Ford-Wheaton can be a viable NFL receiver
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MORGANTOWN -- While all of West Virginia's eyes will be on defensive tackle Dante Stills as the NFL grinds away this weekend in its annual three-day draft, living off the images they recall of what he did on the field, Mountaineer wide receiver Bryce Ford-Wheaton is hoping that the talent judges are leaning as much on what they don't see as the obvious talent that they do.
They see his speed, his size, his athletic ability, but Ford-Wheaton is quick to point out that what he is now may not be a starting wide receiver in the NFL, but he believes he can grow into that. He asks that see not what he is, but what he can be.
One might put it this way … Bryce Ford-Wheaton might be one of the major sleepers in the NFL draft, which started Thursday night and runs through Saturday in Kansas City.
His statistics at WVU were not eye-opening, even if some of his plays were. They talk about one catch against Iowa State in the back of the end zone in which his footwork was better than Nureyev's as he got his feet down while falling backward as among the greatest grabs any WVU receiver has ever made.
And then there was his performance at the NFL combine. It was the kind of thing that demands they look long and hard at him, a 4.38 30 and a 41-inch vertical, which is nearly unmatched among someone who measures in at 6-4 and 225 pounds.
Only three players at the combine were that big, that fast and that explosive over the last 20 years, matched only by Seattle Seahawks stars DK Metcalf and Tariq Woolen.
So you know Ford-Wheaton has caught the eyes of the scouts and general managers.
But he wants to emphasize that what they see isn't what they get, that there is much room for him to grow and that he has the kind of attitude that they should expect him to grow.
WVU Coach Neal Brown put it this way.
"If you saw him in the spring of 2019 compared to where he was in the fall of 2022, or where he is now, it's night and day. It's not even close. It's not like he got a little better. If I showed you film from the spring f 2019 and told you that was Bryce, you wouldn't believe that was him."
In fact, Ford-Wheaton has trouble believing it.
"I look at my film from 2019, and I just feel sick sometimes looking at the plays that I missed," he said. "I'm so much better than that right now, but I'm not a finished product. I have a lot more room to improve and I'm looking for steady improvement from here on out."
Always level-headed, he understands he isn't going to just walk into an NFL locker room and be handed a job, but Ford-Wheaton has an ace up his sleeve that others may not have.
"I'm not going in there to an NFL team as a Day 1 starter. Everybody knows that," Ford-Wheaton admitted. "But I can be a Day 1 starter on special teams … whatever way I can affect the team, however I can get on the field. It's hard to get rid of you if you do all that stuff."
The NFL looks beyond talent and athleticism. They try to get into players' heads as they study them, to figure out what kind of person they might be getting, what kind of attitude he carries with him, how intelligent he is and whether he can come apart under pressure.
Ford-Wheaton saw that over and over in interviews.
"One scout told me, 'Sometimes, when I put your tape on, I see Calvin Johnson. Other times I put it on and you couldn't play on a juco team in Iowa," he said. "I was sitting there, looking at him like 'Alright.' I knew what he was trying to do and I just smiled at him.
"They ask you a lot of off-the-wall questions trying to get a reaction out of you. One coach told me they try to get you mad, but I didn't. They try to get in your head, so you have to keep your head level."
Ford-Wheaton spent a lot of time working with receiving instructors since the season ended and learned a good bit about the art, the most meaningful being that he had to use his size to his advantage.
"Just play to my size and be as big as I need to be," he said. "There's a lot of things smaller receivers need that I don't need, like separation. That's absolutely necessary for a smaller receiver, but if I'm 6-3 and 225, there's not a lot of instances where the ball is in the air and I can't really get a chance at it."
WVU's two most prominent draft prospects are Ford-Wheaton and Stills, who is coming off a record-shattering career and was very impressive in both his workouts in postseason All-Star practices.