Chris Miller woke up Saturday, April 25 – Day 3 of the 2026 NFL Draft – expecting to play a round of golf with his son.
Blake Miller had just finished a whirlwind 36 hours as the new first-round pick of the Detroit Lions. He had a small draft party at his house in Strongsville, Ohio, two nights earlier, when he spent the morning doing chores before a group of 14 people, not including the camera crew there to chronicle the night, gathered to watch the draft on a TV in his family room.
The next morning, Blake, Chris, Blake’s mom, Karen, and his girlfriend, Kylie Jicha, made the 2-hour, 15-minute drive to Allen Park for Blake’s introductory news conference. They toured the Lions practice facility, met with coaches and filmed content for the team’s social media sites before getting back on the road to Ohio.
Chris figured he, Blake and one of his good friends would play a celebratory 18 at Mallard Creek Golf Club, a public course in nearby Columbia Station, that Saturday morning.
Only Blake was nowhere to be found.
“I called him on the phone,” Chris said. “I’m like, ‘Where you at?’ He goes, ‘I’m on my way back down to Clemson. I got a training session at 5 o’clock.’”
In the days after Miller finally made it to the NFL, he went about life like he hadn’t made it at all.
He went to Train Built Performance in Greenville, S.C. – his home away from home during his four seasons at Clemson – for a two-hour workout that weekend with his personal offensive line coach, Amos Lamb.
The two started the session working on strike blocks after hearing offensive line analyst Jared Veldheer, the former Hillsdale tackle who played 12 seasons in the NFL, criticize Miller for clamping onto pass rushers. They focused on hand placement and landmarks and the finer points of pass protection, and when they finished, they turned their attention to the wide-zone rushing scheme they expect the Lions to major in this fall.
Miller returned to Train Built for workouts nearly every day the next week and a half, until he left on May 8 to report for the start of the Lions’ rookie orientation program next week. He dropped by the Clemson weight room, carrying his signature water jug and sweating out reps like he was still in school.
And when Clemson offensive line coach Matt Luke heard Miller was back in town pulling his own personal two-a-days, he chalked it up to Blake being Blake.
“That’s him,” Luke told the Free Press. “He’s a worker. He cares. He’s going to do the things that’s necessary to take care of his body and the extra things. He’s willing to sacrifice to be great.”
‘An X-Man’
At 10 pounds and 7 ounces, Miller seemed destined for something big at birth.
When he was 17 or 18 months old, Karen took Blake, the oldest of her two boys, to a local shopping mall and was asked by someone why she was giving her 4-year-old a bottle. A few weeks before he turned 3, Blake went on a family trip to Disney World and passed the 44-inch height restriction to ride Space Mountain (and every other roller coaster in the park). In sports, he towered over his peers.
“When he was young, like a kid, it was just one of those things where it was like he was playing with babies,” Chris said.
Miller started playing flag football when he was 4 and joined Strongsville’s Mustang Youth Football tackle program, where his dad was his coach, two years later.
He played center until he got to eighth grade, though Chris said Blake learned his physicality from another sport – wrestling. As an 8-year-old, Blake won an Ohio state youth wrestling championship despite routinely competing against kids three and four years older because of his size.
“I do think that’s where he learned to dominate,” Chris said. “He would take a beating and then he would come back and he would win, so it was one of those things where I think that’s kind of where he learned the toughness.”
By the time Blake was in seventh grade, he was taking part in offseason workouts with the Strongsville High football team. And when he got to high school at 6 feet 6 and around 330 pounds, former Strongsville coach Lou Cirino knew he had something special on his hands.
“I told his dad, you’ve got to understand, you’re dealing with a mutant, an X-Man,” Cirino said. “He’s not a normal human being by any stretch of nature.”
Miller earned a starting spot on the defensive line as a freshman and took over as Strongsville’s left tackle as a sophomore, where he displayed many of the same traits that made the Lions fall in love with him in the draft.
Cirino said Miller never missed games, practices or workouts, and even when he was “sick as [excrement]” would take advantage of every opportunity to get better at his craft. Miller spent one 5:28 a.m. workout his sophomore year pushing a stack of mats across the floor while throwing up on himself.
“He’s a sicko,” Cirino said.
Miller’s drive extended to other areas of his life. He got into detailing cars when he was 11 by watching videos on YouTube; he grew so enamored with the process, his dad shelled out $500 for buffers Miller used to make his parents’ vehicles shine like they came from the dealership.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Miller used the extra time to remake his body. He changed his diet, went from 332 pounds to 280 and came back even more dominant on the field.
That work ethic carried over to Clemson, where Miller’s ironman streak – he set school records for most snaps played (3,778) and consecutive starts (54) by a non-specialist – was no accident.
Miller was known to work out at the Max Fitness near his off-campus home after taking part in Clemson’s football weight training sessions; every Thursday in-season, he made the 40-minute drive to Greenville to do extra line work with Lamb, before or after practice.
Lamb, who spent hours on the phone with Miller some weeks, too, going over scouting reports of opponents and dissecting Miller’s play, said Miller’s desire to be great is like nothing he’s seen in his nearly two decades of playing with and training high-level athletes.
“You couldn’t have drafted a more dedicated guy, a guy that cares more about his craft, works to perfect his craft,” said Walker Parks, Clemson’s starting right guard the past four seasons and Miller’s roommate. “It’s hard to tell when you watch athletes on TV or you see clips of their life and quick glimpses and everything, but that dude, winning is important to him, getting better is important to him, and if he’s not doing either of those, it’s eating away at him. And that’s the mentality that he’s got.”
‘Mortal Kombat mentality’
One of the last plays of Miller’s high school career was like a scene from the movie “The Blind Side.”
With about a minute left in a playoff loss to Massillon Jackson, Miller drove the defensive end he was blocking into the fence behind the Strongsville bench.
“The guy [working the chains] was like, ‘You’ve got to let him go, you’re going to kill him,’” Cirino said, mimicking terror in his voice. “I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”
Cirino estimates Miller was flagged more than eight times for personal fouls for blocking after the whistle his senior year. None of the plays were dirty, Cirino said. But Miller was bigger and stronger than everyone he played, and he was trying to live up to the core values the football program had plastered on the walls of the weight room: Never Miss, Find a Way, Be Relentless.
“We used to say, ‘Mortal Kombat mentality,’” Cirino said. “’Finish him.’ Remember how they would yell that and then Scorpion would cut their head off? So that was always our joke was like, Mortal Kombat, like, ‘Finish him.’ And Blake, he grew into that. As a freshman and sophomore, the finishing wasn’t there and [by the time he graduated] he loved it.”
Miller made an immediate impression at Clemson, both with his tenacious play and quiet demeanor off the field.
Lamb said Miller “was almost scary quiet” when he showed up for his first tune-up session with some of Clemson’s other linemen the summer before his freshman season. “But he worked, man. He was laser focused on what we were doing.”
Miller won the starting right tackle job that summer after Parks, the team’s returning starter at the position, went to Dabo Swinney to tell the Clemson coach they needed to find a way to get Miller on the field.
Parks offered to move to guard to make it happen, and he and Miller spent most of their four seasons together playing side-by-side on Clemson’s line.
“He just plays the right way,” Parks said. “He plays football how it’s supposed to be played. That’s the most honorable thing.”
Swinney said Miller missed two practices in his four years at Clemson. One came during spring football, when he underwent wrist surgery during spring break of his sophomore year.
While some of Miller’s linemates vacationed in Turks and Caicos, Miller returned to Ohio and spent his time in the weight room doing one-handed workouts.
Luke, Clemson’s offensive line coach the past two seasons, said his favorite times with Miller were the late-night film session they’d have after practice, when everyone else was gone.
Miller devoured information about safety rotations and defensive football so he could better understand when and where to expect blitzes. Last year, he allowed two sacks, according to Pro Football Focus, and earned first-team All-ACC honors for the second time in his career.
“You train the player two ways,” Luke said. “You train a player from the neck up and then you train him from the neck down. And so the more you can learn from the neck up, the better you’re going to be from the neck down. And he’s just – like I said, you’ve got some guys that are smart enough but they’re not good enough to do anything about it. And then some of the guys are good enough but don’t see it like the way he sees it. So it’s fun when you got one that are both.”
’10 out of 10′
Miller and his father never got in that round of golf the Saturday of draft weekend, but Miller did hit the links a few days later at The Reserve at Lake Keowee in South Carolina.
He and Parks played a scramble against Luke. They played match play, lost by four or five holes, and spent the day talking about their dreams for the future.
Parks, who has a tryout at Miami Dolphins rookie minicamp this weekend, said he wanted to play ball as long as possible, get married in the next two years, settle down and have a big family.
Miller said he wanted the same, to get married and have kids a few years down the road.
“But me and him are in different spots,” Parks said. “I was like, ‘You don’t have to think about that stuff right now. You’re going to play for another 10, 15 year,s so just focus on what you’ve got going on right now.’”
Miller will take the field for offseason workouts next week as the favorite to start at right tackle on the Lions’ reconfigured offensive line this fall.
Penei Sewell will move to left tackle after five seasons and three first-team All-Pro selections on the right side. Tate Ratledge and Christian Mahogany return as starters at guard. And the Lions signed Cade Mays to play center in free agency.
Lions general manager Brad Holmes called Miller a high-floor player with “unbelievable football character” and limitless upside after the draft, and he said Miller’s makeup and intangibles were a perfect fit for the Lions locker room.
“His morals, it’s all about grit, earning it, battling through adversity,” Holmes said. “I mean, it was just, he just kept checking the boxes.”
The way Miller’s friends and family see it, the Lions checked all the boxes Miller could have wanted in an NFL team, too.
They’re close to home, play a physical brand of football, have a veteran lineman to learn from in Sewell and a hard-nosed coach in Dan Campbell.
Chris Miller called the Lions a perfect “10 out of 10” landing spot. Luke, who coached Ratledge for two seasons at Georgia and Mays briefly while he was at the school, said Blake should fit in seamlessly with the other talent up front. And Parks said he’s excited for his good friend to start the next chapter in what he’s sure will be a long, successful career.
“The kind of competitor that he is, is exactly what y’all want in Detroit,” Parks said. “He’s going to fit into that offense perfect, and I think you’re looking at your next right tackle for 10 years.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Work ethic of Blake Miller, Lions OT, makes him ‘a sicko’
Reporting by Dave Birkett, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
