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Anthony Miller Tells Bears Fans "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"


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As Anthony Miller rehabbed in Memphis, 550 miles away from Halas Hall, the Bears were on his mind: 'Chicago hasn't seen how I can play yet'

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Bears wide receiver Anthony Miller returned to his hometown of Memphis, Tenn., for a visit in March.

Colleen KaneContact ReporterChicago Tribune

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/ct-spt-bears-anthony-miller-memphis-shoulder-injury-20190404-story.html

 

The Billy J. Murphy Athletic Complex is buzzing as the Memphis football team prepares for spring practice, but Anthony Miller has no trouble navigating the commotion.

The Bears wide receiver walks into a training room filled with players on tables and in tubs and doles out handshake-hugs to everybody he sees, stopping only for a few moments to take photos with a group of recruits.

His return goes on like this, with frequent stops as his old crew greets him, often with jokes about making the big money. It’s a reminder that Miller is only a year removed from his All-America senior season with the Tigers, even if the many changes in his life make him feel as if it has been longer.

“I really don’t know some of the younger guys,” Miller says. “That’s how old I’m getting.”

Until May 2018, Miller, 24, spent his entire football career playing in the Memphis area, so he has measuring sticks all around the city to show how far he has come. But at his second home at Halas Hall roughly 550 miles away, he hopes he’s only beginning after a rookie season in which he had 33 catches for 423 yards and a team-leading seven touchdowns in 15 regular-season games.

That he played his first year with an injured left shoulder he says painfully dislocated “maybe five or six times” makes Miller believe there’s more to come with the Bears. He had surgery to repair the torn labrum in January, and the rehab hasn’t dulled the confidence the Bears coaches embraced last season.

At one point on Miller’s tour, he stops at a wall featuring former Memphis players who went on to the NFL — running back DeAngelo Williams, defensive tackle Dontari Poe, kicker Stephen Gostkowski.

“I should be right here,” Miller says, jabbing his finger at the wall and moving in closer. “Put my face right here. You know what I mean?”

A slowdown

Miller and his father, Tony, are standing in the Elmore Park Middle School parking lot bantering about the son’s early days on defense.

It’s just past noon on a late-March Thursday, and the duo and their pastor, Donald Johnson, are on the second stop of a mini-jaunt around Miller’s Memphis roots. This site, where a couple of classes of students are outside running through lessons, confuses Miller at first, and it takes a while to find his bearings.

A football field once sat where the school stands, and the old school was where the parking lot is now.

A reconstruction project several years ago at the Bartlett, Tenn., school near where Miller grew up changed the site, but it’s familiar enough for the group to reminisce about Miller’s childhood football glory.

Before he settled on being a wide receiver, Miller also played running back, quarterback, cornerback and defensive end here for the Elmore Park youth team nicknamed the Packers.

“I played D-end because I was quick off the edge,” Miller says. “I could get there. Size didn’t matter back then.”

Chicago hasn’t seen how I can play yet. Really I was playing games with like one arm, making it happen. This year I’ve got two, so watch out. — Anthony Miller

His father interjects: “The actual reason? He was the fastest thing on the team, but his first carry, they gave him the ball and he ran backward 20 yards. We said, ‘Well, maybe if he’s fast we’ll put him at defensive end.’”

“You asked about defense — how did he get to that story?” Miller says. “He just wanted to tell that story.”

Of course, Miller quickly also found his bearings on the football field, too, and became a force. Tony, a former wide receiver, coached Miller’s youth track and football teams and was a tough, straightforward instructor who would run any drill to make his players better, Miller says.

Tony says his son was “nonstop.”

“He wanted every rep,” Tony says. “One of the coaches told him then, ‘Let me allow the other players to get reps. You’re good. I’m trying to get them to your level.’ Once that happened, we took off as an organization. We started beating teams that historically would beat up on Elmore Park.”

As Tony continues to talk, Miller takes a football out to a grassy patch near the school, and his father notes he should only toss it around with his right arm.

For the second time in his career, that “nonstop” kid must slow down.

Miller’s first dislocation during a Bears game was in a September victory over the Cardinals. Every time his left shoulder popped out over the course of the season, he felt his body go limp with the stress and pain of the injury, until medical staff popped it back in and he could play again.

Each time, it became worse, and Miller’s production tailed off in December to four catches for 25 yards, though he had three catches in the playoff loss to the Eagles. Miller is proud he got through the season while wearing a brace.

It was tough, he says, “but I’ve been dealing with injuries and stuff before. I can keep playing.”

Before he became Memphis’ all-time leader in catches, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns, Miller was a walk-on out of nearby Christian Brothers High School. He sat out his first two college seasons, first as a redshirt and then with a right shoulder injury that required surgery, similar to his current problem with his left shoulder.

He didn’t realize a chance to truly prove himself until his third year.

Now he’s striving for a similarly delayed NFL emergence after his January surgery. He started his rehab in Memphis but also has spent time in Chicago, and Tony says a recent follow-up visit to the doctor went “extremely well.”

Miller doesn’t expect to practice much in the offseason until he is fully healed, saying he “can’t play around” at this level. But he says Bears coach Matt Nagy will be “getting a beast coming back” when he is ready to return.

“Chicago hasn’t seen how I can play yet,” Miller says. “Every time I tried to stiff arm, it would come out, or if I ran kind of crazy, it would come out. Really I was playing games with like one arm, making it happen. This year I’ve got two, so watch out.”

He’s not afraid of the grind to get there either.

Grounded and grinding

Before Johnson departs the parking lot for church business, he calls out to Miller to ask when he’s leaving town.

“After church, right?” Johnson says. “Don’t play. Don’t play.”

Miller started the afternoon tour at Johnson’s Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church, a newer tan-and-brown building with a towering white steeple off a busy road near where Miller grew up in Bartlett, Tenn.

His parents, Tony and Andrea, made sure he spent plenty of time there as a kid between his sports exploits, participating in youth ministry, playing the drums and helping the church’s video crew, Johnson says.

Bears wide receiver Anthony Miller

Photos of Anthony Miller, who the Bears selected with the No. 51 overall pick in the 2018 NFL draft.

The church is proud of Miller’s path, and evidence hangs in its hallway — a college graduation photo within a collage of the church’s youth, a framed shot of Miller in a Bears uniform and a small photo of two vans.

One Sunday in November, when the church was celebrating its 155th anniversary, Miller’s face appeared on a video screen during a service.

He donated the vans to the church, naming them after the son of an administrator who had died years earlier and the longtime church bus driver. Miller was playing for the Bears that day, so he sent a recorded message to present them to the congregation, 50 of whom had rented a bus to drive to Chicago for his first Monday night game at Soldier Field earlier in the season. Miller scored his first NFL touchdown in front of them in that game.

When Miller returns for services now, he’ll often oblige for photos or autographs, Johnson says.

“One of the things we were all so proud of, he wasn’t a distant guy to us that he would come by our church. He was actually a faithful member,” Johnson says. “At Memphis, he played somewhere that Saturday, came back Saturday night, and Sunday morning he was at church. Of course, his parents insisted on that as well. Even when he was not staying at the house, he was staying on campus, that was already instilled with him.”

Beneath the confidence Miller radiates, those he grew up around say there’s still a grounded quality inherited in part from his parents.

Tony speaks proudly about how his son vaulted from walk-on to second-round draft pick in five years after going without major college offers out of high school.

“The hardships a walk-on has to go through, it’s so tough having to show your worth not only to the other players but to the coaching staff,” Tony says. “He had to endure all of that, and it’s incredible what he overcame. … To go from walk-on to first team All-American, you can make a movie out of it.”

Miller says the drive came from a desire not to waste an opportunity and a work ethic he has attributed to the environment in which he grew up. During his first media session after the Bears drafted him, he touted the “Memphis grind” he would bring to Chicago, a place he now believes has a similar toughness after interactions with fans.

“Nothing’s given to anybody around here, so we all work to get to where we’re at,” Miller says.

To take a step forward this season, that work will have to continue in the training room and beyond.

‘Don’t doubt me’

After walking through Memphis’ indoor field house where coaches “killed us” with mat drills and the row of outdoor practice fields where he reminisces about beating Ole Miss, Miller stops at the wide receivers room.

Memphis coach Mike Norvell is showing Miller the upgrades he is making, joking he will send Miller the bill.

This is where Miller started studying the intricacies of his position, but the learning curve became much larger when he advanced to the Bears. Wide receivers coach Mike Furrey said early in the 2018 season that Miller was still raw in his understanding of the game, and Miller learned the NFL way of doing things is a little different than college.

“(In the NFL), Coach really puts it on you to understand and know what you have to do,” Miller says. “He’s going to explain it to you the first time, so you better get it the first time. … In here, it’s more structured. Coach is looking for somebody who sleeps. He’ll make you stand up if you sleep. You’ve got to write notes. The NFL, they put it all on you to make sure you’re doing your job.”

The Bears expect more from Miller this season. At the NFL owners meetings last week, Nagy said Miller physically has “all the tools in the world” but needs to take the next step mentally.

“Instead of just trying to just understand where he lines up in a play and in a formation, understand what the other three guys on the field are doing within a route,” Nagy said. “Now you need to know what do the other three guys do and when am I getting the ball versus what coverage?”

In the last year, Miller says he has matured, better understands fundamentals, knows how to maintain his body and is learning to minimize outside distractions. But he is certain there is more to come as he enters another year playing with quarterback Mitch Trubisky.

“I’m satisfied, but I’m really not because there’s a lot I left on the field,” Miller says. “There’s a lot I and Mitch may have missed. I really want to get that chemistry down this offseason because as we continue to grow, those misses are going to become real slim.”

Before he heads to a rehab session for his shoulder, Miller ends his Memphis tour in the sitting room where the team celebrates its NFL stars.

Beyond seeing his name on the wall of Tigers NFL greats, he has statistical goals for this coming season — 1,000 yards and 10 touchdowns. No, wait, make it 12 touchdown catches, which would have tied for fourth in the NFL in 2018.

“I just feel I can get that,” Miller says. “Last year, you guys said, ‘Could I get six touchdowns?’ And I was telling you it was too low, and I got seven. So I’m telling you 12 this time. Hopefully I can get over that.

“Don’t doubt me on that. I’ve got two arms now.”

ckane@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ChiTribKane

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Love how aggressive he is once he has the ball, the kid could probably be a hell of a RB if he was put there. 

 

If he stays healthy he can easily supplant Gabriel this season IMO, I'd love to see him and Robinson be the 1/2 for the next few years. 

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