Everybody is ecstatic the Chicago Bears may finally have a quarterback. Justin Fields has done tremendous work over the past six weeks. His passer rating jumped from 58 to 99. He’s only thrown three interceptions compared to 10 touchdowns and has run for almost 600 yards. Defenses have no answers for him. Unfortunately, these borderline-Superman efforts haven’t been enough to cover up how bad the rest of the roster is. The Bears were the first team to score at least 29 points in three straight games and lose all three in NFL history.
That should help explain how depleted this roster is. The defense can’t stop anybody. Worse still, the Bears just lost top running back Khalil Herbert to a hip injury. So now the bread and butter of their offense is weakened. To top it off, their schedule starts to get worse after Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons. They have the Jets and Packers before the bye week, then Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit, and Minnesota to finish things up. It’s little wonder new draft projections from The Athletic have the Bears picking higher than their current 6th overall spot.
“Mock projects the score for every game and the final win percentage for every team using his NFL betting model. The model phases out older data and uses data from this year as the season progresses. The simulation then runs 100,000 times after each day of games to give us, in this case, our No. 1 pick odds and each team’s likeliest draft landing spot.
6. Chicago (3-7)
Projected odds of securing No. 1 overall: 7.8%
Projected pick: No. 2
Offense: Olu Fashanu, OT, Penn State
Defense: Tyree Wilson, edge, Texas Tech”
The Chicago Bears will be in rare territory if that happens.
The last time this team landed the 2nd overall pick without needing a trade was way back in 1970. That was the year they lost the coin toss with Pittsburgh, costing them Terry Bradshaw. Thankfully the organization won’t need a quarterback this time around. Recent history says the Bears stand a very good chance of landing a blue-chip player at that spot if it’s not a quarterback. Four of the last five #2 picks were Saquon Barkley, Nick Bosa, Chase Young, and Aidan Hutchinson.
Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus would be thrilled to end up with somebody like that. It comes down to how the rest of the schedule plays out. The Chicago Bears face stiff competition for that spot. Eight other teams have only three wins this year. Las Vegas sits ahead of them at 2-7, while Houston is the heavy favorite to claim #1 overall at 1-7-1. It’s hard to win in the NFL, but people overlook how hard it is to lose too. The Bears may steal a couple of games down the stretch with how Fields is playing. It should be an exciting race to track.
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