The Bernstein Brief: Bears' 1st-Round Drafting Is Ugly
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) An emailer to the Boers and Bernstein Show on Thursday provided an analysis of Bears first-round draft picks that could be described as something between sobering and depressing.
Beginning in 2006 when the Bears won the NFC, the information tracked the number of possible starts by those draftees through now, a total of 924 since that Super Bowl year that includes the drafts in which they had spent that top pick on something else they needed desperately. Included are selections by general managers Jerry Angelo, Phil Emery and Ryan Pace.
Of those 924 possible starts for the team, Bears first-rounders have made just 213 of them.
To give some context, over the same period the Packers have received 471 game starts from their first-rounders, the Vikings 593 and the Lions 708. Even noting a couple of seasons when one of those teams had more than one pick in the round, it's striking that those of the Bears have produced less than half of the next-closest divisional rival.
And this is just measuring how often they even showed up, not even beginning to take into account how good they have actually been.
It goes a long way to illustrate why the Bears are where they are.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.