(670 The Score) With each passing NFL Draft, I grow increasingly convinced that none of us know anything. General managers generally know how the board is going to fall, until they don’t. I didn’t see too many pre-draft press conferences talking about contingency plans for when the league sets a record for the most first-round trades.
Scouts and analysts generally have a bead on what type of player they’re getting, until they don’t. There are a dozen guys on any given team that, with the benefit of hindsight, should've gone earlier, later, or not at all. Fans generally know everything, they’ll tell you, until they don’t. I’m old enough to remember when Emanuel Hall was former Bears general manager Ryan Pace’s savviest coup yet. (They may have been right about Jimmy Graham though.)
There's plenty of good to be said about the Bears’ draft. It was refreshing to see first-year general manager Ryan Poles approach the weekend with the responsible type of conviction. I honestly do think there’s something to be said about Pace’s attempts to be as entertaining as possible at all times – especially in a league fueled by those vibes – but fully sending it at all times is just, tragically, not how teams outside of Los Angeles can operate. Like the old adage says, go big or go be a senior assistant in Atlanta. If nothing else, Poles clearly has a great sense of what it takes to team-build in this era – for years now, all the fancy studies have proved that there are few more things more integral than loading up on draft capital. The Bears going into Thursday with six draft picks and waking up Monday with 11 players is The Good Stuff. Trading back four separate times is as encouraging as it is boring, which is sort of the name of the game if you don’t have picks one, two or three.
Everything else is nothing more than that very specific type of speculation that the NFL masterfully creates to keep us from paying attention to baseball. Are we really sure the Bears should get an A- for drafting Washington’s second-best cornerback exactly where he was widely projected to go? Only grabbing one wide receiver -- who “has a limited route tree and is still developing his rhythm,” according to draft guru Dane Brugler-- seems like a place for some fair criticism. The Bears certainly got more athletic this weekend, but that was far from their only problem. Others include, but aren’t limited to, issues like “Who’s going to catch footballs from Justin Fields this year?” and “Who’s going to adequately block for Justin Fields this year?” and “Do the Bears really have to wear the orange jerseys again?” I've always believed that grades are stupid (*my parents nod grimly*) and maintain that any post-draft content that has already made definitive statements on the success/failure of this past weekend doesn’t deserve your precious clicks. Save those for Dodo videos of unlikely animal friendships.
There’s going to be plenty of time this year – roughly 10 or 11 losses worth, I imagine – to figure out how the draft went for the Bears. I promise that at some point this summer, you'll learn whether San Diego State’s Zach Thomas actually makes more sense as a guard than a tackle. If you’re already losing sleep over that, may I suggest instead losing sleep over the White Sox being five games under .500? Or the temperature on May 4 topping out at 48 degrees? There are only a few weeks before you can get irrationally angry at what the beat reporters tweet about during summer practices – until then, maybe use this time to remember that right now, no one knows anything. And spare a few fond thoughts for the Nick Foles era.
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.