One of the few remaining dark clouds hovering above the Chicago Bears is about to be lifted.
OverTheCap.com’s Nick Korte projects the Bears as one of the teams who will land a compensatory selection in the 2020 NFL Draft.
With the deadline for free-agent signings counting against the comp pick formula having past on May 7, an updated calculation of projected picks projects the Bears to be well-positioned to receive a fourth-round pick in 2020 for losing safety Adrian Amos to the Green Bay Packers.
And while the Bears also watched Bryce Callahan, Josh Bellamy, Eric Kush, and Kevin White walk away and sign elsewhere as free agents, they also signed Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, Mike Davis, Cordarrelle Patterson, and Buster Skrine. That means the team is not in a spot to get a compensatory pick for those departures, because the signings they made canceled out the possibilities of scooping up other compensatory picks. Sure, it’s a bummer for draft-obsessed fans like myself, but that’s the price of doing business.
If it happens, we could essentially view it as a replacement for the 2020 fourth-rounder sent to New England in the deal that allowed Chicago to move up in the third round and take running back David Montgomery. See! All is well that ends well … it just has to end with the Bears getting that pick in order for that to happen.
And if the Bears get that pick, just know it’s been a long time coming for the organization. The biggest reason the team hasn’t been able to land these compensatory picks in the past is because they haven’t had enough qualifying free agents leave and because they have been overly active in free agency to fill roster spots. If the Bears draft better, they’ll be less reliant on filling holes via free agency. And should they continue to draft well, they’ll reap the benefits of collecting compensatory picks for players who leave as free agents.
To be 100 percent clear, it’s not officially official that the Bears will get a comp pick in 2020. It just looks that way as of this moment based on projections rooted in history and calculations. But *IF* Chicago is handed a compensatory pick next offseason, it will mark its first such choice since 2009. And since the Bears don’t have a first-round pick in 2020, GM Ryan Pace could use all the draft capital he can get his hands on in 2020.