The 2010s decade will forever be remembered by Chicago Bears fans as one of the worst they’ve ever experienced. It started out nice with a trip to the NFC championship that first year in 2010, only to lose to the Green Bay Packers. That seemed to set the tone for the next 10 years as Chicago would not reach the postseason again until 2018. In fact, they posted just two winning seasons across the entire span. An ugly result for one of the NFL’s charter franchises.
This has left people grasping for answers. How did it get so bad? There are plenty of theories from inadequate coaching hires to ill-fated free agent signings. However, pretty much everything that took place can be traced back to the NFL draft. Specifically? The first round. Great organizations that are able to win consistently are defined by how they do at the top of each draft. They don’t have to score superstars every time, but they do need to at least get a solid player each year.
Looking back as 2020 dawn, the Bears did not accomplish this. At all.
Two years where the Bears didn’t even have a pick due to the Jay Cutler and Khalil Mack trades. Carimi? McClellin? White? They were catastrophic busts. Floyd has plodded along as an average linebacker with occasional nice plays. Trubisky had a decent 2018 sandwiched between two bad years. Long was a star for three years to start his career and spent half of the remainder on Injured Reserve. Now he’s retired. Smith has looked great but failed to finish 2019 due to a torn pec. Only Kyle Fuller emerged as a true score for the franchise, reaching his second Pro Bowl this past season.
One really good player. A really good player who became average because of injuries. A player who might be really good if he can stay on the field. Two average players and three outright busts. No superstars to speak of. That is no way to build the foundation of a football team.
People can talk about having to hit on picks later in a draft and whatnot. This is true, but everything always comes back to the 1st round. If you consistently miss there, it doubles and triples the difficulty of building a championship-caliber roster. Teams are forced to rely more on free agency and take bigger risks in the later rounds. It’s not a coincidence the Bears did that a lot in the 2010s, and it’s not a surprise it rarely worked.
To this day Bears fans talk with reverence about the 1985 team and how great it was. Well, there’s a reason for that. Most of its best players were 1st round draft picks. Just look at the list they collected from 1975 through to the championship year.
Quite the list right? Two Hall of Famers, four more guys who became Pro Bowlers, and three other highly effective starters. It’s not some stroke of fate that made the ’85 Bears into what they became. It was excellent team-building courtesy of smart 1st round picks. This is a lesson the organization seems to have forgotten. Since 1986, only one Bears player selected in the 1st round has made the Hall of Fame. Only two have made All-Pro.
There are always other factors in play, but everything starts there.
