Bears land offensive tackle in way-too-early 2021 NFL mock draft

Share

The 2020 NFL Draft is barely three weeks old and this year's crop of Bears rookies has yet to visit Halas Hall, but we're already onto the 2021 NFL Draft and the potential first-round landscape. At least, some of football media is.

CBS Sports recently ran a 2021 first-round mock draft that had the Bears picking 14th overall. It's a projection that suggests they won't make the playoffs in 2020 and if that's the case, it's probably because they had another sub-par season behind center. Naturally, the pick has to be a quarterback, right? Not exactly.

Instead, CBS Sports sends Texas offensive tackle Samuel Cosmi to Chicago.

"Quarterback is the easy decision here," CBS Sports' Chris Trapasso wrote, "but instead, the Bears ride out either Mitchell Trubisky (after a new deal) or Nick Foles for one more season and grab an athletic, fundamentally sound tackle in Cosmi, who represents better value than any quarterback available."

The odds Trubisky ends up with a new contract after a season in which the Bears failed to make the playoffs are low. Very low. And while there's a chance Foles is in Chicago beyond 2020, the opportunity to draft a player like Ohio State's Justin Fields or dare I say Clemson's Trevor Lawrence will be too once-in-a-lifetime to pass up.

Fields, for example, is the fifth-overall pick to the Panthers in this mock draft. If Ryan Pace is within 10 selections of landing a franchise quarterback like Fields, it's safe to assume he'll make an aggressive move up the board. 

There's also the potential for North Dakota State's Trey Lance to make a meteoric rise up the board this season and become a top-10 prospect in his own right. That would make three legitimate early first-round passers within reach for the Beras, assuming the wheels fall off in 2020.

Here's the thing: with the defense Chicago has in place and a steady veteran like Foles at quarterback, it's almost impossible to imagine a scenario where they finish any worse than 8-8 or even 9-7. And that's a worst-case scenario. The more likely outcome is a 10-win season and a Wild Card berth, which will make any "draft a quarterback" conversation moot.

If the Bears are picking high enough in 2021 to have a realistic shot at Lawrence or Fields, there will be wholesale changes at Halas Hall that extend way beyond quarterback.

Contact Us