Chase Claypool's outstanding Week 5 performance against the Eagles was more than enough for Steelers fans -- and fantasy football players -- to fall in love with the second-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
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However, the Steelers had fallen in love with Claypool well before his four-touchdown explosion that turned heads all throughout the NFL universe. Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin joined former Steelers cornerback Bryant McFadden and Cardinals All-Pro cornerback Patrick Peterson on the "All Things Covered" podcast to discuss what made Claypool such a great option in this year's draft.
"We fell in love with Claypool by the way he sunk his teeth into the special teams combat down in Mobile at the Senior Bowl," Tomlin said. "This guy was special teams MVP, I think, at Notre Dame in his second year at school there. So he showed football awareness in things that were outside the wide receiver position, and for us, we believe that that's a good indicator that you got a football player and then they're gonna do the things that the wide receiver position required."
Who is Tomlin's ultimate example of this all-purpose player whose abilities transcended running routes and catching passes? Maybe you've heard of him.
"To me, Hines Ward is a nice blueprint for that, right?" Tomlin said. "That dude was a wide receiver, but he was so much more... We're looking for football players who happened to play wide receiver, and Hines is just a good blueprint for that, a guy that I just appreciated on that level and have modeled the evaluation, the selection of others just based on that principle alone."
Obviously, this evaluation process has led to several successful wide receivers in Pittsburgh after the draft, including JuJu Smith-Schuster, Antonio Brown, Emmanuel Sanders, Diontae Johnson and others. Mike Wallace was another guy who fit the bill.
"First and foremost, we're interested in football players... guys that show a certain toughness that goes above and beyond the position, or certain competitive spirit that goes above and beyond the position," Tomlin said. "Case in point, you (McFadden) were teammates of a number of those guys. Very rarely you will find a speed guy and deep threat that's as physically tough as Mike Wallace.
"He was a speed guy that was no punk, that was a tough guy, that didn't back down from physical confrontations... Emmanuel Sanders and AB were 180 pounders who were uniquely tough and competitive for 180 pounders. They were wiry strong, they didn't turn down competition."
While Claypool doesn't exactly fit the mold of a wiry and scrawny wide receiver -- he's quite the opposite, standing at 6-foot-4 and 238 pounds -- he's shown off the know-how and the non-receiver traits that prepare him for success in the Steelers offense.
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