Bears Add Cornerback-ups Hayden and Wilhite

Phil Emery and the Chicago Bears added some much needed help in their secondary by signing Kelvin Hayden and Jonathan Wilhite  to compete with Tim Jennings for playing time opposite Charles Peanut Tillman.  For now, let’s call them cornerback-ups.

When the Bears re-signed Tim Jennings, you thought they might be done shopping for free agent cornerbacks, but after losing backups Zack Bowman and Corey Graham, Phil Emery had to pick up a couple of bodies to bolster the secondary.

The Bears flirted with Hayden last offseason, but with some injury concerns, the Bears backed off and he ended up in Atlanta for a season after spending his first 6 seasons in Indianapolis in the Colts’ Cover-2 defense.  Hayden is a Chicago native and turned out to be a nemesis to his hometown team in Super Bowl XLI, when he picked off Rex Grossman to virtually ice the game.

As for Wilhite, he is a former Patriots draftee, but let’s hope he works out better than the last New England castoff that ended up in Chicago, Brandon Merrweather.

Don’t expect either of these guys to set the world on fire, but hopefully they can provide better depth behind Tillman.  Neither Bowman nor Graham were very capable in their roles as backups.

I had been hoping the Bears would add a cornerback with a fairly high pick in the draft, but this move might show they’re thinking of going in another direction.

What do you think?  Good moves?  Bad moves?  Should the Bears draft a corner too?