I get waves of nausea every time I see that guy's name these days. I know we are going to go through the same silly charade and dog-and-pony show this coming August with him. There will be stories written about how he's "finally healthy" and "ready to be a major contributor", and "looking like the player the Bears were hoping for when they drafted him" in camp and pre-season.
Then...he will soon again prove why he was one of the worst top-10 picks the team has made in this millennium and remind me once again of how Ryan Pace utterly jacked up the start of the "rebuild" by busting completely on 3 of his first 4 draft picks as a new GM.
I get waves of nausea every time I see that guy's name these days. I know we are going to go through the same silly charade and dog-and-pony show this coming August with him. There will be stories written about how he's "finally healthy" and "ready to be a major contributor", and "looking like the player the Bears were hoping for when they drafted him" in camp and pre-season.
Then...he will soon again prove why he was one of the worst top-10 picks the team has made in this millennium and remind me once again of how Ryan Pace utterly jacked up the start of the "rebuild" by busting completely on 3 of his first 4 draft picks as a new GM.
Remember, to a large extent, he was depending on Emerys evaluators that first year. You can see a big different in his draft success between that first year and the other two.
I get waves of nausea every time I see that guy's name these days. I know we are going to go through the same silly charade and dog-and-pony show this coming August with him. There will be stories written about how he's "finally healthy" and "ready to be a major contributor", and "looking like the player the Bears were hoping for when they drafted him" in camp and pre-season.
Then...he will soon again prove why he was one of the worst top-10 picks the team has made in this millennium and remind me once again of how Ryan Pace utterly jacked up the start of the "rebuild" by busting completely on 3 of his first 4 draft picks as a new GM.
Remember, to a large extent, he was depending on Emerys evaluators that first year. You can see a big different in his draft success between that first year and the other two.
That's a good point. He was working off of Emery's scouting staff the first draft. And it showed.
I get waves of nausea every time I see that guy's name these days. I know we are going to go through the same silly charade and dog-and-pony show this coming August with him. There will be stories written about how he's "finally healthy" and "ready to be a major contributor", and "looking like the player the Bears were hoping for when they drafted him" in camp and pre-season.
Then...he will soon again prove why he was one of the worst top-10 picks the team has made in this millennium and remind me once again of how Ryan Pace utterly jacked up the start of the "rebuild" by busting completely on 3 of his first 4 draft picks as a new GM.
Remember, to a large extent, he was depending on Emerys evaluators that first year. You can see a big different in his draft success between that first year and the other two.
Still doesn't make much sense to draft the second best wide out vs the best pass rusher in that draft when we needed a 3-4 pass rusher more seeing that we just switch schemes.
White felt like a panic pick seeing that Cooper was gone and he needed to please fans who were upset about letting go our best WR...
I just hope we once again don't draft a WR so early and go after the more important position. That being yet again a pass rusher...
Remember, to a large extent, he was depending on Emerys evaluators that first year. You can see a big different in his draft success between that first year and the other two.
Still doesn't make much sense to draft the second best wide out vs the best pass rusher in that draft when we needed a 3-4 pass rusher more seeing that we just switch schemes.
White felt like a panic pick seeing that Cooper was gone and he needed to please fans who were upset about letting go our best WR...
I just hope we once again don't draft a WR so early and go after the more important position. That being yet again a pass rusher...
The White pick was a terrible decision regardless of Emery-evaluators and later unforeseeable injuries.
It was Pace's very first pick as the new GM of a dumpster fire team just starting a multi-year rebuild. Kevin White was a JUCO-transfer track star who had one productive year at West Virginia, mostly by nothing more than running past people on go-routes. He was the classic case of "better athlete than football player" type which his scouting reports reflected ('great physical talent but raw', 'needs to learn the route tree but has big upside', etc etc). In short, he was a high-risk/reward pick who was clearly a project.
IMHO, given that we were just starting a total teardown and had holes everywhere AND that everyone seems to agree Pace was also depending on unfamiliar scouts at the time, it would have been much wiser to make a safer, less risky pick. To use a baseball analogy, Pace should have choked up on the bat and just made solid contact rather than swinging for the fences and risk striking out. We needed at the time to lay a foundation and get some pieces in place way more than we needed to take boom-or-bust risks. Those are the kind of moves better made when you have a solid core already in place and just need one missing playmaker to put you over the top. We were nowhere near that point back in 2015.
The above doesn't even take into account for the good point made by MOTM above--the positional value of WRs is pretty poor that high up in the draft. Even Cooper has faded after a good start (betcha Oakland wouldn't mind doing that pick over as well). WRs, even good ones, simply don't have as much consistent impact on the outcome of games as QBs, OTs, and Pass-rushers do. They are also easier to find down-draft or even in FA at times. I agree with MOTM--I don't like spending top-10 picks on WRs and I hope Pace doesn't do that again in 2018 either.
Bottom line, it was a really poor, strategically unwise, and frankly dumb decision to draft White at that point and I agree it smacked of desperation in the wake of Marshall being traded and Cooper going a few picks earlier. Combine that huge bust with whiffing in the 3rd (Grasu) and the 4th (Langford) and you can see how Pace's first draft set the rebuild back badly. Goldman has been a solid player and Amos has recently come into his own so a draft that could have been absolutely stellar instead became lackluster and really hurt.
