The Chicago Bears haven’t always been the team that builds through the draft. GM Ryan Pace is trying to change that with a focus on scouting and the draft in hopes to build the Bears into a contender for years to come, but before Pace, several previous GMs haven’t had a lot of success in the drafts.
That hasn’t always been the case. The Bears have found some gems in the later rounds of the NFL draft- even hall of famers. While recent draft history hasn’t been great, the Bears have managed to find some steals in recent years as well.
We look back at the 10 greatest late-round (6th round or later) draft steals in Chicago Bears franchise history. You won’t find any picks that were made before the 1960s. It’s hard to call any drafts prior to modern day scouting steals when basically teams didn’t scout and just drafted off pieces of paper and if you lucked into someone, congratulations. The focus of this article is in the last 50 or so years, and mostly in the last 30 or so when scouting has become a much more prevalent focus in the NFL.