Dan LeFevour excited to be a Chicago Bear

It seems like Dan LeFevour has been overlooked for most of his football career, which is odd considering he's a 6-foot-3, 230-pound athletic quarterback who can run and is tough, smart and hard working.

In four years as the starter at Central Michigan he became the only player in NCAA history with 12,000 passing yards and 2,500 rushing yards. Still, the Downers Grove native and Benet Academy High School graduate plummeted to the sixth round of the draft, where the Bears stopped his free fall with the 181st overall pick.

LeFevour was downgraded by scouts because of mediocre arm strength and questionable mechanics. Another negative is that he played in a shotgun offense and will need numerous reps to master taking the snap from under center and reading defenses while he drops back.

"It's a little bit aggravating at times, and it tries your patience a little bit," said LeFevour, who had been projected as high as the second round. "But you've got to realize that it's all going to work out. Someone's giving me a chance to play at the next level because they like the way I play. It might not have happened in the round that I liked, but it's definitely to the right team and I'm very excited to be here."

The Bears weren't fixated on taking a quarterback, what with Jay Cutler entrenched as the starter, backed up by Caleb Hanie and Brett Basanez. But they felt LeFevour was too good a player at too important of a position to pass up.

"The quarterback position has value any year regardless of what your quarterback situation is, and we've done a lot of work on Dan, given the fact that he's played in our backyard," said Bears general manager Jerry Angelo, who hadn't drafted a quarterback since Kyle Orton in 2005. "We talked about it quite a bit, but we just felt (we couldn't ignore) his value and the position."

Saturday wasn't the first time LeFevour was overlooked. Coming out of Benet, the only schools to offer him a scholarship besides CMU were Eastern Illinois, Eastern Michigan and Ball State.

"At Benet we were in the double wing, and we threw the ball maybe five, 10 times a game," he said. "So I didn't have a lot of offers coming out of high school. But obviously I landed in the right spot. I was in a great situation being able to play for four years, and it's led me to at least have a chance to play at the next level."

With Cutler under contract through 2014, LeFevour's prospects for early playing time are bleak, but he's OK with that.

"I haven't waited to play since my true freshman year back in 2005," he said. "But that's part of the territory. My first goal is to make the team. I have some other goals in mind before I start thinking about being a No. 2 or No. 1 quarterback on this franchise."