When we look back at prior drafts, it's easy to say a team should have drafted so-and-so. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20. When we look back over the last five years, there have been some major blunders by multiple teams. If we were to go back six years, we are looking at the 2017 NFL Draft and I think everyone, even Mitchell Tubisky fans, would agree the Chicago Bears swung and missed.
We should also be careful to think that every player who becomes a star or even an above-average player in the league would reach the same heights playing for any other team. Would Patrick Mahomes be as successful if the Bears drafted him in 2017 instead of the Chiefs? Would Trubisky be better if he ended up with Kansas City? Even though it is highly unlikely that Mahomes would be bad in Chicago, it's also just as likely that he wouldn't have had the same success. The NFL is the ultimate team sport — nothing like the NBA.
The Chicago Bears missed out on these five stars over the last five years
Despite not fully knowing how each player would turn out on a different team, we can look back over the years to see when and where the Chicago Bears went wrong. It's too soon to look at the 2022 draft class. Therefore, we are looking at 2018 through 2021 — all Ryan Pace's drafts. We are able to grade the general manager's drafts and see just how well he is doing. Most of the time it takes a couple of seasons to know for sure, and although I never found Ryan Pace to be bad at drafting, he missed on too many draft picks in the early rounds when he actually had picks to use.