Miller credits maturity on field to new interests off it

At the time, Missouri’s 2018 Black and Gold spring scrimmage looked like it would springboard linebacker Aubrey Miller Jr. into regular playing time. Miller, then a rising sophomore, showcased his athleticism and explosiveness, making play after play with the second-team defense. He finished as the game’s leading tackler with six solo stops and 10 total tackles.

Instead, Miller points to the scrimmage as the start of a spiral that left him “depressed.” The playing time never came, and throughout last season, Miller questioned whether he wanted to continue playing football.

“It was just to the point I felt like I was broken,” Miller said. “I didn’t want to play ball no more. ... I just wanted to quit, man. I wanted to stay in my room and never come out.”

Eventually, Miller made peace with the sport — or, at least, its place in his life. He did so by finding new interests outside of it. He started acting in the Mizzou new plays series, improved his grades, joined a fraternity.

As a result, even though he is listed as the backup at weakside linebacker on Missouri’s Week One depth chart, Miller is enjoying football once again. It has been evident in his performance. The coaching staff has made it clear that, while sophomore Nick Bolton will start in Week One, Miller will play a role this season.

“He’s done awesome,” head coach Barry Odom said during fall camp. “The best part of what he has done in his entire career has been the last 10 days of practice.”

Watch Miller during and after a Missouri practice and it might be difficult to believe he could ever feel depressed. When he’s not participating in a drill, he’s usually dancing. After one fall camp practice, he snuck into a scrum of media members and pretended to interview safety Tyree Gillespie. The first thing anyone mentions about Miller is usually his personality.

“He’s always been a fireball,” said Rodney Saulsberry, who coached Miller at Whitehaven high school in Memphis. “He’s full of energy, and his energy is contagious.”

“He just has a bunch of energy and loves to make you laugh, tries to have fun with everybody,” wide receiver Jalen Knox added. “You just kind of gravitate towards him and want to be around him.”

Miller admits he thought highly of himself when he arrived on Missouri’s campus, and even more so after he saw the field as a true freshman. He played mostly special teams, but his athleticism, combined with the fact that he returned from a cracked bone in his leg after missing just three games, generated hype for his sophomore season. The hype reached its zenith after the Black and Gold game. In Miller’s mind and those of many fans, he seemed destined to play regular snaps in 2018 while establishing himself as the heir to Terez Hall’s starting spot at weakside linebacker.

Instead, Miller saw the field sparingly, recording just two tackles all of last season. Bolton, a true freshman, passed him on the depth chart, and he didn’t participate in two games.

In some ways, Miller’s passionate personality exacerbated the struggles. He chafed at not receiving more snaps. When he did see the field, he struggled to play within the defensive system, trying to rely on his instincts and athleticism as he had in high school. Sometimes, that resulted in a tackle for loss or a big hit. More often, it caused him to overshoot a gap or miss an assignment.

“He’s always been energetic and all that kind of stuff, but that don’t matter if you don’t know where you’re going and if you’re putting yourself out of position,” said defensive coordinator Ryan Walters.

The lost season crushed Miller. Teammates said the usually boisterous linebacker became aloof. He felt like there was no payoff for an offseason of hard work. Worse, he believed that, by not living up to his own expectations, he had let down his family and friends back in Memphis.

“I thought I was doing everything I needed to do,” he said. “... It was very frustrating, just because, too, I felt like I was letting a lot of people down back at home. A lot of people forgot my name. There’s a lot of stuff like that that just comes with it. Me being such an up guy, it just kind of hurt.”

Miller credits his parents for talking him through the dark days. Eventually, he adopted the attitude “enough is enough” and decided it was time to “find my way out of the hole.”

He did so by taking a step back from the football field, realizing there was more to his identity than success on the gridiron and finding new outlets for his passion.

For starters, Miller decided to take his studies more seriously. His pride was audible as he reported that he made the Dean’s List last spring, earning a semester grade-point average over 3.5 and boosting his cumulative GPA above 3.0. He also enrolled in a theater class and performed in two plays, including an hour-long production called The Wall. He sought out black culture classes on campus, and he joined the Omega Phi Psi fraternity along with teammates Jamal Brooks and Tre’Vour Wallace-Simms.

“My way out of the hole was actually trying to join other activities, actually having fun with school,” Miller said. “I wasn’t the type of dude who had fun in school in high school, but now school is fun to me.”

Miller credits the fraternity for teaching him patience and humility. The day before this year’s Black and Gold scrimmage, he was initiated, alongside Brooks and Wallace-Simms. As part of the initiation ceremony, Miller shaved his head and his eyebrows. When he arrived at the locker room for the scrimmage, his teammates oohed and aahed, joking that they couldn’t tell the trio apart due to their lack of hair. With a smile, Miller said he was “ugly for a little bit.”

Almost exactly a year after the moment he pinpointed as the start of his downward spiral, Miller felt happier, more humble and hungry.

“Me joining that fraternity, it really taught me a lot,” Miller said. “It really humbled me, it really showed me that everything is a process. So really that kind of was the main thing that helped me realize that every negative thing is not negative, but God trying to tell me some way and somehow in a positive way. I feel like that’s how he giving me my messages now.”

Miller’s teammates and coaches have observed several differences in him since last season. For one, he’s back to his loud, fun-loving self.

“During last fall, he got a little down on himself, was more quiet, to himself, didn’t really talk much,” Bolton said. “Now he’s back to being himself: loud, jumping around at practice, cracking jokes. He’s even cracking jokes with (linebackers coach Vernon) Hargreaves during our meetings and stuff.”

He has also matured as a football player, dedicating himself to learning the playbook and accepting responsibility when he makes a mistake. Hargreaves said Miller has learned when to rein in his fiery voice and when to use it to motivate the other linebackers. As his performance has improved on the field, Hargreaves said, Miller has become more of a leader among the position group.

“He’s starting to figure it out,” Hargreaves said. “That’s exciting for us because it adds depth and what he brings on the field in terms of the energy and all those types of things. Now as opposed to just being loud, he’s effective.”

That’s been the key to Miller’s transformation both on and off the football field: striking a balance. Finding harmony between football and the other talents that comprise his identity allowed him to get back to enjoying the sport. Balancing his newfound knowledge of the playbook with his naturally aggressive instincts on the field has made him a likely contributor and a vocal leader.

“The personality, presence and all that is a plus, but it’s the on-field production, that’s what gets you on the field,” said Walters. “Otherwise you’re just a cheerleader. That, his production on the field, is what is going to get him on the field, and that’s what he’s improved.

“So when you’re doing the right thing and you have the energy and the juice and all that kind of stuff, that’s when you become special, and that’s what we need.”