Chicago Bears: Compensatory pick gives Pace more options

The Chicago Bears will have a compensatory pick in this year’s draft, which will give their general manager more options.

For the first time in 10 years, the Chicago Bears will have a compensatory pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. While the qualification criteria are much more complicated, essentially, the NFL awards 32 compensatory picks each year to teams based on the players they lost and gained in free agency. Compensatory picks are awarded from the 3rd to 7th rounds, with the compensatory formula (taking into account the value of players lost and gained) determines where the teams pick.

This year, the Bears received a 4th round compensatory pick (No. 140 overall). Essentially, they will get the 34th pick in the 4th round. While that may not seem all that attractive, it most certainly is terrific news for the Bears. It not only signals that they have been drafting better recently (which has allowed them to let players walk and not sign as many in free agency) but it gives Ryan Pace another set of options in the draft.

First, he can decide to keep the pick and make a selection at No. 140. Yes, it’s at the end of the round, but Pace, for all his troubles early in the draft, has had disproportionate success in the middle rounds — particularly the fourth. Here is Ryan Pace’s 4th round draft history:

• Jeremy Langford (2015)
• Nick Kwiatkoski (2016)
• Deon Bush (2016)
• Deiondre’ Hall (2016)
• Eddie Jackson (2017)
• Tarik Cohen (2017)
• Joel Iyiegbuniwe

Those are pretty darn good results and make it tough to argue Pace shouldn’t keep the selection where they could land a quality player like Van Jefferson, K’Von Wallace, Alex Highsmith, or a player we’ve liked for a while, Anthony Gordon. If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at Gordon as a prospect, check out our interview with the Washington State QB.

However, if Pace were interested in perhaps trading back to pick up another 5th round pick (they currently hold the 163rd overall pick), it would be hard to argue with those results as well.

• Jordan Howard (2016)
• Jordan Morgan (2017)
• Bilal Nichols (2018)

Yes, Morgan never panned out, but a 67 percent hit rate in the 5th round is impressive. Generally speaking, you’re thrilled if you find a player in the 5th round who can eventually contribute to the team. Pace found two veritable studs in the 5th — no easy task.

Perhaps the only course of action he should not consider is a trade-up into the third. Considering it would cost him the 4th and probably a 5th round pick, he better be darn sure he’s going to hit on that player he trades up for, especially considering he could be giving up two players the caliber of Eddie Jackson and Jordan Howard.

While the addition of a 4th round compensatory pick gives Pace additional options, it doesn’t mean he should seriously consider all of them. In fact, only trading down or making a selection with the pick makes sense considering his history.