How did Bears fare in draft? They've done worse

Searching for answers to the question "How did the Bears do in the draft?" the best I can come up with is, "They've done worse."

Chicago may never get to know top choice Darnell Wright, the giant from Tennessee whose job it will be to somehow make Justin Fields a better - or at least healthier - quarterback, because offensive linemen get attention for two reasons, penalties for holding and ... well, I can't think of the other one.

An offensive lineman once told me that his ilk were like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed manure.

So Wright may be the best offensive lineman the Bears have ever had and who's to know? Outside of Jimbo Covert, the mind grinds to find another.

Safety comes without the spotlight, where once the Bear were, having lost 10 straight games to be given the first choice from the best college football players in the land, none of whom were a 335-pound offensive tackle on the fourth best team in the south.

If Bears' head clerk Ryan Poles had stayed where the Bears had played so poorly to be, he would be reviewed forever for taking the wrong player, as he still might be for passing the notable defensive tackle Jalen Carter of Georgia, maybe the best talent in the draft.

It takes courage to make the obvious choice. Poles decided instead to move even further away from accountability to the safety of the inconspicuous, the ghost of Mitch Trubisky (or further back, Cade McNown) hovering over the Bears draft room.

"We're excited," said Poles. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Thinking back to Trubisky, and it is impossible to not do that as long as Patrick Mahomes is winning Super Bowls, it was as if the earlier Ryan GM, the one ironically named Pace, was overjoyed to have astonished everyone with his draft legerdemain, plucking Trubisky from obscurity.

(As an aside, the Bears also could have had Brett Favre or Aaron Rodgers at other times, so the whole Packers owning the Bears could have been completely the opposite.)

Trubisky was the guy the Bears had to have, just as not too long later Fields was the guy the Bears had to have, once again sacrificing much for still pending.

The tendency of the Bears to move up in the draft to find their mistakes was reversed by Poles. Moving down is much safer. Let Carolina take the heat for maneuvering to pick a relative runt from Alabama No. 1, not my words.

The loose change that comes with the further Bears draft choices are what they would have been anyhow.

There is still Fields, of course, for whom the Bears moved up and gave away the draft choices Poles has tried so hard to get back. This also means that the Bears are stuck with Fields and must do what they can to prop him up, meaning trading down to draft a tackle and trading down for more choices while gaining a genuine wide receiver.

This seems a sensible strategy since whatever the Bears might have done, none of it was likely to bring instant results, never mind Bears president Kevin Warren demanding to know if Wright was "ready to get to work and win a world championship." That's like asking the saddle if it is ready to win the race.

The NFL draft has become an overblown carnival, with flyovers and fireworks and fans painted for the cameras while what is important is decided in windowless bunkers by folks who think they have answers to questions that are months away.

The Bears' several coaches who played pass the phone with Wright on draft night kept asking if he was ready to get to work as if they needed to be reassured. And Wright, suddenly stunned to suddenly be somebody, reassured all that he was ready.

So did come to mind the aforementioned McNown, a smug bust, or Heisman winner Rashaan Salaam, obviously flawed, or Curtis Enis, forever unfortunate, or Alonzo Spellman, and the list could go on and on, all excited by the pickers and by the pickees, all part of a documented tradition of poor judgment.

And what if Wright is as disappointing as any of the usual Bears top picks? The beauty is no one will notice. Just another mushroom.