Intriguing prospect.
BOWLING GREEN — Multiple times per day, Scott Miller refreshed his email in search of an offer that never came. In the end, the undersized receiver from Bowling Green was not granted the chance to participate at the NFL combine, an opportunity Miller believes his college career warranted.
Miller also was left out of the Senior Bowl. And the NFLPA Bowl. The East-West Shrine Game, too.
Interest from agents was low.
All of this has felt like a party to which Miller was not invited — and that’s just fine with him.
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He’s lived this story before.
“It felt exactly like the end of high school,” Miller said.
Bowling Green was the only NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision team to offer Miller a scholarship; after a standout career with the Falcons, the NFL draft process has been awfully similar (the NFL draft begins Thursday night and runs through Saturday).
Miller, despite leading the Mid-American Conference in receptions per game and receiving yards, was even left off the All-MAC first team. So, for the next few months, he made a screenshot of the first team the background of his phone as motivation.
It didn’t help matters that Miller suffered a broken hand at the first practice of the Tropical Bowl, his lone invitation to an all-star game. Only a couple of NFL teams showed even cursory interest there, so he threw all of his efforts into training for his BGSU pro day.
He aimed to address the same concerns that college programs had — that he was too small and not athletic enough to overcome a frame listed at 5-foot-11, 166 pounds during his final BGSU season.
His pro day was stellar. Most teams timed him around 4.3 seconds in the 40-yard dash, putting him among the fastest players in the draft.
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“I think pro day was very beneficial to validate what his on-the-field play already said, which is, ‘I’m fast, and you can’t catch me,’” said Miller’s agent, Justin Turner. “He put up the numbers that matched the game speed that so many guys see but sometimes can’t evaluate.”
He benched 225 pounds 15 times and had a vertical leap of 34 inches, and NFL teams have showed some late interest in Miller since then. He earned top-30 visits from the Seattle Seahawks and his hometown Chicago Bears, the latter of which also ran Miller through a private workout.
“I had a really solid day and did pretty much everything I want to do,” he said. “I think once these scouts actually saw me as an athlete, I think that finally broke some stereotypes or some things people think of me when they actually saw me run a 4.3 40 or put up 15 reps on the bench press and put up those kind of numbers.
“I think that helped me kind of get a little bit on people’s radar screens.”
In college, Miller seemed to save his best for the Falcons’ top opponents. Against the three Power Five teams BG played in 2018, plus its four MAC opponents who finished with a winning record — Buffalo, Ohio, Toledo, and Western Michigan — Miller racked up 47 catches, 835 yards, and nine touchdowns.
His best national performance was the season opener at Oregon, during which he torched the Ducks for 13 catches, 166 receiving yards, and two touchdowns.
He finished as the third-ranked receiver in BGSU history and caught a touchdown on his final snap as a Falcon.
Once again, however, Miller finds himself simply asking for a chance to prove he belongs at the next level.
“My mentality going into it was to do everything in my capability to give myself the best opportunity I can,” he said. “I wanted to look myself in the mirror when everything is said and done and say I did everything I possibly could’ve to make it. I think, so far, I’ve done that
