Building the Board: Let’s talk about Running Backs

Running back might be the most under-discussed need for a team like the Chicago Bears — it’s by no means their only need (they need help everywhere else too), but with David Montgomery hitting Free Agency the Bears only have one RB on the roster worth handing the ball off to.

For a team that runs the ball as often as Chicago did in 2022, they could very well look to add a weapon in the draft.

For several months now, the WCG crew has been working hard on a simple idea: building a Chicago Bears draft board brick-by-brick in an attempt to create as authentic a draft board 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 10 Running Backs:

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

• Texas’ Bijan Robinson
• Alabama’s Jahmyr Gibbs
• UCLA’s Zach Charbonnet
• Ole Miss’s Zach Evans
• Auburn’s Tank Bigsby
• Tulane’s Tyjae Spears
• Oklahoma’s Eric Gray
• East Carolina’s Keaton Mitchell
• Minnesota’s Mo Ibrahim
• Illinois’ Chase Brown

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!

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!