Pending Sunday’s finale against the Tampa Bay Bucs, the Bears are sitting fifth in a four-player draft. To get a shot at quarterbacks Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf, defensive end Andre Wadsworth or cornerback Charles Woodson, they would have to trade up.
The fifth player on the early charts is Marshall wide receiver Randy Moss. Nobody wants to be picking fifth and facing Moss. He’s a darned-if-you-do, darned-if-you-don’t pick, a potential superstar with a supercheckered background.
Anybody who thinks the Bears are one receiver away should go on a long fly pattern. Besides, their best player is a receiver, Curtis Conway.
So if the Bears are still fifth after Sunday, they have two choices: trade up or down. Either way can work, assuming personnel boss Mark Hatley and college scouting director Bill Rees know what they are doing. Their backgrounds strongly suggest they do.
Both believe Wadsworth is “the best player” on the board, a 6-foot-4-inch, 280-pound pass rusher from Florida State. The guy is bigger than most college outside rushers, the best since Bruce Smith, according to some reports. He’s better than his Florida State teammate, Peter Boulware, who was the fourth pick this year by Baltimore and leads rookie sackers with 10 1/2.
If the Bears could maneuver for Wadsworth, they wouldn’t look back for 10 years. It would be history repeating itself. In 1979, one year after trading their No. 1 draft choice for a quarterback who didn’t play, Mike Phipps, the Bears turned away from their quarterback and selected Dan Hampton. (They left Joe Montana on the board, but so did everybody else until the third round).
But the Bears are not one pass rusher away either.
If the quarterback is available, it’s a no-brainer. Teams simply don’t pass up franchise quarterbacks. The need is so great that hope often supercedes common sense. Washington third-year sophomore Brock Huard, for example, will look just as good as Manning and Leaf to some teams if he comes out.
If the Bears want Manning or Leaf, however, they will have to get in line, which they are willing to do. If they were desperate enough last year to pay the 11th pick for Rick Mirer, they won’t be bashful about joining the fray for Manning or Leaf. Guaranteed of picking no higher than second or lower than sixth, the Bears have more ammunition than most to jockey positions high in the round.
Woodson certainly couldn’t hurt them. He plays enough positions–offense, defense and special teams–to fill all kinds of holes. Who knows? Maybe he could play quarterback too.
If the top four escape their grasp, sliding down in the draft to pick up extra bodies in Rounds 2, 3 and 4 might turn out to be the quickest fix of all.
Whether Hatley and Rees are able to gather extra middle picks or not, their true value will be measured in those rounds. The middle rounds will soon become more important than the No. 1 in rebuilding a team, as the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs can attest.
More Top Picks Janome Magnolia 7318
There are only three No. 1 draft choices on the roster of the world champion Packers–left tackle Ross Verba, left guard Aaron Taylor and left tackle John Michels, who lost his job to Verba.
The Packers emerged because their trade of a No. 1 draft pick for a quarterback turned out better than most. Moreover, their hits in Rounds 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are in sharp contrast to Bears misses.
Since Packers General Manager Ron Wolf started drafting in 1992, the haul includes Robert Brooks (3), Edgar Bennett (4), Mark Chmura (6), Earl Dotson (3), Doug Evans (6), Gabe Wilkins (4), Dorsey Levens (5), William Henderson (3), Brian Williams (3), Antonio Freeman (3), Adam Timmerman (7) and Tyrone Williams (3). Obviously, such a list is also testimony to great coaching by Mike Holmgren and his staff.
Likewise, Kansas City, the last stop for Hatley and Rees, got well in the ’90s with help from Tim Grunhard (2), Dave Szott (7), Will Shields (3), Lake Dawson (3), Tamarick Vanover (3), Donnie Edwards (4), John Browning (3) and Reggie Tongue (2).
Collecting extra picks is how Jimmy Johnson built in Dallas and wants to build in Miami. He figures his second- and third- and fourth-rounders will be better than your first- and second- and third-rounders simply because he’s smarter.
The Bears have traded down before. In 1970 they lost a coin flip with Pittsburgh for the right to draft Terry Bradshaw. Sitting second in a one-player draft, they traded the pick to Green Bay for Lee Roy Caffey, Bob Hyland and Elijah Pitts. Then they traded their second-round pick to Dallas for Craig Baynham and Phil Clark.
Coming off a 1-13 season, they needed bodies and nobody second-guessed. The Packers drafted defensive tackle Mike McCoy, who played seven years in Green Bay, but on only one winning team. The Bears bounced to 6-8, but didn’t get a real rebuilding program in place for five more years. Ed McCaskey was called a bum for losing that coin flip. At least he doesn’t have to worry about that again.