Chicago Bears: Top 10 draft busts of the 21st century

4. Defensive End Michael Haynes, Penn State

The 2003 NFL Draft was a pretty good one overall for the Bears, considering they would go on to select two future Hall of Fame players — the bad news, however, is that neither of those players would be selected in the first round at number 14 overall.

That, my friends, is where defensive end Michael Haynes was taken out of Penn State.

To quickly revert back to my previous point, the Bears did end up taking cornerback Charles Tillman in the second round and linebacker Lance Briggs in the fourth — not too shabby, considering both should have a good shot to end up in the Hall of Fame some day.

Haynes, though, doesn’t have that chance ahead of him. Sadly, Haynes’ career only lasted from 2003-2007, where he would rarely play in the latter half after he left the Bears. Haynes was cut from Chicago in 2006 and then spent short amounts of time with both the New Orleans Saints and New York Jets.

In total, Haynes registered just 61 tackles and 5.5 sacks as a pro.

I hate to do this, but the Bears could have also picked guys like Troy Polamalu, Larry Johnson, Nick Barnett or Rashean Mathis instead of Haynes. Either one of those four would have been lightyears better.

The Bears did go on to have a stout defense for a few years following this draft, however none of it was due to a contribution made by Haynes.