What Happened This Weekend?

Ryan Poles emerges from a wild weekend with his credit cards in his wallet and only one embarrassing phone call made.

The Bears finished their draft on Saturday and did… pretty well? Maybe that sounds like fan bias, but I rarely find occasion to praise anything Ryan Poles does and would still have preferred to see him leave with Matt Eberflus and still prefer to see him leave after this season. But it’s hard to argue with a lot of what he did here. Maybe he’s learning! To go behind the curtain a little bit, I color-coded my board like this:

               Blue = Star (Abdul Carter, Ashton Jeanty)

               Green = Day 1 starter, lower ceiling than star but a contributor immediately (Emeka Ekbuka)

               Yellow = Quality role player who should be able to help immediately as a specialist or special teamer and develop into a decent starter (Cam Skattebo)

               Orange = Developmental prospect who could turn into a yellow player.

               Red = Special teamer or practice squad player

               Purple = A player who possessed traits or factors that indicated they could outperform their draft slot, possibly significantly so (Savion Williams, Shavon Revel). Basically any guy who showed up on my Guys I Like list.

               Blank = A player who did not participate in the combine and didn’t show up on the Combine participant list and/or the PFF draft board.

Cool dude, you ROY G. BIV’d it, what of it? Well, if you wanted to go by my tiers (and why wouldn’t you) the Bears had a pretty damn good draft. Let’s talk to it:

Blues: No blue players this year but there weren’t very many available so Poles gets a pass here.

Greens: Colston Loveland is going to start and play a lot. Once the emotions settled a little bit after Night 1, you have to give the Bears some grace here. They absolutely found themselves in the dead zone of this first round. There wasn’t going to be a pick to make that was a perfect fit so they took a guy who should fill a key element of the offense from Day 1. If he’s their third or fourth (more on that other guy later) best pass catcher, it’s still a great pick. Ozzy Trapilo was one of the most pro-ready linemen in the draft. He’s basically the anti-Kiran Amegadjie. He probably won’t ever make the Pro Bowl but if you are looking for a guy who can do his job at 2-4 spots along the offensive line for a long time, he’s it. His 700+ snaps last year without a penalty was a very refreshing stat to see.

Yellows: Shemar Turner was not egregious by any stretch in the second and they seem to really like him. Darius Alexander and Vernon Broughton were both purple players on my list and they went very quickly after the Bears took Turner but I’m not going to quibble with what professional football coaches and personnel evaluators thought. My issue with Turner was how quickly his scouting report turned into hyping him up involving stuff that isn’t necessarily being a good football player. “Hot motor” and “plays with anger” type things. Those aren’t bad things, but I’ve found those are things that get said about a player who lacks actual high-level football traits. Not to mention he was hit with eight penalties and an ejection during college by “playing with anger.” It’s worth watching.

Orange: None!

Red: If the only guy who looks absolutely destined for bottom of the roster duties was your 7th round pick, it means your draft was pretty good. There are certainly some things to like about Kyle Monangai; gets the dirty yards, great ball security and pass protection. Stuff that will get him on the field, but this wasn’t exactly the running back that fans had in mind going into the draft. Look for him to replace the role played by Travis Homer.

Blank: Going to go out of order here so we end on the positives. Ryan Poles can only resist being himself for so long so give him some credit he was able to wait until the 4th round to do something really dumb. I had 29 interior linebackers on the list going into the draft and Ruben Hyppolite II was not one of them. If this was the sixth or seventh round? No biggie. But this is the 4th round the NFL Draft. This isn’t where you throw your dart. There were still good players on the board, the running back board still looked solid, edge was still there with Bradyn Swinson and Elijah Roberts, there were lineman like Jalen Rivers or Marcus Mbow or even higher ranked linebackers like Smael Mondon. Dane Brugler had him rated as his 35th best linebacker with at least eight players ranked ahead of him going undrafted. And Ryan Poles took him in the 4th round. Let him cook?

This is where the GM’s reputation comes into play. If Poles had hit on guys like Velus Jones and had shown he was able to unearth these guys, it would be one thing. But he hasn’t. Sometimes it’s simple, if a player doesn’t appear to be on anyone’s board, there is probably a reason for it. Using a fourth-round pick on this player might be worse than Tory Taylor last year and there has never been a pick worse than Tory Taylor last year. Luke Newman did appear at #340 on the PFF Big Board but didn’t attend the combine and didn’t receive a composite score. This was a guy they probably could have gotten as an UDFA but in the 6th round, that’s fine. They especially seem interested in his ability to develop as a center. All of those factors work in favor of taking an out of left field guy in that spot. Hyppolite is just another addition to Poles’ dreadful mid-round record.

Purple: Having said that Ryan went full Lloyd Christmas with his fifth-round pick and totally redeemed himself. I had a total of 38 purple players on my list this year and the Bears came away with two of them, one being Zah Frazier. Now, this classification is relative meaning that a 5th round pick doesn’t have to turn into Patrick Surtain for it to be a hit. Frazier is long and fast with excellent ball skills that could turn him into the #2 CB opposite of Jaylon Johnson when Tyrique Stevenson finally leaves in free agency or a squad car. If that’s the end result for Frazier, it’s a home run.

But enough of all of this, let’s get to the best pick of the weekend, probably the best pick of Ryan Poles’ tenure and maybe the best pick in the draft. Luther Burden would have slotted in somewhere between Rome Odunze and Brian Thomas Jr. if he had been allowed to come out last year. He was the best WR prospect going into the year and then his stock dropped a little bit due to some issues with the Mizzou offense. Given his draft position, to outperform it, he’d probably need to be the best receiver from this class and it’s absolutely in play. The Bears entered this draft needing a speedy slot and I, like most people, was looking at the mid-rounds, guys like Kyle Williams, Jalen Royals or even Tez Johnson. The Bears were able to land the tip-top best outcome for that need. He fell out of the first round because he wasn’t going to be a Day 1 outside target and his route running got dinged throughout the process. Well, he doesn’t have to be the Day 1 guy here and some time with Antwaan Randle-El who was trying to pull Ryan Poles out of his chair when the pick came in, should set him up just fine. The Bears are so often the team on the other end of this, passing on a high-level player for this or that and ending up scratching their head when it doesn’t work out and the guy they passed on was a star. This was the least “same old Bears” draft pick I can remember them making.

Last Thoughts

The two biggest criticisms coming out of this draft for the Bears is their lack of edge and waiting until the 7th round to take a running back.

-On the first point, should they have added another pass rusher at some point? Absolutely. Not like they got much value in the 4th or 6th round. But the edge class was consistently misrepresented leading up to the draft. It wasn’t “deep.” There were a lot of guys who were eligible to be drafted at that position. There is a difference between those two things. Quantity doesn't always equal quality. After Abdul Carter there were 20 guys who had similar “well if this goes right and this goes right and he ends up in the right role” qualifiers in their scouting report. Anyone who tells you with certainty that any individual member of that edge class besides Carter is going to be in the NFL in five years is lying to you.

-Poles addressed the running back situation after the draft in his press conference and it was described as “chasing the board” and how they didn’t fall into the right “pockets.” I get that and I think this draft looks a lot different if the Patriots didn’t take TreVeyon Henderson the pick before the Burden pick. I’d be willing to cut them more of a break if again, they didn’t use their 4th round pick on a guy that even front office personnel had to Google after the pick. The running back room is now definitely a question mark with D’Andre Swift presumably returning to his role at the #1 back. Poles doesn’t quit on his guys easily, you can say that for him.

-The maneuvering within the draft was very well done. Ending up with three second round picks in this draft was simply terrific asset management. That was the spot you absolutely wanted to be as many times as you could be. It was very funny that given his record in the third round, Poles decided to just punt on that round this year. Maybe he’s learning!

-Adding a 4th round pick for next year, “making themselves whole” as Poles put it was another solid move that will probably go under the radar. They traded their own 2026 4th for Joe Thuney but now they are back with a full assortment of picks next year.

In the end, the Bears made eight picks and one was an egregious miss, one looks like a potential home run and everything else made sense or fit a need or seemed like a good chance to take. It’s hard to do much better but as has always been the case with Chef Poles, now is the hard part, winning football games, not just the offseason.