I wanted Mitchell as well, but what I heard was on a podcast, and it wasn’t that he is “ nuts,” but it was that he was basically disinterested when he was meeting teams. Anyone can read into that anything they want because it’s impossible know if it’s true, or if it even mattered? What does matter, however, is how much he cares about football, and more important, how much is he willing to do to win. It won’t matter how talented he is if he really doesn’t care, it doesn’t want to be there.
What sold me on Polk was watching the clips of him playing, as well as his comments. He gives a **** about playing hard and wanting to win, and it shows in the way he plays. And it wasn’t huge explosive plays, but it was the way he attacked the ball, and made really tough catch after really tough catch, and they were coming from Penix, who throws a really hard ball.
The same goes for Baker, go watch the tape on him, and the way he uses his body to win contested balls, as well as the way he continually worked back to his QB to bail him out of trouble, And the important thing for me with both of these guys is how and where they are making these catches. They aren’t hauling in deep ball after deep ball in foot races, it’s mostly in the intermediate areas of the field, where you have pick up most of your third down conversions.
I think Polk and Baker will end up with Douglas as their starting receivers, and Bourne and Osborne will be the depth. I’m not sure JuJu and Thornton will even make this team, especially since neither play special teams. IMO this was a great job by Wolf in getting exactly the kinds of receivers that will make Maye successful, ones that can reliably make difficult catches that move the chains consistently. If they can add a # 1 to that mix, either by trade or draft in the next year their WR corps will be in great shape. It’s already in much better condition than it was. I really liked the Polk pick, but adding Baker later on was what made me feel much better about the unit as a whole.