Each day in the month of June, we’ll roll out a fresh topic to get Chicago Bears fans thinking. Be sure to chime in with your answer in the comments so we can all get to know our WCG members a bit better.
There are dozens of ways to interpret this question. For example, I was annoyed when Chicago passed on Troy Paulomalu to draft Michael Haynes, but I won’t pretend I knew the extent of how unevenly that was going to turn out. I think it’s easy with hindsight to say that Mahomes was a better choice
than Trubisky, and while I liked Puka Nacua’s ability from the beginning, I didn’t think he’d turn out to be quite as dominant as he is.
Instead, I’m choosing to focus on a process question regarding the draft and team construction, and so I’m focusing on Nik Bonnito. Taken by the Denver Broncos in the second round of the 2022 Draft, Ryan Poles passed on this player twice. He is second only to Aidan Hutchinson from his draft class in sacks, he’s made the Pro Bowl twice, and he’s generated 105 pressures so far in his career.
He’s also an outside linebacker, not a defensive end. And that, ultimately, is the reason that I am choosing him as the player I wish the Bears had drafted instead of passing on. The team that Ryan Poles took over in 2022 had been painfully and expensively shifted from being a 4-3 to a 3-4. The only home-grown defensive star on the team at the time (Roquan Smith) was more suited to a 3-4. Instead of accepting that his team had a head start building in that direction, Poles gave up that momentum in order to bring in Matt Eberflus and his particularly stale variation of a 4-3 defense.
Everything about the process was wrong. Poles brought in a coach who was not suited to the challenge ahead of him and who ultimately would be so bad at his job he would force the McCaskeys to fire a coach midseason for the first time in franchise history. To meet that coach’s needs, the team was once more shifted in its personnel to undo the limited good work the previous Ryan had accomplished. And that led to a decision to pass on a solid talent at a needed position because he wasn’t a fit for the scheme, ultimately costing the team a second-round pick anyway (and more money) to trade for Montez Sweat, who was far less productive over the same time.
So, while I would love for Bonnito to be a Bear, I would also love for the team’s process to have been different in such a way that Bonnito realistically could have been a Bear.
Which player did the Bears pass on that you wish they had taken?
