The Chicago Bears recently used one of their 30 pre-draft visits to bring wide receiver Treylon Burks to Halas Hall. By most indications, it is hard to see Burks slipping out of the first round, and it is just as hard to see the Chicago Bears trading up this year with as many holes and as limited resources as they have.
So, the question now becomes what is sparking the Chicago Bears’ interest in Treylon Burks?
Do Chicago Bears expect Treylon Burks to fall in the 2022 NFL draft?
The pre-draft process has not been favorable to Treylon Burks. After many compared him to Deebo Samuel and D.K. Metcalf’s one issue raised was that he tested much less athletic than either of them.
Burks was expected to have otherworldly sized hands and showed up about average in that area, and he did not attempt to improve on much at his pro day.
Athletically, he compares to a couple of players who have been selected in or near the first round of drafts but turned out to be draft busts.
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The athletic comparisons shoot to the field as well. A lot of these players were schemed touches and praised for how they used their size to shrug off defenders. None of them have much of a defined route tree or role on the receiver depth chart. In the case of Shenault, he was compared to Samuel in the same way that Burks is this year.
Still, the reason a player has a specific role named after him is that he is rare, and for every Samuel, there is a Harry who cannot quite turn on the explosion to make plays.
This is not to say that Treylon Burks is a bad prospect nor that he will be like these players. In fact, there is a reason that Treadwell and Harry went round one. Still, now that teams shrugged off the questions that surrounded Harry and Treadwell and saw how that went, they may be taking these same questions extra seriously this year.
You can see in his GrindingTheMocks chart that his draft stock has taken a hit since the NFL combine.
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It climbed up a bit and has hardly dropped below 24, but you still are seeing the drop, and perhaps that is not quite as far as the NFL is seeing it.
It would be assumed that Burks is a top 32 player, but perhaps the risk is forcing teams to look in another direction. At pick 24, Burks could be a risk, but at pick 39 he could be viewed as valuable.
There are obvious questions and reasons that the team would like to hear him answer, or see him perform in a workout. Still, the Chicago Bears doing that type of due diligence shows that they are preparing for Burks to be in range. They think he will fall below pick 24 at least, and there may start to be conversations about him in the Bears draft room.