Happy NFL Draft Week! Bears Buzz, Prospect Notes, Rankings, and Other Bears Bullets

Apr 22, 2024

Happy NFL Draft Week! We finally made it. I’m so happy to be here. Let’s boogie.

There are just three days until the Chicago Bears go on the clock with the first pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. Unless something unexpected happens, USC quarterback Caleb Williams will be the pick. Everything the Bears have done this offseason has been geared toward drafting Williams and building around him as their franchise quarterback. The team even went as far as to take a different approach to Caleb’s top-30 visit, having him dine with future teammates Cole Kmet and DJ Moore while he was in town instead of with solely the Bears’ brass. That’s heady thinking. There isn’t a better way to immerse yourself into Bears football culture than to chop it up with team leaders.

With that being said, Caleb Williams won’t be the only player Chicago’s football team selects this upcoming weekend. So it feels like we should bone up on other prospects.

There are few prospect guides I find as handy as when Daniel Jeremiah drops his prospect rankings. The NFL Network draft guru shared his top-150 list, which features Williams at the top and three wide receivers following him before North Carolina QB Drake Maye rounds out the top-5. After trading for Keenan Allen, the Bears don’t have a desperate need at receiver. But finagling a way to get Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr., Washington’s Rome Odunze, or LSU’s Malik Nabers (Jeremiah’s second, third, and fourth best prospects, respectively) could make for a great draft.

The Bears have just four picks (Nos. 1, 9, 75, and 122) going into this draft. And yet, they’ve got some of the most valuable picks. This graphic puts it into perspective:

the Chicago Bears have the fewest picks (4) in the 2024 NFL draft

but thanks to how high the picks are, they have the 3rd most draft capital of any team…

and the most their franchise has held since 2003

let's analyze their roster & draft needs

READ:https://t.co/JLywIoChNm pic.twitter.com/R8HH1LNkYb— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) April 10, 2024

Don’t get me wrong. Having a volume of draft picks is great. But drafting impact players is better (and more fun).

Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar has NFL comparisons for top-50 prospects. Here are some prospects who have been connected to the Bears and their NFL comps from Farrar:

Caleb Williams – Aaron Rodgers

Malik Nabers – Justin Jefferson

Marvin Harrison Jr. – Larry Fitzgerald

Rome Odunze – DeAndre Hopkins

Brock Bowers – George Kittle

Troy Fautanu – David Bakhtiari

Jared Verse – Ryan Kerrigan

Johnny Newton – Geno Atkins

Dallas Turner – Brian Burns

Joe Alt – Taylor Decker

ESPN’s Field Yates has long been one of my favorite football personalities to follow. So when he drops a prospect rankings list, it immediately gets bookmarked and read. Field’s top prospect list goes 200 deep and it includes eight players in his top 10 who the Bears have been rumored to have interest in drafting. Considering Yates’ connection and past with Bears General Manager Ryan Poles, I’m giving this prospect ranking a closer look. The way I’m choosing to read the top of the Field Yates board is that Chicago is in a position to set itself up for sustained success by snagging anyone who lands in this top 10.

Bears 2024 NFL Draft Rome Odunze — © Craig Strobeck-USA TODAY Sports

NFL writer Arif Hasan offers up some of the draft’s most polarizing prospects. As far as I’m concerned, every prospect is polarizing at some level. Or maybe that is just me projecting as a Bears fan who deals with other Bears fans who haven’t been able to come to a consensus on much in recent years. Perhaps that will change in the future.

Charles Davis (NFL Media) presents a list of players he’d pound the table for his team to draft. There are some prospects here that aren’t household names. And it makes me want to dig into some different aspects of the draft process.

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Michael tries to get into what is going on with Chicago Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks and where do we go from here. Hendricks is one of my favorite Cubs ever. So seeing him struggle at the outset of the 2024 season has been as hard on my eyes as it has been on my heart. Hendricks is traditionally a slow starter, but this feels different. I hope he rights the ship. A 2016 World Series champion shouldn’t be going out like this.

Words are great, but actions are better. (BN Bulls)

Here are some Chicago Blackhawks highlights worth re-watching:

Case of the Mondays? Let’s Watch All Four of the #Blackhawks First Career Goals From This Seasonhttps://t.co/2G4JocJJw3
— Bleacher Nation Blackhawks (@BN_Blackhawks) April 22, 2024

written by

Luis C. Medina

Luis C. Medina, who you can find on Twitter at lcm1986, has been covering the Chicago Bears at Bleacher Nation since 2017. Since then, he has written about 3 head coaches, 5 play-callers, and 11 starting quarterbacks. Previously, Luis wrote about the Cubs and MLB at BN (2015-16) and worked in the Chicago Tribune sports department (2011-16). He also co-hosted a Cubs postgame show, Outside the Ivy, in 2019.

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