Chicago Bears 2020 Draft Grades: Darnell Mooney, WR, Tulane

We’re doing something a little different with our draft grades this year at Windy City Gridiron, and that’s because neither I nor our Senior Draft Analyst EJ Snyder thinks that giving a player an arbitrary letter grade before he’s played a snap in the NFL is a fair way to gauge a prospects potential.

Grades are still a wildly popular way to look at draft prospects, so we’ll still be asking you guys to give us your grade for each pick. So with that being said, what letter grade do you give the Chicago Bears selection of Tulane wide out Darnell Mooney?

But as for our official WCG grade for each selection the Chicago Bears make in the 2020 NFL Draft, EJ wanted to have a more detailed way to measure the potential he sees in each prospect, so his methodology is as follows.

He’ll be giving out points in these three categories on a 1-10 scale.

1. Player Skills: How much pure talent/skill/production do they have?
2. Scheme Fit/Potential: What might they do based on where they landed?
3. Draft Value: Were they a value draft-wise where they were picked? Could the team have waited and done OK?

EJ’s Grade for Darnell Mooney

• Player Skills = 7: Mooney is an extremely fast receiver. His speed rivals the fastest players in this draft. He is undersized but shows good body control and above average hands. His ability to get over the top of defenders and open up a defense is his signature skill.
• Scheme Fit/Potential = 8: Matt Nagy has been looking for a true slot speed threat since arriving in Chicago (tried to get Albert Wilson, got Taylor Gabriel). Mooney provides this element in spades. He’s not the biggest or strongest, so he’ll have to learn to get off press coverage, but his ability to get deep will truly open up the underneath of Nagy’s passing scheme.
• Draft Value = 7: Trading away two 6th-round picks to go get a player that possesses the singular skill that could be the key to truly unlock your offense is a small price to pay. It’s a bit soon for Mooney to be taken, but not overly so. This is a risk but one well worth taking at this point of the draft.

We have even more on Darnell Mooney in this mini-podcast from Robert Schmitz, where he’s joined by our Lead Draft Analyst Jacob Infante and our Senior Draft Analyst EJ Snyder.