The Yale football team's 1992 Ivy League record of 2-5 left the entire team upset and disgruntled. There was one player, however, who may have been more frustrated than all the rest. That person is senior quarterback Steve Mills, and he's doing everything he can to turn things around in order to make his 1993 season one to remember. And, by all accounts, he's succeeding. Mills suffered a separated shoulder in last year's 13-10 Halloween Day loss to Penn that sidelined him for one game and allowed him only limited action in the next two, but that hardly begins to tell his tale of woe last year. Mills never was able to get a grip on the Elis' "I-bone" offense, a variation of the wishbone that features three backs and one wide receiver. The coaches eventually decided that their best bet was to split time at the position between Mills and classmate Chris Hetherington, and the result was a good deal of shuttling in and out of games that further prevented Mills from getting in sync with the offense. By season's end he had thrown only three touchdown passes in nine games. The entire offense struggled along with Mills, scoring just 20 points over the final three games as Hetherington had a hard time picking up the slack in the wake of Mills's injury. It was around this time that Yale coach Carm Cozza and his assistants realized that Mills had to be their man, and that if he was ever to become the quarterback he had the potential to be, the Eli coaching staff had to make some changes. It instituted an offense that resembled the Houston Oilers more than the Elis of 1992, with one back and four receivers. Just as the coaches figured, the offense has become a perfect fit for Mills. "Last year [Mills] was trying to feel his way around, but this year he's hitting on all cylinders," Cozza said. "He's more comfortable in what we're doing – he feels more comfortable in the offense. We're utilizing what he does best and that's throw the ball." Statistics often don't tell the whole story, but one need look no further than Mills's numbers to see how much he has improved this season. Mills has already far surpassed his performance last year in just about every category: attempts, completions, yards, touchdowns and unfortunately for him, interceptions (though his interception percentage is far below what it was last year). The most telling stat of all is his average of 216 yards passing per game, up from just 98 a year ago. "Last year [the offense] wasn't suited to my talents," Mills said. "I had to run the option and not make as many attempts as I would have liked. This year the offense is molded to what I can do – marching the team down the field with short patterns, five-step and three-step drops and play action." Mills knew that more of the burden would fall on him and his throwing ability this year, which was how he wanted it. But he did not foresee the season-ending knee injury that starting tailback Keith Price suffered in the team's first scrimmage. Price gained 1,141 yards last season and was thought to be a possible pro prospect heading into this season, so when he went out the Elis feared that much of their offensive spark would go with him. But after a shaky start in a 12-3 opening day loss to Brown, the offense has been as potent as it has been in a while, which can be attributed directly to Mills. "It's been a real tough year for us with the injuries we've had," Cozza said, "and the burden fell on Steve to help us through it both emotionally and physically. He's made the plays, and more than that, he keeps the guys upbeat. He's been a real plus in keeping us in games we couldn't have been in otherwise." One such game occurred on October 2 when the then-winless Yale squad travelled south to play a Central Florida team currently ranked sixth in the country in Division I-AA. Mills ran the offense with precision, passing for 267 yards and two touchdowns, and narrowly missed pulling off a major upset. (Central Florida won the game 42-28 despite trailing 28-27 with 42 seconds left). Despite the valiant effort on his part, Mills was despondent over the loss. "We missed a golden opportunity," Mills said. "It would have been one of the biggest wins for Yale in a long time if we could have gotten it. We played well, but you can only have so many moral victories. We were more pissed off than anything else." Some of the sting from that loss was gone by the next week, however, as Mills led to the Elis to a 31-27 victory over a Holy Cross team that had defeated mighty Dartmouth two weeks earlier. Then, last week, Yale piled on 35 points in its first Ivy League victory of the season over Columbia. Despite the unimpressive 2-4 record and the crucial injuries, Mills is more confident about the team's ability than he was at this stage of the season last year when the Elis were 4-2 (they flopped down the stretch and finished 4-6) . What this year's team has that its predecessor lacked is a quarterback who feels more confident and capable of running the offense than he has ever felt since arriving at Yale. "We've had to go through a lot of adversity this year, but we've had some good games," Mills said. "No one is happy with the record, but we have an opportunity to have a good season?hopefully I can help along the way."
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