Chase Claypool was a star in the making after his rookie season in 2020. He finished with 873 yards and nine touchdowns. While he didn’t ascend in 2021, he was still good with another 860 yards and two touchdowns. There was no reason to think the 24-year-old wasn’t on track to be a dangerous target for years to come in the NFL. Then somewhere along the way, he found himself no longer a focal point of the offense.
Maybe it was his beef with head coach Mike Tomlin. The Steelers head coach was known to be frustrated with Claypool’s individualism and perceived immaturity. Or maybe it was the rise of rookie George Pickens in the receiving corps. Whatever the case, the new Bears receiver saw the writing on the wall before almost everybody else did. He explained the situation to Jason Lieser of the Chicago Sun-Times. From the sound of it, he believes his former team sabotaged his chances to make plays.
The sense that the Steelers didn’t value him was more than a feeling. He saw it in their game plans.
“At some point the perspective on me was like, ‘He’s not a red-zone threat,’ for some reason,” Claypool said. “Or, ‘He’s not a deep-ball threat,’ for some reason. I’m not sure when that happened, but I started getting ‘formation-ed’ away from those things.
“So it was super hard for me to make big plays, because anytime there was a big play drawn up, I was on the other side of it.”
Chase Claypool alluded to this after the Dolphins game.
The Bears threw him a series of quick outs with the idea of getting him the ball and letting him create something after the catch. That simple play was completely out of the question towards the end of his time in Pittsburgh. It was confusing since he was big, strong, and fast. He wasn’t afraid to run with violence, either. GM Ryan Poles couldn’t understand what was happening. So he started digging into the situation. He gauged the price tag and reached out to people he trusted to ask about the receiver.
Once he got the answers he was looking for, he decided Chase Claypool was somebody who could help the Bears. So he sent a 2nd round pick to the Steelers to make the deal happen. Time will tell if it was the right call, but Claypool seems overjoyed. He’s once again in an offense that wishes to utilize his strength, and he has a quarterback with superior talent that can get him the ball. Sometimes things work out the way they should.
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