Inside The Huskies

Mills Turns 18 This Week, Draws Accolade, Questionable to Return

The injured freshman offensive guard will celebrate his birthday on Thursday.
Dan Raley|
John Mills (72) walks through the Apple Cup, casting a huge shadow.
John Mills (72) walks through the Apple Cup, casting a huge shadow. | James Snook-Imagn Images

At the halfway point of the University of Washington football season, the honors keep coming for players up and down the roster.

On Monday, quarterback Demond Williams Jr. was named Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week for the second time, but on the first occasion without having to share the accolade with someone else.

On Tuesday, the Huskies' Jonah Coleman got the nod as a first-team midseason All-America running back by some analytics outfit called PFSN.

Then there was John Mills.

Also on Monday, the huge UW offensive guard was included on On3's midseason True Freshman All-America team, which considering how his season has gone, was quite a feat.

When that list was released, the 6-foot-6, 342-pound Mills hadn't played in nine days, sidelined by a foot injury.

Idle, but not forgotten.

Oh, there was one other thing.

Mills was still just 17, though not for long -- he celebrates his18th birthday on Thursday.

While people could vote for him as an exceptional albeit young football player , he still wasn't old enough at the beginning of the week to cast a ballot in a political election. He couldn't legally join the military, donate blood or apply for a credit card either. Of course, that's about to change.

Yet chances are, this national accolade might be the only real good news Mills receives all week.

While UW coach Jedd Fisch didn't rule Mills out of the Michigan game, he didn't sound overly optimistic that the first-year player would be back in the lineup as the Huskies' starting left offensive guard.

After all, for last Friday night's game against Rutgers, Mills rode around the sideline on a scooter specially designed for players with leg injuries, though he occasionally stopped and sood on both feet.

Still, it seems hard to believe that this first-year player from San Francisco -- who could be on everyone's All-America teams by the time he's a senior if not sooner -- will be ready to play this weekend in Ann Arbor.

To regress, Mills started each of the Huskies' first five games before he went down at Maryland in the third quarter.

After he had trainers surround him on the field and appear to examine his left shin, he walked off the field and then into the visitors' locker room for further treatment.

The good news about being 17 -- and 18 on Thursday -- is Mills is so young he should heal up fairly quickly and return to the lineup soon. It just doesn't seem that it will be at Michigan.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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