Building the Board: Looking at Linebackers

The Chicago Bears may have added three veteran linebackers during free agency, T.J Edwards, Tremaine Edmunds, and Dylan Cole, but don’t rule out the possibility that they’ll look at the draft for another at some point. Chicago’s current depth and the value of the position will no doubt affect how they stack their board, but they had seven linebackers on their 53-man roster at times in 2022, so they obviously want options at the position. Backup linebackers are core special teamers, and the Bears need players to man the third phase too.

For several months now, the WCG crew has been working hard on a simple idea: building a Chicago Bears draft board in an attempt to create as authentic a list as possible while tailoring it specifically to one team (rather than the scheme-free evaluations that are so common around the internet).

We’ve been scouting the players available in the 2023 NFL Draft, and we’ll continue to do so, with the end game being a fully-fledged Draft Board. Today we talk through our next batch of player grades — specifically, these linebackers:

Remember, this list isn’t in order of quality/ranking! Simply order of appearance!

Our initial Draft Board (1.0) will be on a Google Document that we’ll share here as soon as it’s done, and keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks — we’ll be adding players to it in batches of 10 as we try to show the process of how draft boards shuffle week-by-week.

We’re excited! We want to hear your thoughts — do you agree with today’s grades? Do you disagree? Let us know!

Video version here:

The podcast version is available here:

And in case you missed the original introduction video for Building the Board, check it out below for an overview of the project!