It was an overall disappointment for the Bears’ rookie class during one of the more disappointing seasons in recent history for Chicago.
With no first or second round draft picks, the Bears had just five selections. They traded up 13 spots to take running back David Montgomery, who had 889 rushing yards and six touchdowns in his rookie season. But Chicago’s other four picks didn’t has big an impact.
NFL.com ranked the Bears’ rookie draft class third in the NFC North with a grade of a C+, which trailed the Packers (B+) and Vikings (B-).
Beyond the well-documented quarterback issue (SEE: next paragraph), the biggest culprit behind Chicago’s unexpectedly blah season was the offensive line. Bears GM Ryan Pace openly acknowledged the unit’s shortcomings in his end-of-season press conference: “We struggled in that area this year — that’s real.” And therein lies the problem in evaluating the rookie campaign of Montgomery, whose yards-per-carry mark (3.7) left a lot to be desired. But honestly, Chicago’s O-line hung Montgomery out to dry pretty routinely — and obviously, opposing defenses weren’t too worried about getting burned by the Mitchell Trubisky-led passing game on a snap-by-snap basis. Montgomery did his best to overcome these adverse circumstances, breaking the eighth-most tackles in the NFL (47) — which is how he finished second among all rookies in both rushing yards (889) and rushing touchdowns (6).
Montgomery was the only draft selection that made an impact for Chicago in 2019, which made the Bears’ draft class unimpressive considering just one of their five selections saw the field for a significant amount of time.
Besides Montgomery’s production, the Bears didn’t get much of anything out of the rookie class. This isn’t all that surprising, considering Chicago made just five selections last April, with Montgomery being the only player taken before Day 3 of the draft. Coming out of Georgia, Ridley was advertised as a polished route runner — like his brother, Calvin — but he couldn’t even crack the game day roster until Week 13. Adding insult to ineffectiveness: The very next two wideouts selected after Ridley — Hunter Renfrow and Darius Slayton — provided significant Year 1 contributions.
Receiver Riley Ridley and cornerback Duke Shelley saw little playing time. Then there was seventh-round picks running back Kerrith Whyte and cornerback Stephen Denmark that didn’t make any impact on the active roster. Denmark spent the season on the practice squad while Whyte was dealt the the Steelers.
[lawrence-related id=437957,437942,437961,437932,437945]