Von Miller’s 15 minutes in front of the cameras typically are on Thursday afternoons in the same fashion, no matter the upcoming opponent, no matter the talking points, no matter the team’s performance in practice minutes earlier.
He’ll refer to himself in the third person — at least once, but more likely a few times — as he reiterates his plan to “be the best Von Miller I can be.”
He’ll laud his upcoming opponent — he has the utmost respect for Philip Rivers and Julio Jones and Mike Evans and Cam Newton and Andrew Luck and most everyone in the AFC West — and then he’ll laud his teammates. The Broncos have “the best secondary in The National Football League,” you know.
And more often than not, he’ll go back and mention those who helped him years ago and continue to play a role in his success in the league.
Mike Sherman is one.
“He thought he was playing good football, but he really wasn’t. He was a linebacker off the line of scrimmage and wasn’t diagnosing things very well, didn’t work at it at that point real hard,” Sherman said. “Fortunately for me, he had a dad who backed me up and told him to do what coach Sherman tells you to do and sent him back to College Station (Texas) to be a part of the football team. If he didn’t have the dad he has, he could have ended up at another school and we never would have heard from him.”
Miller was on the brink of leaving and never returning, never finishing his tenure at Texas A&M, never winning The Butkus Award as an Aggie in 2010 and, possibly, never being selected at No. 2 in the 2011 draft and never winning Super Bowl MVP honors in 2016.
“But he made a decision to come back to do what he had to do,” Sherman said. “From that point forward he kind of changed things up. He was very accountable after that and did the things we wanted him to do.”
In 2013, Sherman could only watch from afar as Miller, again, ran into trouble off the field with a six-game suspension for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy. But Sherman, knowing Miller, had little doubt as to how it would end.
“A lot of guys when they get in trouble they blame everybody else,” Sherman said. “He doesn’t do that. He blames himself and he fixes what needs to be fixed.”
And he has little doubt of where Miller can still go. Sherman, who admits he’s biased in the Hall of Fame conversation for Miller, believes the linebacker has yet to reach his peak, even after winning Super Bowl MVP — a scary prospect for opposing quarterbacks.
Sherman says the “sky’s the limit” for Miller — who leads the league with 7.5 sacks through Thursday. He says it in part because of Miller’s rare natural ability.
“He could play a lot of positions on the football field. Obviously, the one he’s playing right now suits him just fine,” Sherman said. “But he could probably return kickoffs. He could probably be a running back, could be a tight end. There are very few players who have the ability and talent to be able to play multiple positions on an NFL field, but I think he has the ability to do that. That’s the level of talent that he is.”
But especially because — to quote Miller — he’s “still the same Von Miller.”
“Nobody said a bad word about Von Miller. He was back then what he is today,” Sherman said. “I think one of the most amazing things he did was after winning the Super Bowl, after becoming the MVP — and this kind of speaks volumes as to who he is — instead of sucking it all in and telling everybody why he is who he is and how great he is, he’s offering praise to other people in his life. I think in that moment, that’s one of the hardest things to do — to achieve the success he achieved, winning the Super Bowl, winning the MVP and to have the awareness and humility to point fingers at other people who helped him along the way. I don’t know really how much I helped him. He really helped himself and made his own decisions. He was gracious enough to offer praise to a lot of different people in his life who had been there for him. I’m probably most proud of him for that than anything he’s ever done.”
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