This shows how high Chicago Bears were on Kyler Gordon

The Chicago Bears and Ryan Poles set a clear precedent last night with how they will draft. Poles will never pass up the best player available to reach for other needs. It is easy to say that Kyler Gordon was the best player on the Bears board after the fact, but it is true that many had him as a top player to fall out of round one.

Beyond that, Poles told a funny story about not even thinking that Gordon would be on the board by the 39th pick.

Poles noted that he kept thinking that it was an issue with the simulator because they would not be able to get a talent like him. They even had to pass on him because they were sure he would not be there, and they wanted to get a realistic look at their draft.

Well, good thing they did take him in a couple of the simulations because now they got to see how the board broke with him still there. You can see below that compared to the consensus big board, Gordon went a bit below where all experts saw him getting drafted.

Poles was also asked about the potential to trade down from that slot. He noted before the draft that he would like to trade down and add a couple of picks. However, when Kyler Gordon was on the board Poles said that the discussions of a trade down were gone.

We will not know how high the Chicago Bears graded Gordon, but they appear surprised that he fell out of the first round and even more stunned that he lasted seven picks into the second.

You can say what you want about this being an offensive league, teams needing to load up on offense, and the questions around Justin Fields. However, it is hard to knock a team that went in and took the best player that was on their board regardless of outside pressure.

They stuck to their board and took someone they thought would definitely be gone, which is much better than hearing that they took someone well before anyone expected to because it was a position of need.