Ohio State football | NFL draft: Braxton Miller: "It's a lovely feeling" to be drafted by Texans
Leave it to Braxton Miller to have one of the more elegant quotes of the 2016 NFL draft thus far.
The Ohio State quarterback-turned-receiver was picked by the Houston Texans two-thirds of the way through the third round late Friday night. It might have been just a blip on the screen as far as most people were concerned, but for Miller it was verification that he does have a future in the game.
“I’m very thankful, (because) the place I wanted to be at? I’m here,” Miller said on a conference call of being drafted by an NFL team. “So it’s a lovely feeling.”
The Chicago Tribune Silver Football award winner (Big Ten MVP) in 2012 and 2013 as a sophomore and junior, he gave up playing quarterback after two major right shoulder injuries and the rehab from the subsequent surgeries caused him to miss the 2014 national championship season. And anyone could see that Miller, though a gifted athlete, was still a work in progress after making the switch to receiver last season.
But the Texans are led by coach Bill O’Brien, formerly the coach at Penn State. He saw the Miller-quarterbacked Buckeyes beat his Nittany Lions twice, in particular Miller clinching the win at Beaver Stadium in 2012 with dazzling, leaping touchdown run. He has seen close up Miller’s quickness and elusiveness with the ball in his hands.
“He’s a really good teammate, he’s an excellent athlete, he’s got very good instincts,” O’Brien said. “We went to Ohio State (in the past month) and spent a day with him, and felt like he was a guy who would really fit in well with us and what we’re trying to do here. So we’re excited to get him in here.”
Miller also likes the fit.
“Me and coach O’Brien, we’ve got a couple of history moments together when he was at Penn State,” he said, chuckling, adding that another familiar face on the Texans staff is Mike Vrabel, former Ohio State player and defensive line coach. Houston is “a lovely place to be, too, and they need offensive playmakers like me. That’s one place I really looked at and I really wanted to go to.”
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http://buckeyextra.dispatch.com/content/stories/2016/04/30/0430-braxton-miller-lovely.html