The Chicago Bears entered the 2022 season with huge questions at wide receiver, and everybody knew that. New General Manager Ryan Poles did not have much to work with, and mostly just threw things against the wall with the limited resources he had.
Knowing this, the team should not be too attached to the room moving forward. These three players were given a chance, but they did not show much, and now they should help the next team with no depth in a rebuilding room.
3. Chicago Bears must move on from Dante Pettis
If I told you that Dante Pettis was going to run the most routes on the Chicago Bears this season, you probably would have said that they would be competing for the number one pick. Pettis is 15 routes behind Equanimeous St. Brown, and ESB may not play this week, so Pettis will likely be the top dog heading into the final week of the season.
Despite that, he has half of the yards that Darnell Mooney has, and that is a spot he will not be catching anyone in.
Pettis is like the fifth starter in late August on a 60-win baseball team. He is an innings eater. He is out there because they need someone to run the routes. They hardly look to target him, though.
Of wide receivers with 200 routes, only A.J. Green, Tyquan Thornton, David Bell, and Shi Smith have worse yards per route run this season. He also has three drops. Pettis brings nothing as a receiver, despite the high amount of snaps.
His bigger role is as a punt returner, but even in that area he ranks 21st in yards and 27th in yards per attempt. He ranks 12th in PFF grade, but still, the reality is that he is not enough of an impact player on punt returns to deal with the fact that he is such a negative as a wide receiver.
The team has the whole offseason to replace him, where they thought Velus Jones was the solution and had to rely on Pettis out of poor circumstances this year. This should be an easy decision as Dante Pettis goes somewhere else next year.