Case Keenum‘s injury established some clarity for the Texans’ quarterback depth chart. Davis Mills will enter the season in the backup role, and despite C.J. Stroud having quickly usurped the two-year starter, Houston still has Mills in its plans.
The Texans and Mills have agreed to a one-year extension, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The former third-round pick’s contract is worth $5MM in new money, NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport tweets. This puts Mills in line with a host of veteran backups added in recent offseasons.
This $5MM-per-year number matches where the Panthers and Broncos went for their 2023 backups (Andy Dalton, Jarrett Stidham), and the one-year, $5MM number comes in at the same rate the Giants gave Drew Lock this year. The Texans also jumped into the QB2 market last year, giving Keenum a two-year, $6.25MM deal. While Mills’ guarantees are not yet known, the Texans are planning to keep at least one of their reserve QBs around beyond 2024.
Keenum’s deal expires after the season, and it will be interesting to see if Houston carries the pact on its IR throughout the year. A preseason foot injury will sideline Keenum for at least three months. The Texans placed the 36-year-old passer on season-ending IR last week. Keenum started both the games Stroud missed due to a concussion last season, but Mills — the team’s primary starter from 2021-22 — received work as well.
Chosen 67th overall in 2021, Mills effectively became Houston’s placeholder while the team first dealt with the Deshaun Watson drama and then while it waited on picking a successor. The Texans traded Watson for a bounty of draft picks in 2022, but as that year did not bring a promising QB class, the team waited. Mills ended up making 26 starts from 2021-22; bottom-tier Texans teams essentially playing out the string won just five of those games.
For his career, the Stanford alum is a 62.8% passer with a 35-to-25 TD-INT ratio. Mills has averaged 6.5 yards per attempt for his career; he led the league in INTs (15) in 2022 despite being benched for part of that season. The Texans chose Stroud in 2023 and then took calls on both Keenum and Mills. The team ended up liking its three-QB setup last year, but with Keenum out, it will count on Mills as the backup this season. Wednesday’s deal certainly points to Mills keeping that role into 2025 as well.
I hope mills gets a chance somewhere one day.
To think he’s probably the best or 2nd best QB from the 2021 draft
I think even getting this far is a good outcome for Mills.
I think he will. Houston is a great gig for him so far.
Smart to lock ip a capable young backup.
I was never a Davis Mills believer – but as a backup this is solid.
Trevor in Jacksonville has a career passer rating just 2 points better than Mills but is earning $50MM more a season. I’m no math expert but something really seems out of whack there.
Judging two quarterbacks with wildly different bodies of work by one bad metric is pretty out of whack, yes.
Wildly different bodies of work? A QB is someone who throws passes right? You’re trying to make it sound as if one of these guys is a nuclear scientist while the other is a potato farmer…lol.
That’s not what body of work means. Lawrence has played twice as much football in the NFL and almost three times as much football in college.
Joe Flacco has a ton more experience than Lawrence, plus the ring, so does that mean he should be getting paid in excess of $55MM per year?
How you’re not currently working for an NFL team is a mystery to us all…
I think Mills makes a great back up. Man will be a back up the next 10 to 15 years and bank probably 75 to 100 mil… I want that life!
I just saw an article on Bleacher Report about backup QBs and how hard it is to find and keep a quality one on the field. 67 QBs started a game last year. I saw the attempt made with the practice squad rule that was shot down by the NFLPA. The solution should be to add a 54th spot to the roster specifically for an emergency QB. It would give the players more security than being a weekly call up to the main roster and would allow the QB to get used to the system.
If 67 QBs started a game last year that simply means 35 QBs that weren’t at the top of the depth chart got a start. How many of those 35 were actually the third guy on the depth chart though? The schedule consists of 272 games so if less than 27 games saw third stringers get a start, the emergency rule is going to impact less than 10% of all games played. I don’t think that warrants adjusting the roster limit (which is going to be increased in the near future when the 18 game schedule comes into play).