From Speedy Scotty To Super Scotty
How a Chicagoland track star became one of Tom Brady's favorite targets
(Photo Credit 24/7 Sports)
By now, we all know the play that made Scotty Miller famous.
Miller, wearing Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey No. 10, caught a 39-yard touchdown pass from Tom Brady right before the half of the Bucs’ NFC Championship Game win over Green Bay on Jan. 24.
The play wasn’t complex—Miller ran a fly route to the end zone, outran Packers defensive back Kevin King and Tom Brady, the Bucs ageless quarterback, threw it up with just enough air for Miller to chase the ball down.
The touchdown, seen live by a global audience in the tens of millions, made Miller, a 5-foot-10, 180-pound sixth-round draft choice, an immediate Twitter star.
Home for Miller is the northwest Chicago suburbs, Barrington, IL.
For those in and around Barrington who know Miller, who coached him when he was just Scotty, a wiry bundle of arms and legs with a rabid competitive spirit no childhood peer could match, the play that made him famous looked delightfully familiar.
“Every Sunday, I’ll text with Coach K (Barrington High School assistant coach Todd Kuklinski),” Barrington High School Head Coach Joe Sanchez said. “(Against Green Bay) we’re watching and we’re like, ‘no surprise Scotty got behind someone. We’ve seen that a lot.’”
The Chicago suburbs are filled with young football players who can run. Almost all of them don’t end up catching touchdown passes from Tom Brady. But Miller did against the Packers, and has for the entire 2020 season (33 catches, 15.2 yards per game average).
How he got there, to the National Football League and Sunday playing in Super Bowl LV, is a story of God-given natural talent, nurtured competitive tenacity and a little bit of good fortune.
From the time Scotty Miller first stepped onto the football field, at the age of 10, he could out run everyone.
His father, Scott Miller, coached his son in the Barrington Youth Football League. He, like everyone else, saw the natural speed. But there was an intangible quality about Scotty, a controlled fury with which he played the game that also separated him from others in his age group.
After a championship youth football game when Scotty was in seventh grade, a press box observer could not leave the stadium without telling the boy and his father what he thought of what he’d seen.
“Scotty did everything you can possibly imagine a football player doing that day. But we lost,” Scott Miller said. “The announcer came down (after the game) and found Scotty and I and he said, ‘you are the best seventh grade football player I have ever seen. You are going to do unbelievable things.’”
Hearing it from someone else affirmed what Scott Miller already knew about his son, how Scotty had greatness in him. And how much of Scott was in Scotty.
Because there is not Scotty without Scott.
Scott Miller came out of Elk Grove (IL) High School and first landed at Harper Junior College (Palatine, IL). He moved on to Division 1-AA Western Illinois University where he played football for the Leathernecks. Playing at the next highest level below Division 1 was no small accomplishment but for Miller, he had no choice. Not because he needed to escape the mean streets of Elk Grove (a middle-class suburb in northwest Chicago) but because laboring to reach one’s full potential is all Miller knows.
“I’m a very intense person. So many people are content to go through the motions in life,” Miller said.
A few days after Scotty Miller’s touchdown catch in the NFC Championship Game, he went on the “Dan Patrick Show.”
Patrick asked Scotty if he raced Kansas City Chiefs speedster Tyreek Hill, who would win?
Scotty said:
I’m taking me every day of the week. I’ll take me over anybody. Tyreek is unbelievable, super quick, unbelievable talent but if we’re talking about a race, I got confidence in myself going up against anybody.
The answer from Scotty gained traction on the internet, but not in a typical athletes-talking-shit-about-other-athletes kind of way. When listening to the audio and watching his facial expressions, the comment, for those who know him, was just Scotty being Scotty.
Scott Miller said that’s how he raised his son, to never back down from a challenge, but he fights back, do so with humility.
“People ask me, ‘would you correct your son?’ No. Who teaches his kid to lose? I guess that’s the modern mentality of a parent,’” Miller said. “No, you go for the best and tell them they are capable of anything. He has taken that and run with it.”
Speed in a player is a trait coveted by football coaches.
But raw speed—forward propulsion, the act of moving fast, the rapidity of a body in space—does not instantly carry over to the football field.
“There are guys with track speed but when they play football, it doesn’t always translate,” Sanchez said. “Some of those high end speed guys, it takes them awhile to get going.”
Starting, stopping, then starting again when there are defenders in the way, is more a football skill than track.
Not possessing a body type to run over people, Scotty instead had to run around them, then past them.
Time and time again, as his high school highlight tape shows, Scotty plays the part of a human Pac-Man, gobbling up field turf, leaving mortal defensive backs in his wake.
But there is something else revealing about the clips.
In a sea of humanity, a blob on the screen, snatches the airborne football from the atmosphere by the guy who’s lower half must be attached to pogo sticks. That guy is Scotty.
Tracking the football in the air is another special quality of Scotty’s going back to his youth football days. Just like he did against the Packers, he did so many times as a junior Bronco, following the trajectory of the ball until it reaches the pockets of his hands.
“Most seventh graders are running in circles or get lost in space. Scotty is always running in stride and not dropping (the ball),” Scott Miller said.
Watch touchdown plays from Scotty’s high school days, and there are subtitles about his release off the line of scrimmage.
If a defender is playing press coverage (lined up right in front of the receiver), Scotty takes a step or two to the inside, then releases out.
That move—a technique on a ‘slant belly’ play—was learned and refined as a youth football player.
“Instead of beating people by two steps by running straight, he’d spend 15 minutes after practice catching more balls using this jab step and release,” Tom Kolder said, Scotty’s coach in Barrington Youth Football. “Most kids that have a physical advantage, or speed with Scotty, I think they have a tendency to rely on that trait but what you saw with Scotty at that age was a desire to learn and develop some of the finer points of the game.
“When he touched the ball things could and often would happen. Even at that age, were were like, ‘Scotty’s got the ball, something big will happen.’”
Todd Kuklinski remembers getting a buzz on his phone. It was over Christmas break in 2012.
The Barrington track and field head coach started at the screen. On it was a video of Scotty, along with Barrington Broncos track teammate Parker Deloye. The two were getting in a training session and wanted to show their coach what they were doing.
“We had an old set of (starter’s) blocks that we were going to throw away and he (Scotty) asked if he could use them to work out on his own,” Kuklinski said “Somehow he had gotten his way into the gym over break and they were working on their blocks. It’s like 10 o’clock on a Saturday night.”
There a hundred stories like that about Scotty.
When on a recruiting trip at Bowling Green State, where he eventually signed and played college football, a spectator mistook him for the younger brother of a recruit. Or a kicker.
At a Northern Illinois University football camp, the head coach at the time, Rod Carey, caught wind of Scotty’s sub-4.4 second 40 yard dash time. Carey didn’t believe it and asked Scotty to run another 40. Again Scotty clocked below 4.4 and Carey said that was the fastest time he’d ever seen from a camper.
But Carey made a point of telling Scotty:
“We’re still not going to offer you (a scholarship).”
(Bowling Green State was the only FBS school to offer Scotty).
Or the time when as a freshman at Barrington, in 2011, he didn’t get called up to the varsity for the playoffs. The reason had nothing to do with merit. There were only a certain number of players called up and the numbers didn’t work and Scotty was left off the postseason roster.
“He wasn’t personally mad at anyone but you better believe that chapped him,” Sanchez said.
The next year, he made the varsity team.
One off-season, Sanchez ran into Scotty and a group of football players while inside a classroom at school.
A test was coming up in one of their classes. Sanchez challenged his players.
“I told them, ‘between you guys, whoever gets the higher score doesn’t have to worry about conditioning next week,’” Sanchez said. “As soon as Scotty heard that he upped his game and got an ‘A’ because he was like, ‘uh-uh, I’m not losing.’”
There was the time two days before a state track meet when conventional wisdom would be to ramp down training before the season-ending competition. Scotty didn’t see it that way and spent hours doing shoot and block work, prompting a visiting reporter to say, ‘this guy is ready to go.’
“He would have felt underprepared if he hadn’t done those things,” Kuklinski said.
(Miller holds the Barrington school record in the 100 and 200 meter dash).
His friends will never forget the Cornhole and Ping-Pong matches at his parents’ house in Barrington.
If anyone beat Scotty, they couldn’t go home.
“You know you’ll have to stick around for another game. You are not going to be one and done with him,” Jason Harris said, Scotty’s high school football teammate and one of his best friends.
Sanchez is a long time New England Patriots fan and admirer of Tom Brady. He said he thinks he knows why the 43-year-old G.O.A.T. has taken a liking to Scotty, who shares a sixth-round draft position with Brady (albeit 19 years apart).
“He (Brady) sees guys like Scotty and someone who has always had to fight,” Sanchez said. “Brady, he builds a rapport with those guys because in so many ways, he still sees himself that way.”
Just hearing the stories, or a glance at his colorful Instagram page, it would be easy to paint Scotty as a caricature of competitive intensity, a one-dimensional athletic freak devoid of humanity, possessing a single-minded approach to life and to winning.
But that’s not Scotty.
At the high school state track meets in Charleston, IL, Scotty each year brought his video game console to use during downtime before and after races.
Flashing a bright, friendly smile to visitors and always wearing a ball cap turned backwards, he’d invite all competitors into his hotel room.
Every year, the most crowded room would inevitably be Scotty’s.
“Literally there would be kids in the hotel room from other schools and they’d hang out and want to be with him,” Kuklinski said. “He’d beat them up and make great friendships with them.”
Said Harris: “People gravitate towards Scotty. But if you want to hang with Scotty, you’ve got to keep up. He’s going to make you play.”
The summer after Scotty got drafted by the Bucs, in 2019, Sanchez invited Scotty to speak to the Barrington football team.
(Photo Credit: Barrington 365)
He spoke to the team on the importance of work ethic, on teamwork and camaraderie.
But what Sanchez remembers most about his former player’s talk is a message about daily habits and living with humility.
“He said he didn’t go out on the weekends. He stayed home with his mom and dad. We ended up having a phenomenal year that year (Scotty’s senior season of 2014),” Sanchez said. “Those high, elite kids have that in them, the ability to understand that ‘I’m part of something bigger. Yes, I’m blessed with some talent but it’s not enough.’
“People will look at Scotty and say how lucky he is. They don’t know how much it takes, how hard he has worked and sacrificed, to be in that position. That’s why he is such an inspiration in our community, just a kid who has busted his tail and always had to prove people wrong.”
Sunday, at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Scotty Miller will again attempt to prove he belongs.
Scott Miller and wife Kristen, Scotty’s mom, will be in attendance. Scotty’s three sisters—Megan, Abby and Kelsey—will also be in Tampa for the game.
Back home, in Barrington and around Chicagoland, thousands of others will be tuned in to the game, all feeling some connection to the player wearing uniform No. 10 for Tampa Bay, watching him run past and around defenders and catching passes thrown by Tom Brady.
No moment, not even the Super Bowl, is too big for Scotty Miller.
“This is exactly who Scotty is and the people who know him and follow him really know that,” Scott Miller said. “Scotty has an amazing way of making the most of every opportunity he is given.”