Dad was John Elway’s backup. Mom’s a model from Lakewood. His parents met at a bar in Aurora. Grandpa lives in Evergreen.
“And you know our dog is named ‘Denver,’ right?” former Broncos quarterback Hugh Millen, father of CSU quarterback Clay Millen and Elway’s understudy in 1994 and ’95, offered with a laugh.
“He’s basically a beagle with a little pug in him. And he got the name Denver from the kids. There was no debate. In five seconds, they said, ‘We’ve got to name the dog Denver, because of all the cousins in the family and affinity to Denver.’”
Clay Millen grew up in Seattle, the son of a Washington Huskies great, one of those Pac-12 quarterbacking legacies. But the kid’s heart was always a mile high, a love affair built up from years of holiday visits.
“His (closet) was half-and-half,” Millen’s mother, Michele, said. “He and his brother had Broncos jerseys, but they also had Seahawks jerseys, because they grew up (in the Northwest).”
It gets better. Take your index finger and your thumb. Put them an inch apart. That’s how close the likely new starting quarterback at CSU was to suiting up for … the Buffs.
“It’s actually crazy, because (CU) was one of my final schools towards the end,” said the younger Millen, a redshirt freshman transfer from Nevada and the Rams’ likely starter to open The Jay Norvell Era.
“And even after I’d decommitted (from Arizona), I honestly thought that’s where I was going to end up.
“I thought CU (was) the place. You had my family down there. I felt good about the staff. And then Nevada kind of at the end of the (process) came in and the coaches, they sold me. And that flipped my decision.”
“I’m excited to be here”
Destiny didn’t so much push Clay Millen to the Front Range so much as nudge him, silently and constantly. The way a puppy nudges a meatball before swallowing it whole.
“I’ve probably got at least 10 family members down here,” the new Rams quarterback said, referring to a slew of aunts, uncles and cousins on his mom’s side. “So they’re super happy. They all went to the (CSU) spring game and got to watch me and they were excited for that. They’re all super-excited to see me here. And I’m excited to be here with them, too.”
Not half as excited as Rams fans, who’ve already started to fall in love with the little clips and snippets they’ve seen of the cannon masquerading as the younger Millen’s right arm.
Tapped by 247Sports as a four-star prospect and the No. 23 quarterback nationally in the Class of 2021, Clay Millen entered FoCo’s orbit with two big factors on his side: First, a blue-chip pedigree at quarterback, the perfect blend of nature and nurture. Second, a familiarity with new coach Jay Norvell’s Air Raid playbook, having spent a season learning the system as a backup to then-Nevada signal-caller Carson Strong, the 2021 Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year. The latter threw for 36 touchdowns — four of them coming against the Rams in Fort Collins last November — and 4,175 yards last fall.
Because of his experience in Reno, Millen turned up at CSU ready to hit the ground running. Or rather, throwing. His connections during spring ball with fellow Wolf Pack transfer and new Rams wideout Tory Horton came off, at times, as almost telepathic.
“We’ve both got the same passion for football,” Horton chuckled. “But I’ve got more swag than Clay.”
“She’s not into that dude”
If Clay Millen’s tale reads like a superhero origin story, then ex-Broncos punter Tom Rouen is the planet Krypton. Or the radioactive spider. The one who sets things in motion.
Only instead of a long time ago or a galaxy far, far away, the whole Clay narrative actually starts here, roughly 27 years earlier, at the Stampede bar in Aurora — a watering hole that some Broncos players were known to frequent.
Michele, an alum of Alameda High School, was hanging there with friends and her then-boyfriend when she first met Hugh. At least, that’s how Hugh remembers it.
“I made this conclusion: She’s really sweet, but she’s not into that dude,” the elder Millen recalled with a chuckle.
Hugh, at this point, was very into Michele, who modeled for the same agency as Rouen’s girlfriend at the time. Since that was his “in,” Millen would occasionally query his teammate, on the sly, how things were going with Michele and her dude of the moment.
“I couldn’t DM her or anything,” the former Broncos quarterback laughed. “So now Tom becomes the catalyst. And I keep asking, ‘Hey, what’s up with Michele?’ And then somehow I heard that (Michele) got engaged, and I’m like, ‘No way, no way.’ And I said (to Rouen), ‘You must have (your girlfriend) call her. She’s not into that dude. I can tell.’
“Well, sure enough (his girlfriend) calls, and (Michele was) like, ‘No, I never got engaged.’ So that was an urban myth. And then (the two of them) set us up.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Hugh appeared in eight games for the Broncos from 1994-95, starting two, and came off the bench to steward a game-winning overtime drive against the Chiefs in Kansas City on Dec. 4, 1994.
“I absolutely loved Denver and I loved my time with the Broncos,” said Millen, who would have two boys with Michele; elder son Cale recently transferred from Northern Arizona to UConn. “Backing up John Elway was just a great thrill … it was awesome. I wish I could have stayed forever there.”
“It’s like the Beatles”
Clay Millen took the scenic route to Canvas Stadium. And by scenic, we mean from Snoqualmie, Wash., to Tucson (almost) to Boulder (also almost) via Reno to FoCo.
If Rams fans want to thank Rouen for setting the Millens up, they can toss a second benediction toward Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke, who fired former football coach Kevin Sumlin after an 0-5 mark in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
Millen had forged a strong relationship with Sumlin’s right-hand man, then-Wildcats offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone, who was the Rams’ old quarterbacks and wide receivers coach under Leon Fuller from 1982-86. After throwing for 34 touchdowns as a junior in 2019 and another six in just two games as a senior in 2020, the younger Millen was looking forward to chucking-and-ducking with the ‘Cats under Mazzone and Sumlin. But when both were shown the door, Millen decommitted from a future in the desert.
The first choice for a Plan B was CU, which had made inroads with the Millen camp during the spring and summer of 2020 under then-QB coach Danny Langsdorf and former offensive coordinator Darrin Chiaverini. After a two-hour-long Zoom meeting whet his appetite, the Millens flew out to Boulder to take an in-person visit, even though the facilities were closed due to the pandemic and they could only interact with coaches virtually during their visit.
Michele was so convinced, in hindsight, that Clay was joining the Buffs that she’d started buying CU gear online.
“(And) Matt Mumme kind of snuck in,” Hugh Millen said of CSU’s current offensive coordinator, the son of Air Raid progenitor Hal Mumme. “And (he’d) said, ‘Hey, how would you like to throw for a bunch of yards and a bunch of touchdowns?’”
Norvell, Mumme and the Wolf Pack weren’t top-of-mind, at first. Until Clay and Hugh did their homework.
“The deciding factor was probably the Air Raid (system),” the elder Millen recalled. “And in particular, the success Carson Strong had …
“With Clay growing up in Seattle, with Mike Leach at Washington State, you’d see a lot of Wazzu football and the Leach (offense) and the Cougars were really prolific throwing the ball. Well, if you do a little digging, it’s like the Beatles — every time you look at a song, it’s always (credited to) Lennon-McCartney, right? Well, if you know the history of (Leach’s Air Raid), it’s the (Hal) Mumme system. And (Clay’s) doing some research and he’s going, ‘Wait a minute, we’re at the ground zero of the Air Raid with Matt Mumme.’”
Only the family ties didn’t end there. Jim Mora Jr. was Hugh’s roommate at the University of Washington. When the elder Millen was doing his research on Norvell, the younger Mora suggested he ring up his father, Jim Mora Sr., who’d had the future CSU coach on his staff with the Colts from 1998-2001.
The snowball started rolling downhill from there. Mora Sr. vouched for Norvell, who then touched base with Hugh.
“And I swear, we talked for like three-and-a-half hours,” Norvell laughed. “It was by far the longest recruiting call I’ve ever been on.”
In hindsight, though, it was worth every last second.
“We talked about everything from scheme to philosophy,” Norvell said, “and how we feel about working with our QBs and the passing game to how you like to call a game, all those types of things. I think that conversation, with Jim Mora Sr.’s blessing, had a lot to do with us getting Clay.”
