As each year's NFL Draft nears, reports of visits/meetings a team has had with players can lead to a false sense of interest the team has in that player. A good bit of the time, those "top-30" visits are a continuation of information gathering to bring more focus to a draft board.
That said, there are definitely times when those visits yield actual draft picks, and we subsequently go, "oh yeah, they had him in for a top-30 visit, etc.," and it's an actual indicator of strong interest.
At seemingly every stop along the way in the pre-draft process, the Chicago Bears have gotten an up-close look at Ole Miss wide receiver De'Zhaun Stribling. With good size (6-foot-2, 207 pounds), sub-4.4 speed (4.36 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine) and solid production over five college seasons, there's certainly a lot to like.
De'Zhaun Stribling just proved why the Bears' interest in him is not a smokescreen
In a conversation with Jacob Infante of Pro Football Network, Stribling used 39 words to prove the Bears' interest in him is no pre-draft smokescreen.
"As a receiver, you get maybe seven targets a game. So out of 50 plays, what are you doing the rest of the 43 snaps? You have to go out there and block and make the most of it.”
When Bears head coach Ben Johnson was the offensive coordinator in Detroit, the Lions' wide receiver group, led by Amon-Ra St. Brown and new Bear Kalif Raymond, adopted the Johnson-driven mantra, "no block, no rock." Meaning that, with Johnson's offense built around the run game, "if you don't want to block, don't expect to see targets."
If the "no block, no rock" mantra can be summed up in longer thoughts, what Stribling said to Infante would be high on a hypothetical list.
A wide receiver is usually targeted on a small percentage of the total offensive plays in a game. So what are you doing when the ball isn't in your hands? After the Bears dropped to 0-2 to start last season, Johnson made how important that element is to him absolutely clear.
Read more: An easily forgotten Bear could become sneaky trade asset around the draft
As talented as Stribling is, he also appears to have the mentality Johnson covets in his wide receivers. So maybe he's the wide receiver prospect the table will be pounded for the hardest by the Bears' head coach, and it would be perfectly understandable.
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