Chicago Bears Draft 2007

By Mike Maguire | Apr 30, 9:12 AM

Well folks, another frenzied NFL draft has come and gone. As the dust cloud settles and Mel Kiper Jr. retreats to his football-shaped cave for another year, NFL teams and fans alike are anxious to kick the tires on their new athletes. Football fans across the land all want to know what kind of impact the new kids are going to have in 2007 and beyond, plain and simple. The only problem with this type of thinking; you can never really tell what you’ve got until the bullets start flying for real.

The Chicago Bears will be the first to tell you that they feel very good about the players they have added this off-season, both through free agency and the college draft. The Bears feel they have now addressed all of their concerns, with the somewhat puzzling exception of wide receiver. There is no doubt that the Bears have addressed many areas of concern and improved their overall depth, but calling the Bears draft “high-profile” would be going too far, for now. The Bears didn’t pull of a deal that landed the big-time receiver (have fun, Tom Brady), or cunningly land two primetime talents like the Cleveland Browns, but for a team drafting as the defending NFC champions, it looks like the Bears did a good job in adding some solid talent.

The Bears 2007 draft did not stray far from Jerry Angelo’s traditional draft day roadmap. Angelo pulled off a deal to get extra picks, he stock-piled talent by making nine draft picks from a wide range of schools, and he and the Bears are confident that they’ve landed a fistful of impact players… even if many Chicagoans (not to mention Die-Hard Bears fans) have never heard of a few of them.

Just to refresh, here is the list of the baby Bears…

Greg Olsen – TE – Miami – Round 1 – Pick 31
Dan Bazuin – DE – Central Michigan – Round 2 – Pick 62
Garrett Wolfe – RB – No. Illinois – Round 3 – Pick 93
Michael Okwo – LB – Stanford – Round 3 – Pick 94
Josh Beekman – G – Boston College – Round 4 – Pick 130
Kevin Payne – S – Louisiana Monroe – Round 5 – Pick 167
Corey Graham – CB – New Hampshire – Round 5 – Pick 168
Trumaine McBride – CB – Mississippi – Round 7 – Pick 221
Aaron Brant – OT – Iowa State – Round 7 – Pick 241

After Greg Olsen, Michael Okwo and Garrett Wolfe, I can safely say that I haven’t seen many of these guys play during their college careers. To my knowledge I’ve never sat down and watched a Central Michigan football game, though I hear nice things about Dan Bazuin. I wasn’t even sure they played football up in New Hampshire, but welcome to town, Mr. Graham; at the very least, you are already used to cold weather. I didn’t know that there was a school called Louisiana-Monroe until the Bears drafted Chris Harris, but the Bears weren’t afraid to drink from that well again in drafting Kevin Payne, the player who stepped into Harris’ spot at Louisiana-Monroe. As strong as a college career as he had, if I didn’t live in Illinois, I probably would have never heard of Garrett Wolfe.

From the honest fan’s point of view… all I really know about many of these guys is what other people have told me.

That being said, the fact that the Bears didn’t add a heap of household names is not necessarily a bad thing. Bernard Berrian, Danieal Manning, Mark Anderson and Chris Harris all pop to mind when thinking of recent players who were relatively obscure draft picks that quickly became impact players for the Bears.

In Greg Olsen, the Bears landed the best pass catching TE in this year’s draft, Dan Bazuin is a pass rushing specialist whose skills should fit well in the Bears system and Garrett Wolfe was the two-time player of the year in his conference who could become a dangerous third down option in 2007. Michael Okwo provides immediate depth at linebacker and is a nice safety net with the Lance Briggs situation (Briggs was a third round pick, by the way) and Josh Beekman is an All-American caliber linemen who fell into the Bears lap in the forth round. The Bears spent all of their Sunday picks on offensive linemen and secondary players. Again, I know very little about these player’s track records. But as time has gone on, I have grown to trust Jerry Angelo just enough. I think it’s safe to count on the fact that Angelo has found a few players who will contribute to the Chicago Bears cause in this draft… and he may have even found a few more diamonds in the rough as well.

The glaring question mark/omission from the Bears draft was the position of wide-receiver. Ohio State’s Anthony Gonzalez was taken by the Colts with the 32^nd overall pick, and both USC stars Steve Smith and Dwayne Jarrett were also still on the board when the Bears drafted in the first round. In short, it’s safe to say that the Bears believe that Greg Olsen can help Rex Grossman stretch the field.

Angelo himself put it best, “Who knows? In time, we’ll find out if we did the best thing.”

You can try to grade the caliber of the Bears draft if it helps you pass the days until kickoff, but the truth is that only time will tell what kind of NFL players these kids will make. The Bears may not have a list of high-profile names on their draft roster right now, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be celebrities before you know it.

Just ask Marques Colston, or perhaps even Devin Hester. The Saints found Colston in the 7^th round last season and, of course, the Bears found Hester in the 4^th… and things worked out pretty well for the both of them.

The fact is that only time will tell. The good news is that the clock is done ticking away draft selections and is now counting down to training camp and opening day.

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