Draft day is when you find out whose fault last season was. We learn, not to our surprise, that in the case of the Bears, it was Jeremy Lincoln’s fault.
Well, you can’t blame John Thierry for everything, and Ron Cox is already out of town.
“We had to be aggressive,” said coach Dave Wannstedt.
In other Bear years, aggressive would mean screaming the name of the No. 1 choice into the phone, I guess. Or overselling it later.
This time it meant leaping ahead five spots in the draft to rescue Walt Harris, of the Mississippi State Harrises, from ending up in, oh, Denver, I suppose, or more likely, the second round.
The Bears just knew someone else wanted Harris, though everybody later was just tickled with what they got.
When you have only one idea, you go with it. And the only idea the Bears had was to get another cornerback, even though they already had six. What they really wanted was a better cornerback, a non-Jeremy Lincoln cornerback, and they did know this one better than any other.
The Bears’ coaches spent a week at the Senior Bowl in the company of Harris, liked what they saw and became so desperate to exploit their familiarity, they shipped off their first-, third- and sixth-round choices to St. Louis for the Rams’ turn.
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“I pictured myself as a Bear,” said Harris.
So, no Heisman Trophy winner this year for the Bears, though the Heisman winner was available. No Outland Trophy winner. No All-American. No underclassman. No kicker. Nobody you ever heard of, at least until the second round.
This could work out.
In the Wanndstedt Era, and even before, the Bears’ No. 1 draft choices have come with breathless endorsements, great relief and defiant conviction. This one comes with a sigh.
“We feel like we got a pretty good player,” said draft engineer Rod Graves. “He could come in and possibly give us immediate impact.”
Pretty good? Possibly?
You don’t spend three draft choices on possibly. You do not pass up Eddie George and Marvin Harrison and Duane Clemons and Tony Brakens and any number of more celebrated commodities for possibly and pretty good.
Such are the credentials of Harris. Harris played for a college team that lost eight games, won only one in its conference, gave up 65 points to one team, 52 to another. Sounds like a Bear cornerback to me.
“A big corner,” said Graves.
By the Bears’ confessed measurement, Harris is 5 feet 11 1/2 inches, not to be confused with his generally listed height of 5-11. That half-inch obviously tips the ruler onto the side of big, though in strictly Herman Moore terms–Moore being the Detroit receiver against whom any Bears corner must be measured–it would take seven more half-inches to get to Moore’s altitude, not to mention Moore’s vertical leap.
“We wanted to get a guy with size,” Wannstedt said.
Not in a receiver, not in the second round. The Bears took Penn State’s Bobby Engram, shorter than Harris by three full half-inches. Engram is also slow for a receiver, but more famous than Harris. Size sounds like backfill.
Possibly the most impressive credential of Harris is his college eligibility. He has none left. The Bears are used to selecting people who aren’t ready to come to the big city.
This does remove familiar excuses for the slow starts of recent No. 1s like Curtis Conway, Rashaan Salaam, Alonzo Spellman–homesickness, immaturity, having to constantly ask directions.
Harris has even been to Chicago. Once.
“We feel we got an outstanding football player and a real good citizen,” said Wannstedt.
Possibly.