T.J. Houshmandzadeh trained many of the wideouts in this year's draft and has high praise for the Steelers rookie
... “He was [expletive] unstoppable,” Houshmandzadeh said. “No one could touch him.” ...
... Houshmandzadeh sees Claypool doing the same things in NFL games and takes pleasure in reaching out to the same coaches and scouts he tried to sell on Claypool, “when no one wanted to listen to me.” Houshmandzadeh corrects himself that there was one guy who believed him, a scout for the Buffalo Bills.
“What do you think?” the scout asked. “Because I think he’s the best receiver in the draft.”
“You’re onto something,” Houshmandzadeh answered.
Houshmandzadeh got a text Sunday afternoon from that same scout that simply read “Chase Claypool” with the wide eyes emoji. “I tried to tell you,” he wrote back...
... “I told him, by midyear, you’re going to be the No. 1 receiver on that team,” Houshmandzadeh recalled. “He said, ‘What about JuJu?’ I said this has nothing to do with JuJu. You'll be the No. 1 receiver on that team because you've got Ben [Roethlisberger], and once you show him what I think you can do, he’s not going to stop feeding you.” ...
... “You can't say Larry Fitzgerald, you can't say Mike Evans, because Chase is faster than those guys. I think Plaxico Burress is a little bigger, but Plax couldn't run like Chase can run. It’s tough, man. Chase, he’s going to be his own guy. You can't compare Chase to nobody. He can do things that there’s not too many guys that came before him can do. You maybe could say, maybe, T.O.” — as in Terrell Owens — “but he’s probably going to be a better route-runner than T.O., more sure-handed than T.O. But the size and speed? I can see T.O.”
At 6 feet 3, 224 pounds, Owens was actually listed an inch shorter and 14 pounds lighter than Claypool. It’s not just the natural gifts that have Houshmandzadeh predicting greatness but also his ability to to learn an offense, as well as his technique — two things they honed before the draft. “How to basically get away from all the [B.S.] in the playbook that you don't need,” Houshmandzadeh said. “And Chase will tell you, all we work on is creating separation and beating tough coverage. That’s all we work on, physically.”