All-Decade Bears Include Sack Men and Return Men
Two Bears sack men and two return men made All-Decade.
The NFL All-Decade Team for the 2010s has been released and although it contains four Bears players, only one of those was a Bears draft pick and none were drafted by the Bears during the 2010s.
Devin Hester is the only Bears player drafted by the team who made the All-Decade Team, and it would be easy to argue his best years as a Bears return man were the previous decade.
The other Bears players to make it were known at least as much for playing in other cities during their careers.
Defensive end Julius Peppers, outside linebacker Khalil Mack and Cordarrelle Patterson were the other members of the team who played in Chicago.
Hester played eight seasons in Chicago and this included 2010-2013. He had an NFL record 20 returns for touchdowns with kicked footballs, and his most famous was easily the opening kick to Super Bowl XLI. He had seven of his returns for touchdowns in Chicago between 2010-19.
Hester led the NFL in punt-return average at 17.1 in 2010 and then the following year at 16.2. In 2010 he had a career-high average of 35.6 yards on kick returns but returned only 12.
The other Bears return man on the team, Patterson, played only one season in Chicago during the decade and made the Pro Bowl, averaging 29.5 yards with one TD return. His career return average of 29.9 yards is second only to Gale Sayers in NFL history.
Mack came to the Bears in 2018 and has 21 of his 61 1/2 career sacks for the Bears. The first four years of his career were spent in Oakland. Mack helped transform the Bears into division champions in 2018 and forced 11 fumbles in 2018 and 2019. In his four years with the Raiders, he had nine forced fumbles.
Mack has been in the Pro Bowl in five of his six seasons and has been All-Pro three times.
Although Peppers spent 10 of his 17 seasons in Carolina, he played more games with the Bears from 2010-2019 than any other team.
In 2010 Peppers helped the Baers get to the NFC championship game and earned one of his nine Pro Bowl berths. He also was All-Pro that year, the third and final time he did it.
After 2018 Peppers retired and made 159 1/2 sacks, including 37 1/2 with the Bears from 2010-2013.
He spent three years with the Green Bay Packers and made 25 more sacks before finishing up his career with Carolina the final two seasons.
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