Washington offensive lineman John Mills is a steak enthusiast

SEATTLE — After an afternoon spent sampling steak and drinking root beer on camera at an upscale downtown restaurant — for money, even — John Mills arrived, eventually, at an unpleasant memory.

The 18-year-old offensive lineman confided that he once witnessed the unthinkable: a fellow diner not only ordered steak well done, but did so with a cut of filet mignon.

“I don’t know how you do that to a steak,” Mills said. “It’s disgraceful, I think. It’s disrespectful.”

Mills lives on the other end of the preparation spectrum, preferring his favorite food be cooked rare, no “medium” about it, unless he gets distracted by his phone and leaves it on the grill too long. His mom, Jennifer, recalled one restaurant at which John’s order prompted the manager to seek explicit parental approval before proceeding.

They obliged, though in her own kitchen, Jennifer said, “I didn’t want to cook it rare, because it’s just gross — I mean, no! It’s just not OK.”

Bleeding or bone-dry, Mills’ lifelong appreciation for steak landed him squarely in the NIL wheelhouse with Washington’s new “Muggin’ with Mills” social-media series, in concert with university partners El Gaucho and PepsiCo (Mug root beer, John’s beverage of choice, is a Pepsi product).

The brainchild of Gibran Hamdan, the football program’s new creative director, the series will find Mills sampling a different cut from El Gaucho’s menu across eight episodes, all filmed on a single Monday last month at the restaurant’s Western Avenue location.

“To mix in two partners that John’s got this love and affinity for, and two partners that are so important to the UW, and to bring an opportunity about where both of them see the value of furthering their investment and including a student-athlete — that’s gold,” said Joe Knight, executive director of Dawgs Unleashed, UW’s internal athlete marketing unit. “That’s exactly what Dawgs Unleashed is set to do, and, frankly, needs to do more of.”

With Hamdan in the director’s chair and a key light pointed from above, Mills slid into a red-backed booth, a white tablecloth and red-orange candleholder adorning the surface before him. The restaurant is closed on Mondays, so Mills had this spotlight to himself. He took his cues from Hamdan, who read from a script for the 6-foot-6, 335-pound lineman to repeat. Some lines required multiple takes, and Hamdan occasionally asked Mills to summon a different vibe, like when he instructed that a certain line be delivered “like there’s bald eagles flying behind you!” He changed clothes between episodes, and filmed a different entrance shot for each one.

It didn’t take long for Mills to settle in, punctuating his assessment of a bone-in ribeye and its “big personality” by turning to a different camera and breaking the fourth wall: “Just like me!”

It went on like that.

“Make sure you get some of the lobster,” he encouraged.

“That cheddar cheese sauce is amazing,” he gushed.

“This … is NOT on the menu,” he announced.

“Some steaks walk in, but this one makes an entrance,” he proclaimed of a tableside presentation.

Cooper Mills (no relation), president of Fire and Vine Hospitality, which owns and operates El Gaucho, attended the shoot and can be seen greeting Mills at the door in the first episode. He was impressed.

“That kid is dynamic,” Cooper Mills of the mulleted freshman All-American. “John is the right personality for it. I already feel like he’s one of us.”

El Gaucho used to cater meals for the football team multiple times per week, Cooper Mills said, particularly during the Chris Petersen era. But this is their first attempt at promoting a UW athlete. “We’ve been wanting to do it, but (we didn’t know) enough about it, and it’s still really new,” he said. Then Deborah Goldstein, UW’s longtime director of football operations, reached out and said they were looking for a steakhouse to partner with.

“This one just popped up, and we were like, ‘this is a no-brainer,’” he said.

Any offensive lineman could help sell steak, but few might genuinely love it as much as John Mills.

“Truthfully, there is not a time when I remember him not eating steak,” Jennifer said. “From the age of 2, he was ripped. He’s always just been this big kid.”

John also grew up with two older brothers — Henry was a rower, and Charlie Mills plays water polo at USC — and his younger brother, William, who plays water polo, “eats a full steak at least once a day, if not twice,” Jennifer said. Typical Costco trips yielded eight gallons of milk per week, and untold amounts of ground beef, chicken and bacon, in addition to flank steak, New York strips and ribeye (a chef friend taught her how to most efficiently prep and freeze it). Pair the meat with some form of potato and roasted asparagus or broccoli, or a Caesar salad, and that was dinner.

Her boys liked it simple.

“It was not a very adventuresome meal plan,” she said.

About the time he started high school, John began cooking for himself in earnest, making frequent use of the family’s Blackstone grill. He also enjoyed cooking cowboy-cut ribeyes with his dad, Alden, on a cast-iron skillet. Steak became a part of his personality. For his eighth-grade graduation, his aunt gifted John a personalized steak knife. One Christmas, an uncle gave “the family” a subscription to Omaha Steaks, Jennifer said, “but really, it was John.”

Maybe it shouldn’t have been too surprising that this person once committed to play football for a school that calls its teams the Longhorns. No doubt, the food and barbecue culture was a factor in luring Mills to Texas, where he committed in June 2024 before flipping to Washington six months later (much to his grandfather’s delight). His mom guesses that some day, John might live on a ranch with his own cattle. She credits the staff at Florida for incorporating the agriculture department in its recruitment, pitching John on its hands-on cattle-raising courses.

He’s into more than just the meat. Jennifer is a fan of her son’s garlic butter, and John says he tries to incorporate garlic, onion and salt into most of his cooking (he’s not that into pepper). He likes to shop for New York cuts, and prefers sweet potatoes as a side. One day recently, he was fortunate enough to have two tomahawk steaks — a favorite — leftover from a dinner he hosted, and a sandwich was born. “I put some cheese on there and just seared both sides,” he said. “It was really good.”

Tonkotsu ramen is another favorite food, as is Hawaiian barbecue. Seafood, too, and sushi, in particular. Shortly before spring practices, John and his oldest brother, Henry, went for omakase in New York.

Mills has reshaped his body since arriving at UW in January 2025 weighing more than 360 pounds, checking in this spring around 335. Cutting fast food and gummy candy was key, he said, and he does try to stick to zero-sugar Mug root beer. During spring practices, he opted for leaner cuts like sirloin and cutting the fat off a New York to reduce calories. He worked with a nutritionist in high school, too, wanting to cut baby fat and build muscle. For a time, John and his dad ate a daily, three-meal diet consisting of meat, avocado, rice, egg whites and hard-boiled eggs — some 60 grams of protein at a time. Jennifer remembers John carrying his meals to school in large coolers.

“There was no cheating,” Jennifer said. “There was no complaining, there was no sneaking. It was 100 percent focused dedication.”

It was a revelation, she said, for a kid who had always been bigger than everyone else his age, and therefore always aware of his size, that “I can actually manipulate this. I can take this and turn it into something that’s really powerful for me. … My body is not a liability, it’s actually an asset.”

El Gaucho seems to think so. It’s hard to imagine a pitchman more excited about the product. Over the course of three hours, Mills put away small parts of eight steaks (plus some lobster and bites of mashed potatoes and asparagus), while the remains were boxed for him to take home. Even off camera, he beamed: “How good is that bearnaise sauce?”

Arranging and fulfilling third-party NIL obligations — finding money to pay players above the internal revenue-share cap — has become more crucial to a program’s roster construction than nearly any other task, and Mills is no doubt among the Huskies’ most valuable players. But he says money isn't what drives him.

“Money comes and goes. I don’t think it’s a huge part at all,” he said. “Obviously, it’s there, but there are so many bigger things to me than money — building a legacy at a school, building relationships with the fans, with the team, with the coaches. 

“One thing I really have been thinking about was the rivalry. I feel if I transferred somewhere, or if someone transferred in or out, whatever — personally, how could I have a true hatred toward that team if I was only there one year or two years?”

This was his first acting experience, he said, though he did take a drama class in high school. Jennifer said she made all her boys do the same, wanting them as skilled at public speaking as possible (Alden, a regular keynote speaker, took a drama class in business school, she said, and felt it made him more comfortable speaking in front of people). 

John said he never appeared in a play, but “I did act in front of the class. I’d do little skits in front of the class, which was pretty funny.”

The hardest part of filming the series, he said, was reciting the lines properly, but he felt comfortable in front of the camera.

By the end of the day, he also felt just a little bit full.

— Christian Caple, On Montlake

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