So far the draft is going well for the Bears. Mark Hatley is playing hardball and everybody else thinks he’s bluffing. It’s the first draft he has run and he acts as if he knows what he’s doing.
Curtis Enis?
Nobody believes the Bears will take Curtis Enis. The St. Louis Rams want him at the sixth pick, right after the Bears, but they don’t want to pay the Bears anything to leapfrog them. The Rams believe Hatley will leave Enis on the draft-room floor for them.
The Jacksonville Jaguars want Enis with the ninth pick. They have the ninth and 25th picks but won’t give up both to the Bears for the fifth.
The New England Patriots want Enis too. They draft 18th and 25th and don’t want to put a package together to jump to fifth.
Nobody believes the Bears will take Enis because they don’t think the Bears need a running back. What will they do with all those other running backs on their roster–Edgar Bennett, Raymont Harris and Rashaan Salaam?
You mean the guy with the torn Achilles’ and the two guys with broken legs?
The Bears need Enis and just about anybody else in this draft. Hatley can justify any choice he makes. To his credit, he claims he has plenty of choices. The popular notion is this is a four-player draft and the luckless Bears are picking fifth. With no chance of landing Peyton Manning, Ryan Leaf, Andre Wadsworth or Charles Woodson, the Bears could throw up their hands in despair and call it the perfect end to an imperfect year.
But Hatley bravely suggests there are eight players he “feels good about” at the fifth spot: Enis, Randy Moss, and linebackers Keith Brooking and Takeo Spikes after the top four.
Actually, on a 4-12 team with no Pro Bowl players, Hatley could sell more rebuilding plans than Mike McCaskey sells tickets.
He could take Moss and call it a departure from recent nice-guy drafts of John Thierry and Salaam.
He could take Brooking or Spikes and say he wanted to start his Chicago career by paying homage to the city’s favorite position, linebacker.
He could take Grant Wistrom and argue he’s better than Thierry or Alonzo Spellman and at least as good as Trace Armstrong or Richard Dent was at age 37.
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He could take Brian Griese and say it’s because Griese’s dad, Bob, won more Super Bowls than Manning’s dad, Archie.
The Bears are so bereft of talent that Hatley and college scout Bill Rees could throw darts at the board and who would second-guess? You say they’re going to take another punter? Sure, the Bears have spent third- and second-round draft choices in recent years on punters, but you never have enough punters.
A 4-12 team has nowhere to go but up and all kinds of ways to get there. What Hatley and Rees can’t do is back down. What they can’t do is undervalue the fifth pick, letting it go for riffraff. What they can’t do is let other teams convince them they really don’t need Enis even if he’s the best player available.
“When you really get in trouble in the draft is if you only draft needs,” Hatley said. “If it works out that you can get the player you want at your need, it’s a big plus. But sometimes it doesn’t work that way and if you try to solve everything, you get in trouble.”
In other words, if Enis is a better player than Wistrom or Brooking or Spikes, you’d better take the running back regardless of whether you need a defensive player. Heck, if Moss is better than Enis, take him. Trouble is, Moss has no trade value. Nobody even wants to consider moving up to take the controversial time bomb, Moss. Enis is the bait here, not Moss.
If the Bears take Enis, the Rams won’t know what to do. They’ll probably take Wistrom, leaving the Dallas Cowboys holding the bag and leaving the Jaguars with the second-best running back, fumbler Fred Taylor, and the Patriots with the third-best running back, former cornerback Robert Edwards.
Hatley is gambling that somebody will give him something for Enis. If not, so what? Take him and never look back. The Bears haven’t held many cards lately, but they hold this one.