As we do every year, we take a look at the Bears’ first-round pick and the different positions the team needs, and what would make sense for the team to do. As a reminder, I will go through multiple positional cases for the 25th pick, making the case does not necessarily mean I believe this is what the Bears should do, simply laying out the reasons as to why this pick makes sense.
It’s time to make the case for safety.
The case is obvious: you start two safeties, and the Bears only have one starting-caliber
safety on the roster.
There are other position holes on the team, but none as glaring as safety. At every other position, you at least have an NFL-caliber player ready to start, even if he may not be the strongest player, but you can at least make the argument.
Elijah Hicks has returned to play the S4 role, which is largely a special teams role on this team. Jonathan Owens is no longer here, and he’s been replaced by Cam Lewis, the former Buffalo Bill. Now I haven’t seen a case made, but if someone is out there actually making the case that Lewis is the team’s S2 and not the team’s S3, you can simply skip that person’s opinion as someone who “doesn’t know ball.”
Lewis is the new Jonathan Owens as the team’s S3. I special teams player that can start if needed (Lewis has 14 career starts over 6 years), but not a starting caliber player.
Coby Bryant has been signed as the team’s S1, but they simply don’t have an S2 on the roster. When a hole is that glaring, you simply don’t wait until round 2 or round 3 to fill that hole; you fill it immediately.
You don’t know how the draft is going to break, if you decide to go another direction at 25 and decide to wait until 57 to grab your safety, you may be in a position where there is a run on safeties and you can’t grab the one you were hoping for, and, unfortunately for the Bears, when you have a glaring need, you just can’t let the draft come to you, you need to be pro-active.
Luckily for the Bears, three safeties in this draft are considered first-round caliber safeties, which is higher than most drafts. Ohio State’s Caleb Downs, Oregon’s Dillon Thieneman, and Toledo’s Emmanuel McNeil-Warren.
I don’t see any world where Caleb Downs is still available when the Bears are at 25. If Thieneman is there, I think that’s the type of pick that Dennis Allen would slap Ben Johnson, knock over Ryan Poles, and call the pick in himself from the War Room before anyone had a chance to consider anyone else. Thieneman is a great prospect and fits what DA likes to do with his safeties very well. McNeil-Warren may not fit Dennis Allen’s defense as well as Thieneman and doesn’t have the skills that Downs has, but he has the talent to be a very successful player at the NFL level, and the Bears need difference makers on a defense that is sorely missing them right now.
If all three of them are off the board, perhaps the Bears should consider a trade down into the early part of the second round and take a safety there because waiting until 57 with the Bears roster construction is certainly a very risky proposition.
