Chicago Bears: 4 players who had their careers cut short

Looking back at Chicago Bears teams over the past couple of seasons, you’ll spot a few guys who just didn’t get the timing right and never ended up being the Bears legend that everybody thought they’d be.

As I was taking a retrospective look at the Chicago Bears draft picks over the past couple of decades, I noticed one glaring similarity among many of the groups of players I was analyzing: The Bears have been riddled with situations that cause a promising player to either lose playing time or have their career ended short.

We’ve seen this most recently in Kevin White, who clearly had the talent to be an NFL star but couldn’t get the timing right. We saw this a while ago with Nathan Vasher, known for his NFL-record field goal return. In between the two, we saw this with Johnny Knox after his nightmare back injury. Despite this being a common occurrence recently with the Bears, it’s not specific to the Windy City.

But there is one simple trend you’ll notice with these players: each guy’s career was cut short despite an excess of potential. It’s the NFL after all, and most franchises don’t have the time to string along players for years because there’s a small chance that they’re still a star after their injuries.

I want to emphasize that this is not a list of the biggest draft busts in Chicago Bears history. If that were the case, the list would only need one name – Mitchell Trubisky. Rather, on this list, you’ll find a large group of guys who simply never put together a great career. One or two may be considered busts, but the point here is that most of these guys’ careers failed based on bad circumstances. These are four Chicago Bears players who could have been.