The good news is the Bears not only have a first-round draft choice this year, but it is one of the top five draft choices. No. 5 is the Bears’ highest choice this decade.
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The bad news is–see the good news.
Of late the Bears have treated the draft like a dachshund treats a hydrant.
The responsibility of picking the fifth-best player in the draft weighs so heavily on the Bears they would rather not. What they would rather do is pass the thing off to someone else, for a few more choices.
This way, instead of making one big blunder, the Bears can make several smaller ones, sort of safety in debris, not to pick on either Stan Thomas or John Thierry.
The Bears may yet get stuck with Curtis Enis, a rather chunky running back from Penn State, who, unlike Rashaan Salaam, did not win the Heisman Trophy, but is every bit as quick and every bit as elusive.
The Heisman was the excuse, if you will recall, the Bears used for picking Salaam, although 21 other NFL teams managed to ignore it.
Listen, said the Bears, when a certified Heisman winner is there, you have to take him.
When last we saw the Bears’ running game, it was in the hands of Darnell Autry, not the most secure place but more so than with Salaam. Autry may not always know exactly where the hole is, but the ball arrives there with him.
Raymont Harris, injured also, still is regarded so highly by the Bears that he is their transition player (which means hands off), and Harris is re-healthy, a word and a condition Harris could have invented.
Added to the Bears have been Edgar Bennett, recently of Green Bay, whose greatest games were always against the Bears. A more impressive choice might have been someone whose greatest games were against the Packers, but Terrell Davis isn’t available.
For reasons not yet clear, the Bears also have hired an assumed professional fullback named Ty Hallock. Insert shrug here.
In short, the backfield is stacked up like a baggage carousel and the Bears might have only one linebacker–Barry Minter–who ever has been introduced in an NFL stadium.
In an obviously crowded backfield, why would the Bears want to invest their best draft spot in years on something they don’t need, never mind a running back coming out of the school that gave the NFL highly drafted disappointments like Ki-Jana Carter and Blair Thomas?
The answer is the Bears do not want Enis. What they want is everybody to believe they want Enis, who is, by some kind of predraft, nerdy hoo-doo, the consensus fifth pick.
The Bears do not want to do anything to enfeeble this notion.
Enis is the best running back available, and nobody say otherwise. He may be the only first-round running back available, and with the first four picks pretty much laid out–quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf, defensive end Andre Wadsworth and cornerback Charles Woodson–the Bears are sitting in the dealer’s chair.
Want a running back? What’s your offer?
Good luck, Mark Hatley, in pulling this off.
This is Hatley’s first draft for the Bears and if he could get, oh, say Jacksonville’s two first-round picks (9 and 25) or New England’s (18 and 22), he might be able to get a linebacker and a defensive end–and this time make a choice. No more ‘tweeners like Thierry.
Hatley also will have shown more draft-day daring and imagination than any Bears personnel guy since Jim Finks.
I do not include last year’s great gamble, which was the 11th pick for quarterback Rick Mirer, only the single worst idea in the history of the Bears, maybe in football.
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If no one bites and the Bears still have the fifth pick when the clock runs out, they will use it, not on Enis, but on Randy Moss, a wide receiver of tarnished social reputation, as if such a thing is possible with a football player.
Listen, when a player of Moss’ potential is available . . .