The three Mills siblings — the oldest, 26-year-old Erin, is an attorney in Atlanta — were gathered together at their parents’ home in Fulton, Ga., anxiously waiting to see how things played out. Ali, who’s 24, said the Texans had phoned during the second round to tell Davis they would be drafting him if were still available, although she said they didn’t sound confident that he would still be around when they finally entered the fray with the 67th pick.
The tension in the room grew palpable when Minnesota went on the clock, one selection ahead of Houston. The Vikings, after all, were also in the market for a quarterback. But they tabbed Texas A&M’s Kellen Mond and, when Mills’ phone rang almost simultaneously, “we all went just dead quiet,” she said.
The celebration that followed, however, was anything but.
Texans general manager Nick Caserio later explained his decision by touting Mills’ pedigree, saying he “played in a good offensive system, played for a good coach, has pretty good size, fairly accurate with the ball, smart, makes fairly good decisions. Coach (David) Shaw does a great job with their program offensively. He some of the attributes that a quarterback that we like and possess and played well with his opportunities when he was on the field, so it was a situation where we like the player, we spent time with him before the draft, did our research, did our homework.”