Philadelphia Eagles: Jalen Mills far exceeded anyone’s expectations

When the Philadelphia Eagles drafted Jalen Mills with the 233rd overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, it felt rather inconsequential.

Now granted, Mills wasn’t like every player selected in the seventh round. He was a four-year contributor at a Power 5 Conference stalwart – one quite literally known as DBU – who logged at cornerback, nickleback, and safety and even returned to the field after suffering a season-ending injury during his senior season in Baton Rouge. His fellow Tigers liked him, as did the 2015 All-American committee, but between a slew of injuries, an underwhelming showing at the 2016 Draft Combine, and an eventually dropped charge of suspicion of second-degree battery, Mills’ chances of becoming an NFL player were very much up in the air.

Howie Roseman was ultimately the man who made Mills’ NFL dreams come true on that fateful day in April but not before selecting another cornerback, Blake Countess, one pick earlier in the sixth round.

Typically, that would be the end of the story. There’s a non-insignificant number of seventh-round picks who never log a snap for the team that drafted them and a significantly higher figure that never become full-time starters period, let alone earn second contracts.

But, in a weird twist of fate, Mills outlasted Countess, Carson Wentz, and every other member of the Philadelphia Eagles’ 2016 draft class to earn a one-year extension in 2020 and work his way towards a four-year, $24 million deal in free agency with the New England Patriots.

Will Jalen Mills ultimately live up to his new contract? Only time will tell, but regardless of how he performs in Foxborough, number 31/21 will forever be fondly remembered as the Green Goblin in the City of Brotherly Love.

Jalen Mills embraced the Philadelphia Eagles like few others.

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When Jalen Mills turned up to his very first Philadelphia Eagles training camp sporting a neon green fauxhawk, it was rather apparent he was far from your typical seventh-round rookie.

Despite his meager draft standings, in addition to being tasked with switching from safety/nickel to the perimeter, Mills brought a certain swag to the field that no Eagles cornerback we’d seen around these parts since… Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie? Asante Samuel? Eric Allen? could match.

Though Mills’ rookie season started off slow, splitting his time between defensive sub-packages and special teams, the legend of “The Green Goblin” grew considerably in Week 10, when Mills approached Jim Schwartz at halftime and explicitly asked to go one-on-one with the best receiver in the game, Julio Jones, after he thoroughly torched Leodis McKelvin, and really anyone the Birds threw at him, in the first quarter.

Jones finished out that game with four more catches for 62 yards but was held out of the endzone, thanks in no small part to Mills’ pressing style.

That game is particularly significant not because it marked the Eagles’ fifth win of a season they would ultimately finish with an 8-8 record, but because it proved that Mills could be a starter at the NFL level.

Granted, that game marked the second and final start of Mills’ rookie season, but he would go on to start every game he would appear in for the Eagles from there on out, 36 at cornerback, and 15 more as a strong safety. Mills started 18 games during the Eagles’ championship run across from 2017 preseason acquisition Ronald Darby, picked off three passes, and defensed 14 more on the way to the Super Bowl, all the while embodying the “Underdog” attitude that near-singlehandedly pushed the Birds past Bill Belicheck to bring their first-ever Lombardi Trophy back to South Philly.

Sidebar: How crazy is it that Mills and Nelson Agholor are going to be reunited in New England all of these years later? Hm… it’s almost like someone isn’t over that fateful game.

Was Mills always perfect? No, one could actually make the argument that Mills was an incredibly imperfect cornerback during his tenure with the Eagles due to his lack of long-speed ad eagerness to get too handsy more than five yards down the line, but did number 31/21 let a flag affect his confidence?

Heavens no.

Whether touted as a hero for his efforts or absolutely revealed for his eagerness to put up with a wagging finger even after surrendering a big play, Mills never let the bone-crushing outside pressure of playing football in the City of Brotherly Love get to him and instead locked and re-loaded for the next play regardless of down or distance.

No matter how often he was shamed on Twitter, booed in the Linc, or just generally classified as a bust – as if any seventh-round pick can be labeled a bust – Mills wore a midnight green jersey with pride regardless of the number on it and was willing to do whatever was needed to put his team in the best position to succeed moving forward, even if it meant moving back to cornerback to cover for an ailing Avonte Maddox.

Could Mills have returned to the team in 2021 and remained a steady contributor under new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon? Yes. By Mills’ own admission, he was excited to see how he fit into Gannon’s scheme and likely could have been a starter on the outside, in the slot, or back at strong safety, but at this point, no one is really going to fault him for chasing the money and doing what’s right for his career.

If the first day of free agency is of any indication, it’s not like the Eagles are going to be big spenders in free agency anyway; why lock the 26-year-old in for the remainder of his prime when playing K’Vonn Wallace instead will have no real effect on the team’s win-loss record?

So Jalen Mills, the “potentially-no-longer-Green Goblin”, good luck in New England. While you may go down as one of the more polarizing players to grace the midnight green in recent memory, you unquestionably represented the Philadelphia Eagles as well as anyone over the past five years and have finally been awarded a long-term contract for those efforts. Not too shabby for a finger-wagging seventh-round pick many dismissed for being slow with short arms.