
Self-admitted bad decisions that cost him a scholarship at Georgia Tech.
 
A shoulder injury that sidelined Mills while he was already feeling down, some 1,500 miles away from home, adjusting to the culture of the desolate western Kansas plains.
 
Oh, and if you happen to ever catch Mills without a smile?
 
Don't fret.
 
That's his natural expression, he says, and he hates that people mistake it for him being upset.
 
"If I'm not smiling, people think I'm mad," Mills said. "That's just how I look. But I'm never really mad. I'm always happy. I always have a smile on my face. I like making other people's day."
 
The powerful, confident, driven Mills intends to make the day for many Nebraska football fans this season, thanks, in part, to lessons he's learned along his journey to Lincoln.
 
"Dedrick has learned responsibility, dealing with the obstacles, the stumbling blocks that come his way," said his mother, Sharon Mills. "He's pretty much learned how to be a man, instead of a little boy."
 
Strong Work Ethic
 
Whether Mills is Nebraska's starting running back on Aug. 31, or how many carries he sees in the Huskers' season opener, remains to be seen.
 
But suffice it to say Nebraska running backs coach Ryan Held has seen enough of Mills, and his work ethic, to include the Georgia native and Garden City Community College transfer among the mix.

"He's a sweater," Held said. "I mean, he is going to work hard and sweat. We've got to have a towel with him at all times because he works his rear off."
 
One towel won't work.
 
"I go through at least two towels in practice, not including the two little towels they give me," Mills said. "If I'm on the field, I'm going to work. I'm out there to play."
 
Oh, there's more.
 
"I'm going to work, and I'm going to make sure everybody around me works, too," Mills said. "I'm going to be holding everybody accountable for what they're supposed to be doing, and also hold myself accountable for what I'm supposed to do."
 
Mills will tell you his work ethic is a characteristic he wasn't necessarily taught, or learned from any one person.
 
Rather, he developed the trait throughout life's travails.
 
"I always had to work for what I had to get and what I wanted," Mills said. "I always had to work for it. There was nothing ever, ever given to me.
 
"At all. Period."
 
Overcoming Loss
 
The smoke was too heavy in the hallway, the heat too intense.
 
Stifling. Life threatening.
 
So Mills, age 11, and his three brothers joined forces to bust through a back door of his family's trailer house that had caught fire. (Adults had previously sealed the door because the mischievous boys had been sneaking out at night.)
 
At the time of the morning fire, which had originated from an outside air conditioning unit, seven people occupied the house in Waycross, Georgia – Mills and his three brothers, his cousin, and his two grandparents.
 
"We were not knowing what was going on," Mills said. "My grandma's in the kitchen, my granddaddy … I forget what he was doing.
 
"The only way left to get out of the house was the front door. And the hall was so small, and you had to come all the way down this hall … We couldn't even cross through it because of the smoke. We ended up kicking the back door down, me and my brothers. We were the only ones stuck in the back."
 
Sharon Mills had already left for one of her jobs as a housekeeper at a local hotel. She learned of the fire from a neighbor across the road who called her, and she headed home.
 
Fortunately, everybody had escaped. However, the fire destroyed the house.
 
"We didn't have nothing left after that," Dedrick said.
 
The freak accident displaced Mills, his three brothers, his cousin, his mother, his grandparents, Gloria and Leon Williams, his three uncles, his uncles' kids …
 
Imagine having to jostle for a place of crowded sleep at night.
 
Mills says he didn't have an easy life but also had no qualms about his childhood upbringing, acknowledging his mother and grandparents provided for him and his brothers the best they could.
 
"They sacrificed time, things they could be doing with their life," he said, "to make sure I'm good, to make sure my brothers are good."
 
Sharon worked two jobs and took extra shifts to make sure Dedrick and his brothers had what they needed – not what they wanted, but what they needed.
 
Mills considered himself lucky for merely being under a roof, no matter how many people shared it.
 
"I really don't have it as rough as a lot of people," Mills said. "I thank God for what I went through. I thank God for putting me in the position I'm in today, because if I didn't go through none of that, I wouldn't even be here."
 
After the fire, Mills and family members spent a few months living at a hotel. The local Red Cross greatly assisted with recovery efforts. So did a local church, and area middle schools and high schools, all of which raised enough funds to help the family find a new home in a brick house on a street corner in Waycross.
 
That's where Sharon lives today, now only with her parents and her youngest son.
 
What Could Have Been
 
Might have been a Heisman candidate for us.
 
Would've been a GREAT B-Back for us. I truly believe he would have broken records at GT.
 
Wish him the best in his career, I would love to see him break out.
 
Haven't been more excited about a player going into last season since joe ham. Sucks. But it suck more for him.
 
It hurts me inside that we lost beastmode Mills, the kid could have set records here for 4 years.
 
Those were comments from fans about Mills upon learning he'd lost his scholarship after his freshman season at Georgia Tech because of a violation of team rules.
 
Mills' transgressions have been well documented, and he fully admits fault.
 
"I was most definitely immature," Mills said. "I was mature in some ways, but as far as making decisions, doing stuff, managing money, doing all this stuff on my own – it was my first time being away from home on my own in my life.
 
"I felt like I was that man at Georgia Tech. I was the man at Georgia Tech. Rules really didn't apply to me. At that point I'm like, 'I'm free! I can do whatever. I can do this and that, with no consequences.'
 
"But in reality, whatever you do, there's always a consequence, for everything."
 
Paul Johnson, the former Georgia Tech coach who recruited and coached Mills, lamented having to tell his star running back he could no longer be with the program.
 
"He was outstanding as a freshman," Johnson said in phone interview. "He was one of our best players. We struggled through (his issues) and went through it, up and down, and he just finally ran out of chances.
 
"The school had a policy, and there really wasn't anything I could do."
 
Sharon Mills remembers clearly the turning point in her son's life.
 
"I had just got off the phone with him before they let him go, and he was all happy-go-lucky," she said. "Then when he called me crying, I'm like, 'What's wrong with you? You were just …'
 
"He said, 'Momma, they let me go.' He was pretty upset."
 
Indeed, because Mills remembers his nickname from high school, "the beast," and how his mother spread the word in the stands at Georgia Tech games. She encouraged fans to yell, "Feed the beast! Feed the beast!" whenever Mills got the football.
 
"They knew who the beast was," Mills said. "When they handed me the ball, the whole crowd started to get wild. They knew once I get the ball in my hands, they knew where it's going."
 
So did Johnson.
 
"He's got really good football sense and awareness," Johnson said. "He's really physical, and he loves to play the game. He's a very talented player. Very hard to tackle."
 
Mills loved his beast nickname and made sure he lived up to it. He compares himself to Herschel Walker or Marshawn Lynch.
 
"I'm pounding, pounding, pounding. I need it," Mills said. "I want them to feel me before I feel them."
 
Held will back those words.
 
"When we go with our power stuff and it's more downhill, the pile is going that way when he hits it," Held said. "He's probably one of the best backs I've had, in four years at the places I've been, of hitting it downhill."
 
Mills became the second freshman in Johnson's career to start a season opener, and he became the first Georgia Tech player to be a multi-time ACC Rookie of the Week since receiver Calvin Johnson in 2004. He rushed for 771 yards his freshman season, averaging 5.1 per carry, and earned Most Valuable Player in the 2016 Gator Bowl after rushing for 169 yards on a career-high 31 carries.
 
All of this made Johnson's delivery of bad news all the more difficult.
 
"He really is a good kid," Johnson said. "It wasn't like he got in trouble or anything. At that time, he was young and immature."
 
On The Road Back
 
Stanley Jean-Baptiste. Lavonte David. Jermarcus Hardrick. Brandon Kinnie.
 
They all starred at community colleges in Kansas before making names for themselves at Nebraska.
 
Mills wants to add his name to the list after a productive sophomore season at Garden City in which he ran for 1,358 yards and an NJCAA-best 19 touchdowns. But the trip to southwestern Kansas did as much for Mills off the field as it did on.
 
"When I went to junior college," he said, "it made me think about all the things I did, all the stuff I was going through and the decisions I made that wasn't right.
 
"It made me see, 'You were at a (Power Five) school, and you did all this and you gave it all up. You pissed it all away by wanting to do what you want to do, by choosing to make the wrong decisions,' which I did. I fault myself for that because at the end of the day, it was my decision. It's stuff I regret."
 
Mills steered clear of trouble. He clamped down academically and fought through various challenges before earning eligibility. A shoulder injury his first season at Garden City that limited him to a mere seven carries didn't help matters.
 
"I almost gave up, thinking I wasn't ever going to make it back," Mills said. "But Nebraska gave me the offer, and I committed right away."
 
Nebraska was the first school to offer Mills, and he wasted no time in saying yes. Other schools, like Auburn, Arkansas and Kentucky, later came calling, but Mills wasn't interested in listening.
 
"Although I did get other offers, I wouldn't trade Nebraska for nobody in the world, because I met the coaches. When I met the coaches? Oh, my God," he said, referring to Held, Scott Frost and Jovan Dewitt, the three most responsible for his recruitment.
 
"They took anything anybody else could tell me away. You couldn't tell me nothing else. I'm hearing what Coach Frost is saying, I'm hearing what Coach Held is saying, I'm hearing what Coach Dewitt is saying, and all the other coaches on staff.
 
"They treat us like their kids. They treat us like we're their kids, for real. I appreciate every coach on this staff."
 
So, too, does his mother, who's convinced Nebraska is the right place for her son.
 
"I love Nebraska. I love Coach Frost. I love Coach Held. I love Coach Dewitt," Sharon Mills said. "What I love about them is, I'm the type of parent I don't want nobody to be soft on him. I want them to teach him how to be a man, because I'm a single parent, and there's certain things a woman can't explain.
 
"With the coaches who they are, they pretty much taught him how to be a man and how to stand up and take responsibility on his own. Coach Held, he ain't ever gonna let up off of him. Coach Held just pushes him. He stays on top of everything."
 
Sharon Mills is trying to make plans to see her son's first game on Aug. 31, which means a long drive to Lincoln.
 
"I'm scared to death of flying," she said.
 
Once, Sharon made flight plans to Garden City for a surprise trip to see Dedrick. She boarded the plane. She buckled her seatbelt.
 
Then she got up and left.
 
"I was terrified."
 
She laughs and says she's thankful Dedrick has no fears.
 
Happy In Lincoln
           
Yes, Mills has heard the kind, positive words his coaches and teammates have been saying about him in fall camp.
 
He's not afraid to admit they're true.
 
"What I've heard about me is I'm a strong, powerful running back, and that's pretty much true," he said. "And I run with authority. I feel like I own the field when I run."
 
Held sees it more and more with each practice rep.
 
"He's a guy that comes out every day ready to go in practice," Held said. "That's what I love about him. Smile on his face. I don't ever have to worry about him working. He gets after it. I really like where he's at."
 
So does Mills, in many ways.
 
"I'm a good guy," Mills said. "The team loves to be around me. I love to be around the team. I make everybody happy that's around me. Everybody makes me happy."
 
Mills treasures the family environment the coaches have created. And Lincoln in general feels like home to him.
 
"Everybody says, 'Good morning.' Other places, you've got people that's kind of rude. They don't say, 'Good morning' to you," Mills said. "I see random people around Lincoln and they say, 'Good morning.' I get on the elevator where I'm staying, I see random people and they say, 'Hey, how you doin'? How was your day?'
 
"I'm like, 'Whoa, where did that come from?' I ain't ever heard of this. I'm not used to nice people like this. Being here, I'm just at 'wow' for real."
 
Off the field, Mills stays at home a lot. He's learned his lessons, and knows the importance of holding himself accountable for his actions.
 
"What we choose to do is not only affecting us, it's affecting our team and the coaching staff," Mills said. "What we do, we have to hold each other accountable for the things that are going around and for the decisions we choose to make."
 
Johnson, now retired from Georgia Tech, is pleased to hear the progress Mills is making in Lincoln.
 
"I'm really happy for him," Johnson said. "He's a great kid, and he's a tremendous football player. He loves to play the game, and he's a really talented kid.
 
"Hopefully, he'll take this opportunity and run with it."
 
That's exactly what Mills intends to do – for himself, for his family and for his team.
 
"Everybody in that running back room I love like my own brother, for real," Mills said. "Ain't nobody going to mess with us, period.
 
"When we get on the field, we're going to show everybody why we're the running backs of Nebraska."
 
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.