Da Windy City
Fansided

Chicago Bears: 2020 NFL Draft prospects to watch at Shrine Bowl

By William Martin

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - OCTOBER 05: Dele Harding #9 of the Illinois Fighting Illini carries the ball for a touchdown after an inception against the Minnesota Gophers during the first quarter of the game at TCF Bank Stadium on October 5, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - OCTOBER 05: Dele Harding #9 of the Illinois Fighting Illini carries the ball for a touchdown after an inception against the Minnesota Gophers during the first quarter of the game at TCF Bank Stadium on October 5, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 3
Next
Chicago Bears, 2019 NFL Draft
Chicago Bears (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images) /

The College Football Playoff ended Monday night and that means that draft season will almost certainly begin to pick up. The Chicago Bears were present at LSU’s victory over Clemson, but will they be at this year’s East-West Shrine Bowl?

Well, I hope so. Because there are some good football players in this exhibition. The Chicago Bears have plenty of Day Three picks so it’s not crazy to think that they’ll put a ton of stock into this game.

That’s where we should expect a lot of these guys to get drafted. While the Senior Bowl is the more ballyhooed Senior bowl game, there have been some Hall of Fame players that come out of the East-West Shrine Game. Some examples include some dudes named John Elway, Brett Farve, and Tom Brady guy. So you never know; even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

With plenty of free agents and a surprisingly large amount of holes to fill, one the best way to do so is to hit on prospects in the later rounds. With the salary cap starting to look more and more like a glaring issue with the Bears, there is going to be a bevy of difficult decisions that Ryan Pace will need to make in the coming months. That’s why finding players in the later rounds is so important. This takes away from the burn of losing free agents because then you have established, young talent that can walk in and clog the hole.

A great example I always harken back to is the Seattle Seahawks. Dating back from 2010 to 2014, they found the following players in the middle to late rounds: Kam Chancellor, Walter Thurmond, Richard Sherman, Byron Maxwell, Malcolm Smith, J.R. Sweezy, Jeremy Lane, Luke Willson, and Kevin Pierre-Louis(!).

A lot of those guys were the foundation of the “Legion of Boom”. The point is that while the scouting departments need to evaluate prospects carefully, saying that Day Three picks aren’t valuable is a fallacy as you never really know who or what you’ll find late in the draft.

The game kicks off at 3:00 P.M. EST on NFL Network if you care to watch the festivities.

Home/Chicago Bears