Football footnotes: Steelers interested in West Virginia wide receiver?

Our “Friday Football Footnotes” finds a team taking more heat than the Steelers, a West Virginia draft prospect who may wind up in Pittsburgh and a popular name linked to the Steelers who may be overrated.

Bad Baker?

If you missed Thursday’s NFL Draft podcast with “Draft Analyst” contributor Tony Pauline, it’s worth a listen.

Pauline pans Georgia cornerback Deandre Baker. He’s a player who some projected as a potential first-round pick of the Steelers when the predraft speculation season began.

“I’m not a fan of his. I’ve never been a fan of his,” Pauline said. “I see a guy who is under 6 feet tall. I see a guy who beats up opponents with physical play and stripping the football. But I see a guy who can’t make plays with his back to the ball. If you watch the film on him, he’s constantly face-guarding. You can get away with that on Saturday. You can’t get away with that on Sundays.”

Baker is the 2018 Jim Thorpe Award winner and an All-SEC selection. But that doesn’t impress Pauline.

“There are a lot of people who questioned his work ethic and how committed he was to combine training,” Pauline said. “I said, ‘Watch how he does at the combine in position drills because I’m not expecting good results.’ And there weren’t good results. And there wasn’t much improvement at pro day.”

That analysis surprised me because I heard good things about Baker, and he seemed to stand out in a few Georgia games I saw. So I reached out to two other people I know in the scouting business, and they gave a similar assessment.

Pauline says some teams still like Baker. It’s just not an opinion he shares.

Diggin’ David

Meanwhile, there is a player Pauline likes for the Steelers. And he’s familiar to many college football fans around here.

It’s West Virginia wide receiver David Sills.

“I’m told the New Orleans Saints really like Sills,” Pauline said. “And I’m told that the Pittsburgh Steelers are in love with David Sills. He’d be a great fit for both teams. But I could absolutely see the Steelers using a pick in the fourth round to acquire David Sills.”

Anecdotally, just being around the Steelers facility last year, Sills’ name came up once. And I didn’t hear that the Steelers “loved him.”

But I heard that they had an interest. And that interest was as a third- or fourth-rounder.

So that’s consistent.

Why not? Look at his numbers with the Mountaineers. He had 132 catches for 2,097 yards and 35 touchdowns at WVU.

Sills was tied for the national lead as junior with 18 touchdowns in 2017.

Where have we heard this before?

It appears quarterback-and-coach bashing is quite the popular thing to do these days.

Read this Bleacher Report evisceration of the Packers by Tyler Dunne. If you substitute the names Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers with Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger, it’s essentially one long piece of collected criticisms that we’ve read from Antonio Brown, Josh Harris, James Harrison and Le’Veon Bell in recent weeks.

McCarthy — fired late last season — is portrayed as uninspiring, with a system and a message that has grown stale. He’s described as a “fake tough guy coach,” who has a football I.Q. lower than what the public believes and is unwilling to discipline his players.

Rodgers is made out to be a self-absorbed, self-entitled, distant island to himself. Plus, he likes to put people in the dog house and keep them there.

Furthermore, most of the criticisms are coming from ex-teammates years after they left, since now it’s convenient to rip the team because it is struggling.

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? Did Dunne actually write on the South Side and confuse Green and Gold for Black and Gold?

New threads

The Jets may be paying Le’Veon Bell a lot of money.

But they still have some cash left over to buy some new uniforms.

Poll: How do you like the New York Jets' new uniforms? https://t.co/U8EPuXe92M pic.twitter.com/A3LeMt1US6

— ESPN New York (@ESPNNewYork) April 5, 2019

Pretty sharp.

Wait? Have I seen those somewhere before?

New York Jets uniforms on top, Saskatchewan Roughriders uniforms on bottom (H/T @TujuMaster) pic.twitter.com/jLqwDsP5pr

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 5, 2019