Draft Experts Shocked At Chicago Bears Absence From Prominent Pro Day
The Chicago Bears have been busy the past few weeks as colleges across the country hold their annual pro days to help draft prospects showcase their skills one last time. General manager Ryan Poles has popped up at a few of them, as has director of player personnel Terry Koziol. Yet nobody has been more travelled lately than offensive line coach Dan Roushar. He’s hard at work trying to help the team figure out their center and left tackle positions after multiple disruptions. Ozzy Trapilo tore up his knee, and Drew Dalman retired. They are likely to go into this draft seeking help.
Roushar has made stops at pro days for several notable prospects, including Kansas State’s Sam Hecht and Georgia Tech’s Keyland Rutledge. However, some in the draft community were somewhat shocked that the Bears coach was nowhere to be found at Iowa’s pro day on Monday.
This feels quite prominent considering Iowa has long been one of the bigger factories for good offensive linemen in the NFL. Logan Jones is considered among the better centers in this draft class, drawing comparisons to Garrett Bradbury, whom the Bears literally traded for a few weeks ago.
Why would the Chicago Bears skip this pro day?
Keep in mind, it’s not just Jones they passed up on watching. Hawkeyes guard Gennings Dunker is already generating lots of buzz as a future starter. The Bears didn’t want to see either player up close or speak to them? That means one of two things. Either the team genuinely has little interest in them, or they’re trying to keep their actual interest as lowkey as possible. Jones feels like the type of player Bears general manager Ryan Poles would love: undersized, athletic, intelligent, physical, and nasty.
Perhaps they prefer not to take an older prospect. Jones turns 25 this year. Or it could be his limited anchor in pass protection. Then again, that is the same problem Dalman had when they signed him, and it didn’t seem to bother them that much. The truth is, the Bears have a weird habit of not taking offensive line prospects from schools known for producing them. Nobody from Alabama. Nobody from Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin, or Iowa. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but seeing things like this makes it feel more deliberate.
Overthinking has been the biggest enemy of this team.
When you look at the Chicago Bears’ biggest offensive line successes over the past 30 years, there is often a correlation with the size of the school they attended. Olin Kreutz came from Washington. Kyle Long went to Oregon. Charles Leno went to Boise State. Cody Whitehair went to Kansas State. Teven Jenkins went to Oklahoma State. Darnell Wright went to Tennessee. By and large, each player came from established programs with good track records for producing offensive linemen.
Then you look at their bigger flops over the years and the correlation mostly holds true. Marc Colombo went to Boston College. Chris Williams went to Vanderbilt. Kiran Amegadjie went to Yale. The only outlier was Gabe Carimi, who went to Wisconsin, but he was derailed by injuries. They say scout the player, not the helmet. While that is true, the fact remains that the large majority of good offensive linemen still come from a select group of schools. Iowa is one of them.