The Facts:
The Steelers thought Bryant was a second-round talent but with the draft so deep in receivers, he fell to them in the fourth. Bryant might have benefited from playing one more season at Clemson because he really played only one after backing up 2013 first-round pick DeAndre Hopkins, but Ben Roethlisberger long has asked for a tall receiver and Bryant is it. While his combine height of 6-3 is nearly two inches shorter than Clemson advertised in 2013, he's plenty tall enough and fast enough at 4.41 (seconds in the 40-yard dash) to get the job done. The rest is up to him, which will include work on catching the ball away from his chest, a habit noted in pre-draft analyses. "I can catch, I'm not worried about what people say," said Bryant. "I'm working on catching it outside but as long as you catch it and don't drop it, people can't really talk about it."
Reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Fantasy Football Diehards Line:
Indeed, Bryant caught 42 for an average of 19.7 yards for Clemson in 2013 as a junior. And as Post-Gazette staffer Ed Bouchette notes, there is a job open for someone to start catching footballs in Pittsburgh since they lost three of their top four wide receivers over the past 14 months, two since March. Antonio Brown is the only fixture of a group that also includes Markus Wheaton, who had six receptions as a rookie, and newcomer Lance Moore, who caught a bunch in New Orleans the past eight seasons. Moore will play in the slot, so it figures that either Wheaton or Bryant will become the split end, where Mike Wallace and then Emmanuel Sanders played. The competition for that starting spot will be worth monitoring.
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