GM Ryan Poles gets the credit for every player the Chicago Bears sign, draft, or trade for. That is the nature of the job he holds. In truth, it’s a team effort. He’d be the first to say that, especially concerning veteran and undrafted free agency. One of the best moves of the entire off-season for 2022 came when the Bears secured Wisconsin linebacker Jack Sanborn as an undrafted rookie. It was a considerable surprise nobody selected him after a highly-productive college career.
While multiple people were big fans of Sanborn inside Halas Hall, the biggest voice in the room, according to Adam Jahns of The Athletic, was executive scout Jeff Shiver. The 65-year-old has been with the organization for 35 years. In that time, he’s been a trusted voice for multiple regimes, particularly when it comes to the Midwest region. His efforts led the Bears to future studs such as Jim Flanigan, Rosevelt Colvin, Cody Whitehair, Jordan Howard, David Montgomery, and of course, Justin Fields. He understood the reasons Sanborn fell and didn’t care.
He’d seen it happen before.
The reasons good players fall in the draft or, in Sanborn’s case, out of it completely, vary. Sanborn, a first-team All-Big Ten selection last year, ran the 40-yard dash in 4.73 seconds.
“I got in scouting in the late ’80s and all the old scouts used to talk about missing on Karl Mecklenburg, who played all those years with Denver,” said Shiver, who has worked for the Bears since 1987.
Mecklenburg was the heart and soul of the Denver Broncos defenses during their immense success of the late 1980s, reaching three Super Bowls in a four-year span from 1986 to 1989. He finished with 1,118 tackles and 79 sacks. It wasn’t because of his speed. His 40 time was even worse than Sanborn’s. It didn’t matter. He made up for it with quickness, intelligence, and instincts. Shiver knew Sanborn could be the same way, so he pushed hard to ensure Poles and Ian Cunningham were aware of him.
“Hey, if this guy falls, he’s ours now,” Shiver said. “We got to make sure he’s ours.”
In the competitive world of undrafted free agency, the Bears benefited from Sanborn’s having local ties.
“We were hoping to get him,” Borgonzi said. “There were a lot of teams that obviously wanted to sign him.”
Jack Sanborn is quickly carving out a role in this defense.
People were skeptical when the Bears chose to trade Roquan Smith. There was no way they’d be able to replace his production. Sanborn has 43 tackles and two sacks through four games as a starter. He also should’ve had an interception but had it taken away by a bogus penalty call. Smith has 20 tackles and a sack since joining Baltimore. He might be a superior athlete to Sanborn, but there is no denying the undrafted rookie is playing like he belongs on that field.
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It is another feather in the cap for Shiver. Scouts never get the credit even though they often do most of the grunt work in finding these players. There is a reason the organization has kept him around for so long. The guy is clearly good at his job. Jack Sanborn feels like he’ll be one of those guys that never make a Pro Bowl but ends up playing in the league for ten years. He’ll be a glue guy for the Bears. The fact he’s a homegrown product makes it even sweeter.
