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Our Chicago Bears have been... how should I put this? Pretty bad at drafting in the last couple of decades outside of a few great picks like Roquan Smith, Matt Forte, Devin Hester, and Brian Urlacher. So I decided to go back to the year 2000 and analyze what star players the Bears should have drafted instead of who they actually took.
Let me just get the obvious one out of the way, yea we all know the Bears selected Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick instead of Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. Was I upset at the time? I was incredibly upset. Will, I ever get over it? Probably not. But here we are, 4 years later and Patrick Mahomes is the best player in the NFL, Deshaun Watson is doing... you know what, let’s not talk about that. And Mitch Trubisky is playing second fiddle behind one of the best young quarterbacks in football in Josh Allen. But I’ll move on.
In 2008, the Bears selected tackle, Chris Williams, from Vanderbilt with the 14th pick, remember him? Turns out, Chris Johnson, one of the fastest running backs ever was taken with the 24th pick. Luckily, we somehow got Matt Forte in the second round, but Chris Johnson would have been fun to have.
2012 was another year where the Bears missed out on someone pretty good. In the second round, the Bears selected one of my favorite players, Alshon Jeffrey with the 45th pick. Seems like a good pick right? Unfortunately, All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner was picked literally two picks later. Imagine Wagner with Vic Fangio? God that would have been awesome.
You can argue that these last two examples were okay, but the 2014 draft had an inexcusable selection. In the second round, the Bears took Ego Ferguson with the 51st pick. I mean come on, Ego Ferguson? The Packers two picks later took Davante Adams with the 53rd pick. That is an all-time miss right there and you cannot argue that at all.
You would think that the Bears would have learned their lesson after the Ego Ferguson incident, no sir. In 2015, the Bears took Kevin White with the seventh pick. Todd Gurley was taken with the 10th pick and Marcus Peters was picked at 18.
Luckily for Bears fans, the last couple of drafts have been pretty good for us. Roquan was picked in 2018, he seems to be a stud at the linebacker position. And the most recent draft could one day go down in Bears history, trading up to take Justin Fields is an amazing move that every single Bears fan can get behind. Let’s hope the next couple of drafts can keep up this level of promise.