An early look at WVU’s 2019 NFL Draft prospects: David Sills
The 2019 NFL Draft is months away, but West Virginia has numerous players on its roster this season who have a chance of playing at the next level.
WVSports.com catches up with CBS Sports NFL Draft Writer, Chris Trapasso, to ask him his opinions on the early draft stocks of these players.
Today, we continue our series with another Q&A with Trapasso regarding the draft stock of West Virginia wide receiver, David Sills.
1. With Sills playing his first full season as a wide receiver last year, how important is this upcoming season for him as far as his development and Draft stock go?
"He was a really fun player to watch last year and I kind of went into West Virginia games watching Justin Crawford and watching Will Grier and David Sills just popped up as this dominate, almost Mike Evans type of wide receiver. I think just getting a little bit better after the catch and that's not to say he's brutal after the catch right now, but this is kind of the overarching theme of my answers -- looking at where the NFL is going, it's very short passing, yards after the catch predicated and I think it's going to continue to be that way. So for me, I'm someone who just naturally over the last 10 years grown to like those bigger body, tall receivers, those Mike Evans types because my thought is if a defense schemes perfectly and there's perfect coverage, those guys can make plays two feet above their head or in the end zone or when coverage is great and David Sills -- his athleticism, size and his ball tracking, that combination was potentially the best in all of college football last year, so I think he's going to dominate in that area again. So just getting a little better, making a few more guys miss on some of those shorter passes and really maximizing yards after the catch will be the biggest help to his stock because it seems as though the bigger wide receivers, I'm not being phased out by scouts and GMs, but you see those guys go a little bit later in the draft than they did maybe even 5-10 years ago."
2. How do you see his skill set fitting in at the next level?
"I loved Courtland Sutton from SMU last year. I had him as top five overall prospect on my big board. I was a lot higher on him than many other people were and he ended up going in the second round to the Broncos and I thought that was crazy. He definitely should've been a first round pick. So we'll see how Sutton plays and how he transitions. Ultimately, he'll be a little more experienced than Sills as he hasn't been playing wide receiver that long. He's the type of player that he's a deep threat -- although he's probably not going to run 4.4 flat at the combine because he can just go up and get it, he knows how to use his big body. There are some wide receiver prospects that are 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4 and they don't really play to their size. I think Sills even plays bigger than he is and he just tracks the ball extremely well, has big strong hands. So I think maybe most teams are going away from those types of receivers and want the smaller guys that can take a bubble screen and make three guys miss and go 25 yards down the field, but there is certainly still a prominent spot for him as a teams No. 2 wide receiver. But in the red zone, when everything is really tight, there's not a lot of space, you can throw it up to him and there are still those prominent wide receivers that are 6-foot-2 and above that aren't necessarily the quickest but really excel in those tested catch situations."
3. What are his strengths and weaknesses?
Strengths: "Just to kind of get more specific about him and contested catch situations, if that’s going to be your forte as a wide receiver, you have to be really good with your body control with knowing where you are on the field when you're making those extended catches near the sideline I think he does that really well. Not only does he have reliable hands in those situations, he has strong hands where there are cornerbacks, safeties, draped all over him trying to knock away the ball and he seemingly has a vice grip on it once it gets into his area. I think that is a strength and that's something that NFL coaches won't have to coach and he'll potentially get even stronger.”
Weaknesses: “Maybe a weakness, and this is not even individualized to him, it's just kind of the body type he has, that he's more of a build-up speed guy than someone who can flip on the jets right away, so maybe getting a little quicker with his burst in the first 5-10 yards would maybe not help him that much because he's more of a deep ball guy, but if you can really, as a bigger receiver, threaten in those 5-10 yards you can really just work that comeback and that hitch game extremely well and I think that's what Mike Evans really showed in his final year at Texas A&M that certainly he's not someone who would be considered explosive compared to Odell Beckham or Antonio Brown, but I think he does a good enough job to have his speed built up in the first 5-10 yards to threaten those corners that he is going to go deep and that's why he gets targeted 180 times a season and has 1,000-plus yard seasons and 10-plus touchdowns because he's not kind of that long striding guy that takes forever to kind of get to his top speed."
4. Would you compare Sills to Mike Evans or is there another player you compare him to?
"I don't know if I would say Mike Evans just because he could turn into being very similar to him, but I guess what Sills did last year reminds me of what Mike Evans did his second-to-last season at Texas A&M. That last year, Evans was 230, 235 (pounds) and looked almost like an NFL tight end. Not that Sills is this super lanky guy that hasn't been in the weight room, but I think potentially this offseason and we'll see come August/September if David Sills kind of bulks up a little bit and just plays into that, 'I'm going to be that Mike Evans type.’ It's kind of hard to say what he should do because I'm mentioning getting faster, getting better after the catch, so that may be lending some credence to him maybe slimming down, trying to get quicker. But Mike Evans, Kelvin Benjamin, those two guys went in the first round in that famous 2014 draft and have had pretty good careers and they said, 'hey we're going to be one of those big tight ends out here, throw us up the football and we're going to go up and get it,' so I think getting overall stronger would probably help him and probably push me toward more of a Mike Evans comparison. I don't have one officially on CBS right now, but he's in that kind of mold of that bigger, physically dominating wide receiver."
5. Where do you see him being selected in the 2019 NFL Draft? Which teams and schemes would he fit best with?
"It's very possible that he will go on day two. I think he will be the classic, under the assumption he's going to continue where he left off last year and have a very big season for the Mountaineers, that he will be the classic one or a handful of teams will love him and there will be a lot of teams like I mentioned that want to throw it two yards and have their wide receivers create that won't really like him. I still think if he was available on day three, the start of round four, I would be very surprised. I would say Courtland Sutton is probably a pretty decent comparison for him. We obviously haven't seen Sutton play yet. He goes in the second round, I think with another big year, 10-plus touchdowns, you're looking somewhere from pick 50 to pick 100, somewhere in that range.
"In terms of teams, teams that need that size at the wide receiver spot. Most teams have that wide receiver so teams that want to get a little more vertical with their wide receivers. I mentioned Norv Turner earlier, I think the Buffalo Bills that have kind of become the Carolina Panthers of the AFC what they want to do and kind of recreate what they had for Cam Newton that they didn't really care if he was completing 65 percent of his passes as long as he was hitting some long passes each game -- that kind of philosophy on offense which is not archaic or totally obsolete, but it's kind of going by the wayside a little bit, that type of offense where Sills fits in is not the Mike Wallace deep threat, but just that bigger deep threat that doesn't have to run 4.4 but can still hit you those splash plays every game."
Enter the contest by clicking on the following link and choosing to subscribe to the channel: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=VideoGlide
