The emotions are already peaking. In buildings across the NFL, the anxiety and anticipation are partying together like college kids on the night final exams wrap up. That much enthusiasm is swirling, that much adrenaline pulsing.
Draft weekend has finally arrived.
And soon it will be over. In a blink.
What happens during a frenzied 47-hour stretch of picking and trading, strategizing and recalculating gives personnel folks across the league that surge of energy.
Imagine the eagerness percolating through the second floor of Halas Hall and flooding toward the Chicago Bears’ state-of-the-art draft room, where the proceedings will be monitored this weekend.
This is it. Finally. The chance, with a top-10 pick, to take a huge swing at landing a star for the show before moving into Friday and Saturday with a calculated vision of how to fortify the depth chart on both sides of the ball.
Bears assistant general manager Ian Cunningham was asked this week to describe the excitement that comes with the draft, which follows months of scouting, planning, discussion and debate. Then, suddenly, it’s go time.
“It’s trying to find calmness through the chaos a little bit,” Cunningham said. “Just relax.”
That rush is real.
Mark Dominik, who spent five seasons as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers GM and 12 as their director of pro scouting, called draft weekend “the most exhilarating part of the entire job.”
It’s almost intoxicating.
“Your mind is always clicking,” said Dominik, now an analyst for SiriusXM Radio. “It’s, ‘What’s next? What could I do? Should I go do something?’ You have that list of players you might want to go get or you have your reasons for why you’d trade back.”
A Kevin Costner fan, Dominik watched “Draft Day” after his GM days were over.
“In that entire movie, there was really only one thing that was real to me,” he said. “One of the things that happens around draft day and certainly on draft day is that you need to get away from everybody, sit in a room and just think.
“It’s a great time. It’s a very peaceful moment where you say to yourself, ‘OK. Here’s what I think is the right move for this organization.’”
Introducing …
Round 1 of the draft begins at 7 p.m. Thursday. If the Bears stay put in the No. 9 slot, they will scoop up the headliner of their 2023 class a little after 8 p.m.
Months of preparation and research have created an intricate matrix of possibility for just about every team and front office. Stare at that long enough and you’ll feel almost hypnotized — with hope, with curiosity, with wonder, with excitement.
For the Bears, what happens Thursday night will become the punctuation on an offseason so many fans convinced themselves can be a major turning point in the team’s championship pursuit. And the best news is no matter what path GM Ryan Poles chooses and no matter which player he selects in Round 1, he’ll be able to sell it like Gatorade to a desert wanderer.
The headliner of this Bears draft class — regardless of his name, position or school — will likely address a significant need.
He will have a college highlight tape that will be played on a loop through the rest of the spring and summer.
He will have talents and traits that will be accentuated on a brochure for where this voyage is headed.
Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter? Yes, there are questions about his maturity and drive and how much work it could take to mold him into a reliable professional for the next 10 years. But strictly as a football player, the dude is like a wrecking ball swinging from the bottom of a fighter jet. You can’t find that breathtaking combination of speed and power just anywhere.
Offensive lineman Peter Skoronski from Northwestern by way of Maine South High School? Tackle? Guard? Guard or tackle? Does it really matter when most of the league agrees Skoronski has all the talent, technique, intelligence and drive to be a standout starter into the 2030s?
What about Illinois cornerback Devon Witherspoon, who might have the best “HITS principle” tape of any prospect in the draft?
Or, heck, even Texas running back Bijan Robinson, whose biggest — and perhaps only — flaw is he plays a position that’s devalued in the pass-happy world of 2020s football.
The menu the Bears will be ordering off Thursday night is impressive.
Wish list
The point is Poles, Cunningham, coach Matt Eberflus and new team President Kevin Warren should have something wonderful to sell by the end of the night, effortlessly able to generate a massive wave of hope and excitement they can surf deep into September or October.
That’s a big part of this week’s big, big energy.
The stakes for the Bears this weekend are well-established. Poles is in the most demanding stages of a roster overhaul he compared last fall to an extensive home improvement project.
Part of the next step involves having a sober view of the building blocks and working to find upgrades for every placeholder and “just OK” player on the roster.
That’s why Poles talks so often and emphatically about this being “a long journey” and why he has given himself repeated reminders that not everything will be fixed to his liking by the start of the 2023 season.
Still, there are major demands this weekend accompanying the excitement Poles and his team of executives, scouts and coaches are feeling.
- The Bears had the worst pass rush in the NFL last season, and their biggest move in free agency to jump-start those efforts was signing DeMarcus Walker, a seventh-year journeyman joining his fourth NFL team with 19½ career sacks.
- The Bears couldn’t stop the run last season, either, and still have a massive hole in the interior of the defensive line. Opponents racked up 4,080 total yards and 331 points during the 10-game losing streak the Bears will carry into next fall.
- The Bears are looking for offensive line upgrades, too, to aid quarterback Justin Fields’ growth. And they wouldn’t mind finding a few playmakers who can be long-term contributors at wide receiver, cornerback, tight end or running back.
You get the point.
‘Pressure is a privilege’
Everyone inside the Bears front office understands the potential magnitude of this weekend’s proceedings and how grand the expectations are — both internally and from the outside world.
“I kind of look at it as pressure is a privilege,” Cunningham said. “At least for us, you just kind of look at it as, ‘This is a draft.’ We’re excited about it. But you just try to keep yourself in the moment.”
In their second offseason working together, the Bears front-office leaders believe there has been crisper communication through every phase of the pre-draft process, a natural byproduct of strengthened relationships.
The visions of the coaching staff are clearer. The desired identity of the roster is understood.
Now the Bears have to apply all that amid this weekend’s tornado of excitement and anticipation.
Dominik stressed the importance of establishing plans and boundaries, especially for GMs eager to dive into dealing.
“If you’re thinking about making a move, you really should know what your limit is the night before,” he said. “Because (on draft night) the adrenaline pumps. It goes. And you’re in the draft room and you’re saying, ‘OK, we’re going to move from 9 back up to 6.’ And you’ve said to yourself, ‘I’m going to give up a (first-rounder), a 3 and a 4.’
“But now it’s draft day and you’re like, ‘OK, I’ll give up a 1, a 2 and a 3.’ Whoa. What happened to last night when you were calm and thinking clearly? Why did something change? It didn’t. You just have to sort through those thoughts.”
After the Bears make their first pick Thursday, a flurry of high-fives and hugs will ensue at Halas Hall, most of them caught on camera for the hype videos the team will pump out on social media in the coming days and weeks. There will be a long-awaited and well-earned moment of celebration.
“But you have to keep setting the table as well,” Dominik said. “So when you make your pick at No. 9, you don’t just sit back and say, ‘Well, that’s it for today.’
“You have to continually look at your list and figure out exactly who is the player you might want to go get and what would you be willing to give up. Especially when you’re in a situation like Chicago where you could use two or three elite players to help you build upon what you’ve got so far.”
There’s little time to waste, a lot of activity and emotion to process and so much to get done.
As Cunningham said, the key will be to just relax, to find calmness amid chaos and to embrace all of it as a golden opportunity.
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