How did the Chicago Bears fare in the 2010 NFL Draft?
To spark up the offseason we are going to go back in time and regrade the Bears drafts of the past decade. Some will be a lot easier to grade than others but it will be a good exercise to look at recent history and compare it to what the team has and has not learned over its hits and misses. This edition, we will focus on the 2010 NFL draft.
For the second straight season, the Bears first round pick was in the hands of the Denver Broncos. While the big name of the 2009 draft was Robert Ayers, the Broncos did a lot more with the Bears assets in the 2010 draft.
While they did some wheeling and dealing on their own with the picks the Bears gave them, the final trade in its entirety is; Jay Cutler and Johnny Knox for Robert Ayers, Kyle Orton, Richard Quinn, Seth Olsen, Demaryius Thomas, Tim Tebow, Eric Decker. All of the sudden it starts to become a debate about how valuable Jay Cutler was in Chicago. While this is not a big blow for the Bears, it was not the trade of the century for them either.
The Bears ended up trading their second round pick as well. The team traded the 42nd pick in the NFL draft to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for Gaines Adams. The Bucs used the pick and another to move up three spots to take wide receiver, Arrelious Benn. Of course, in the irony of this, both teams passed up on Rob Gronkowski, who went 42nd overall when the New England Patriots traded up to select him.
Of course, we will never know the impact of Adams. After just 10 games with the Bears in 2009, the defensive end passed away in his that winter due to a heart issue. Adams was just 26 years old.