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Jeff King Reveals Exactly What Bears Had Hoped in Predraft Assessment

The new assistant GM answered all of the questions and none of the questions about the 2026 NFL Draft Tuesday as the Bears continued preparations for the big day.
Gene Chamberlain|
Bears assistant general manager Jeff King addresses the assembled media at Halas Hall.
Bears assistant general manager Jeff King addresses the assembled media at Halas Hall. | Chicago Bears On SI photo: Chicago Bears video

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Chicago Bears

As predraft assessments go, Bears assistant general manager Jeff King told the media absolutely nothing.

Sitting off to the side, GM Ryan Poles had to be nodding to himself in approval over his newly anointed second in command. King's first time facing the media in his role was a resounding success from the personnel department's standpoint.

“If it goes exactly the way we think. Yeah, we'll be excited to pick at 25,” King said.

Then again, there's always trading back or forward.

"We're not going to get to 25 and say, 'Well, we don't have any first-round picks, we're not going to pick,' " King said. "We feel really good about where we are. We feel really good about if we have to move back, if we have to move up.

"We're going to stay adaptable. We're going to listen to the board and pick the best players available.”

It was very similar to the words Poles himself had used a few moments earlier.

"If things start to shift and move, we're agile enough to make adjustments, if that's moving up or moving back," Poles said. "We'll be ready for anything that comes our way."

Pick No. 25 has been traded by teams eight of the last nine years. The Bears might be the outlier who makes it eight in 10, or perhaps they'll fall in line and make it nine in 10.

Best available boring pick

The Bears have four of the first 89 picks to be made before the end of Friday's Round 3 festivities. They have to be able to come out of there with players at some needed positions, even if both King and Poles both pressed the useless and generic best-available player schtick.

The goals for this draft are easy to meet when they are as vague as possible

“Create competition for the roster," King said of their goals. "Create hard decisions that we have to make come the start of the season. Add guys to our building that compete daily. That's our goal.”

King has been with the organization since 2015 in various roles after his career as a tight end for Carolina and Arizona ended.

"I want to build a consistent or help build a consistent winner here in this city," King said. "I've seen lows. I've seen highs. I've been in the middle."

Since 2015, the high was last year and 2018 a bit below that. There wasn't much in the middle except the 2020 late-season run to a wild-card berth as a mediocre 8-8 team. There were plenty of lows.

The goal is consistent winning, as Poles as said in the past.

"The fact that we can steady the ship and be a part of being a consistent winner here means a ton," King added. "I think it's one of the best football cities that you can be in when you're winning, and that's our charge to keep it there. But that doesn't come easy.

"We have to reset, we have to restock, and we're going to have to start over."

Maybe the best King "who yah crappin' " moment came when he didn't feel backed into a corner to draft a safety. He pointed out newly acquired Cam Little has started a playoff game in the past. He has also started only 14 out of 76 games over six years and is a 183-pound slot cornerback, not a safety.

King did toss out one bone for everyone to fight over and gnaw on. It pertained to center, a position of interest to the Bears because they need someone to succeed Garrett Bradbury either next season or in the future.

“There's not very many of them," King said. "I think that the thing that you're starting to see now is guys staying in school longer. This is really across all positions, but it really comes into play at center.

"They're staying in school longer. There's less of them coming out in the draft. You saw (Raiders center Tyler) Linderbaum get his deal. They're just getting harder and harder to find. I don't know if they're getting developed and cross-trained as much in college as they maybe used to be, but it's definitely something that we've talked about is there's a little bit of a limited supply coming out of college now.”

If there aren’t many, and most analysts say the ones there are really don’t qualify for Day 1 status, then expect it to be pick they take somewhere between Rounds 2 and 4 and he’d sit out most of this season.

There also was a comment about Tyrique Stevenson being a young player who is prone to good play and bad play like many young player. We all know the bad play. We'd like to see more of the good plays. It could mean a cornerback would be of interest, but maybe not.

None of this was very much to go on. In fact, it was nothing to go on.

So it was exactly what Poles would have wanted to hear from his new second in

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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