How Rylie Mills 'means everything' to Notre Dame, Sandy Hook and so much more

What you see isn’t necessarily what you get with Notre Dame defensive tackle Rylie Mills. Sometimes it is. Not always.

What you see: a 6-5, 295-pound behemoth of a human. That comes with insane, imposing individual efforts in sacking of quarterbacks that lead to losses of double-digit yards for opposing offenses. No better example than the one he pulled off against Stanford in Week 7.

Mills lined up across from the left guard, was quickly matched up with the left tackle via a well-executed, lightning-quick stunt then was on top of the signal-caller before anyone in Cardinal red and white knew what hit them. Well, except for maybe the tackle. He knew exactly what hit him, tried to stop it and flat-out couldn’t. And when QB Ashton Daniels had to get up off the turf at Notre Dame Stadium, he eventually knew what hit him too.

Big No. 99. A number as big as his impact.

“Rylie means everything,” Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden said. “Rylie is an anchor. He’s a leader. Same guy every day. Consistent. Shows ruggedness. Will do the dirty work.”

Underneath the dirt is a tender-hearted child who was an aficionado of the theater before he ever put on a pair of football cleats. That’s one of the things you don’t see, for example. His relatives still pull up videos of past performances in school plays. They’re too rich not to reminisce.  

“They’ll tease me with it,” Mills said through a laugh. “It would be tiny kid, tiny kid then the big, green giant. Then another tiny kid. It was funny.”

You don’t see the ever-inquisitive kid who learned to play four instruments — guitar, keyboard, bass and drums — either.

Or the young adult who didn’t directly face the ultimate fear of every child-bearing family — the unfortunate, all-too-real reality of a potential mass shooting in a school setting — but is still someone more closely connected to such a tragedy than most could ever imagine.

The Mills family lived in Sandy Hook, Conn., for nine years before moving to Lake Bluff, Ill. Mills never attended Sandy Hook Elementary, the site of the mass murder of 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 and 26 fatally wounded victims in total on Dec. 14, 2012, but his older brother, Jaxon, did until third grade. Mills played tee ball with one of the victims. The Mills aren’t far removed from one of the most unthinkable devastations ever.

“We knew too many families that suffered from that,” Kristina Mills, Rylie’s mother, told Blue & Gold Illustrated. “It was very difficult.”

Mills was 11 at the time of the shooting. Old enough to understand the gravity of it even if he didn’t comprehend the motive. There isn’t ever a coming of age for that. Some things won’t ever make sense.

Mills doesn’t have vivid memories of his baseball buddy; he was too young to remember. He does has a firm grasp on the gravity of the fallout from that fateful day, however.

He’s 23 now, in his fifth season at Notre Dame, and it’s something he told his mom when he was 22 and in his fourth that proved to Kristina how much her son cares about the community that molded him in his formative years, a community that won’t ever fully heal from the needless loss of life that struck a dozen years ago but one that is always accepting of sympathetic recognition.

“It hit me really hard when Rylie said, ‘You know mom, it’s pretty scary when you go to school and you’re not sure if you’re going to be shot at,’” Kristina said.

That’s who Mills has grown to be, someone always thinking of others. Bettering others’ lives. That ranges from staying after practice to work on pass-rush technique with Notre Dame freshman Bryce Young to returning to Lake Bluff, where he was a larger than life figure as a team captain at Lake Forest High School, to volunteer and be a venerable voice of reason.

“Rylie is a really good person and to his core is a wonderful human being,” Lake Forest head coach Chuck Spagnoli said. “I’ve seen him in settings with little kids. I’ve seen him with peers his age. I’ve seen him in situations where he’s always willing to mentor, lend, give or be a part of anything that is right and good. That’s one of the things that drove him to Notre Dame.”

Righteousness is certainly at the core of all things Notre Dame. Mills fits right in. Of course, Fighting Irish football is a core tenet of South Bend culture as well. Mills doesn’t have any issues adhering to that either.

He’s a Notre Dame team captain, too, after all. He couldn’t have ever dreamt of that possibility when he was banging on the drums or belting out lines on stage, causing a ruckus in his house with the former and a roar out of the audience with the latter.

“If I went back to when I was that age and was like, ‘Hey, this is what you’re doing now,’ I’d be like, ‘That’s pretty wild. I would not have guessed that,’” Mills said. “It’s cool to see my growth.”

The growth has certainly stuck with Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, who first worked with Mills as the Irish’s defensive coordinator in his sophomore season.

“Riley’s just been a staple in the center of our defense,” Freeman said. “I’ve always had a belief you have to be good up the middle if you want to be good defensively. He’s actually a guy that, from the time I got here in 2021 to now, the improvement’s been tremendous. 

“He was a raw football player when I first got here but had so many traits of being able to be a great football player. He’s really developed those traits, and he’s practicing and performing in games at a high level. He’s doing a great job in terms of his leadership, too.”

The last point is the most important. Football comes and goes. Character lasts a lifetime. It’s also passed on to others.

The little kids Spagnoli saw Mills interact with in Lake Bluff? Young, whose Notre Dame career will go on for at least a few years after Mills graduates from the program? They’ll always remember the time he took to be there for them. And they’ll be better for it.

The emotional security that comes from knowing someone cares is as strong of a stabilizer as any. Mills has bestowed that upon plenty, from Sandy Hook to South Bend to the Northern Illinois shores of Lake Michigan.

“Rylie is somebody who is not afraid in any way, shape or form to put himself out there,” Spagnoli said. “He’s always been willing to give. He might see any opportunity that’s out there in front of him as a chance to give and help others. That’s the guy he is.”