Ike Hilliard is a new face for the Pittsburgh Steelers organization, having had no prior connections to the team as either a player or a coach prior to his hiring earlier this year to take over the duties of the wide receivers coaching position. But he is not entirely unfamiliar with the lineage he is stepping into.
In fact, one of the Steelers’ most recent and most prominent wide receivers coaches was something of a mentor to Hilliard. The two overlapped during the end of the latter’s playing career, having spent his first eight seasons with the New York Giants as a former first-round wide receiver, before playing four more seasons between 2005 and 2008 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.