Chicago Bears General Manager Ryan Pace will either a.) be ultimately proven a genius for his outside the box 2017 NFL Draft selections or b.) soon looking for a new gig.
Coming off a 3-13 season in which the Bears hit rock bottom, Pace went with a very high risk/very high reward strategy which yielded just five total picks, out of a draft that lasts seven rounds. The end result will be extremely hit-or-miss, sink-or-swim, choose your all-or-nothing cliche.
If Mitchell Trubisky develops into the Chicago Bears bonafide QB1 for the next decade, then this will all be worth it.
If he’s the real deal, then we’ll all forget about badly Pace got fleeced by the San Francisco 49ers to get him. If Trubisky indeed pans out, then no one will recall all that Chicago gave up for the chance to move up one whole slot. The Trubisky selection was not very well received, especially within the Chicago Bears community itself.
Social media torches everything, but it really torched this decision. It’s funny, but we actually mocked Trubisky to the Chicago Bears, way up at the top of the draft, as the NFL season was winding down.
Later, like a sane person, we actually slotted him much lower, towards the back of the first round.
While the Trubiksy selection was much maligned, some of the Bears’ other picks were questionable as well. They took TE Adam Shaheen in the second round out of the Division II Ashland University. It’s reminiscent of another second round pick the Bears made 11 years ago, for another division II player, Abilene Christian’s Danieal Manning.
That choice was also slammed at the time, but in the end it worked out beautifully because Manning ended up having a really nice career. That’s definitely got to be the ceiling on the Shaheen pick.
In round four, the Bears grabbed DB Eddie Jackson out of Alabama and RB Tarik Cohen out of North Carolina A&T. Are you sensing a theme here? That of taking guys from schools you have never heard of?
Rank the Bears draft. @360FFB
— Gordy Baba ?? (@gordy_baba) April 30, 2017
In round five, the Bears took OL Jordan Morgan from Kutztown University, again a school where you can’t name the conference affiliation or mascot of the school. You got to give Pace credit for this though- he doesn’t care where the players that he thinks can ball come from. You got to love his originality and boldness.
That said, this Chicago Bears draft class will earn a lot of “F” and “D” grades from a lot of pundits, writers, bloggers and fans.
Of course, what do draft grades really mean? You can’t actually evaluate the true value of a draft class until a few years down the road. On the other hand, you still have immediate thoughts and feelings to anything in life, despite the fact that the ultimate meaning down the road could vastly different.
Today, in the immediate aftermath of the Bears five picks, I would give them a participation trophy. Congrats on your participant ribbon. That’s the grade I was assign.
It was a very deep draft, at least on defense, and no doubt an amazing class for defensive backs. However, what did the Bears without a doubt, genuinely accomplish here? They have needs all over, certainly so on defense and in the secondary. I see no upgrades in those areas.
Good luck to Chicago Bears Head Coach John Fox; he really wasn’t given a whole lot to work with here.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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