INDIANAPOLIS — Michael Wilson wanted to attend Stanford University for almost as long as he can remember.
When Wilson, a native of Simi Valley, California, began to think he might have a football career in the offing when he was about 10, he looked to the north and saw what he called his dream school.
“That was when coach (Jim) Harbaugh and coach (David) Shaw were taking the program to new heights,” Wilson said.
He particularly liked two Stanford players who went on to great NFL careers — Richard Sherman and Doug Baldwin.
Wilson calls each “my role models,” in how he viewed Baldwin — who like Wilson played receiver — and Sherman merging on-field and off-field success.
One moment from Baldwin particularly stood out — an interview on the turf of Lumen Field following the Seahawks’ comeback win over the Green Bay Packers for the right to go to the Super Bowl following the 2014 season when Baldwin took aim at NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders for echoing some of the criticisms of the receiving corps, especially the infamous characterization of them as “pedestrian.”
“That’s just what pedestrian, average, mediocre receivers do,” Baldwin told NFL Network’s Steve Wyche. “My man Deion Sanders said we are aight, huh? We aight? Yeah, we aight. We are going to go to the Super Bowl again being aight.”
“I was 14 years old when he debated Deion Sanders,” Wilson recalled this week at the NFL scouting combine. “Watching those guys speak in interviews, I was like, ‘I want to be just like that.’”
Eventually, Wilson got that chance, earning a scholarship to Stanford in 2018 and becoming a team captain and three-time member of the Pac-12 all-academic team.
Last spring, he finally had a chance to thank one of the players he said had helped him get to that point.
“I met Doug Baldwin for the first time during spring ball of last year and the first thing I said to Doug was, ‘You are one of the ones that inspired me to want to go to Stanford,’” Wilson said.
That kicked off a friendship that has seen the two text regularly. Baldwin attended Stanford’s game at Husky Stadium last season when Wilson caught six passes for 176 yards and two touchdowns, one of the few highlights for the Cardinal in a 40-22 UW win.
Now for Wilson to see if he can further emulate Baldwin by forging his own successful NFL career.
Wilson doesn’t figure to have to fight an uphill battle as did Baldwin, who went undrafted out of Stanford before latching on with the Seahawks as a rookie free agent, a de facto part of the team’s famed 2011 draft class that included Sherman and K.J. Wright.
Baldwin went unselected, in part, because it was hard to stand out as a receiver in one of the better running offenses in the country. There were also questions over his size (5 foot 10, 192 pounds).
Wilson doesn’t face questions of his size, measuring 6-2, 213.
But he does face some questions about his injury history. He suffered a season-ending collarbone injury last year that limited him to six games and a foot injury in 2020. He’s played just 14 games in the last three seasons. And the 4.59 seconds in 40-yard dash he recorded Saturday was slower than he expected.
Wilson put a lot of other questions to rest when he was regarded as one of the standout performers at the Senior Bowl, with many analysts thinking he’d jumped into possibly being a second-day pick in a year not regarded as strong in receivers.
Following Senior Bowl week, the game’s executive director, Jim Nagy, who also was a scout with the Seahawks for five years from 2013-18, tweeted: “Nobody changed narrative more at (Senior Bowl) than Stanford’s Michael Wilson. Most NFL scouts pegged Wilson as “A+ character” & polished “possession guy’’ but he showed different set of gears in Mobile. Wilson was a big riser moving from likely fifth to possible third-rounder.’’
That could put him square into the eyes of the Seahawks, who with DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett don’t have a need to take a receiver high in the draft. With little else proven behind those two, they could have a desire to take one somewhere in the middle rounds to try to solve what has been an annual quest to find a consistent third receiver.
If the Seahawks are truly interested in Wilson — he said he has met with someone from every team over the last month or so — they won’t have to go far to get an in-depth scouting report. Not only can they get one from Baldwin, but from another former Seahawk — T.J. Houshmandzadeh.
Wilson is one of several receivers preparing for the draft by training with Houshmandzadeh, whose 11-year NFL career included spending the 2009 season with the Seahawks (he spent camp with the team during Pete Carroll’s first year in 2010 before being released).
Wilson has been working out with Houshmandzadeh in Cerritos, California, for the last three years or so, saying he would often fly down during weekends off at Stanford. Others training with Houshmandzadeh include Chase Claypool of the Steelers, Michael Pittman of the Colts and former UW standout John Ross, who recently signed a futures deal with Kansas City and will go to camp with the Chiefs this year.
“Always been talented but just needed the platform,” Houshmandzadeh tweeted following the Senior Bowl.
Wilson says he has worked specifically with Houshmandzadeh — who had to wait until the 204th pick to hear his named called in 2001 out of Oregon State and went on to lead the NFL in receptions in 2007 with 112 — on his releases off the line and the last three steps of his route, which Houshmandzadeh told him are the two most crucial factors in getting open.
“He says (doing those things successful) are the things that keep guys in the league,” Wilson said.
He says he still checks in with Baldwin, who usually offers advice of a broader nature.
“He just always encourages me to go hard in everything I do and just have fun because this time doesn’t last for long,” Wilson said.