The Chicago Bears don’t have any picks in the first two rounds of the upcoming NFL Draft, but they officially gained a selection on Friday as the league shared the draft order.
Here are the picks the Bears own now that the process of handing out compensation picks is in the books:
Even though Chicago’s first-round pick goes to Oakland (Khalil Mack trade) and its second-round selection is headed to New England (Anthony Miller trade), at least the team won’t enter the draft empty-handed as the Bears received pick No. 238 from the Philadelphia Eagles to complete the Deiondre’ Hall trade from last September. Hooray for late-round selections!
And, hey: GM Ryan Pace has struck gold in the fourth and fifth rounds in his first four years running the show. Pace has unearthed All-Pros (Eddie Jackson, Tarik Cohen), reliable starters (Adrian Amos, Jordan Howard), special teams contributors (Nick Kwiatkoski, Deon Bush), and rookie standouts with upside (Bilal Nichols) in Rounds 4 & 5 since 2015. And even though there are some noteworthy misses that have happened along the way (Jeremy Langford, Jordan Morgan), successfully navigating the deep end of the draft pool could go a long way toward getting the most out of the team’s current competitive window.
In an ideal world, the Bears would have more picks to play with this time of year. But in what has grown into a tradition unlike any other, the Bears weren’t given any compensatory picks in the draft. And as Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune points out, that’s 10 years running without any compensatory draft picks. Hey, it can’t all be sunshine and rainbows.