Forget linemen, Chicago Bears must target college football’s most dynamic player to help rescue Caleb Williams

During his first year in a Chicago Bears uni, running back D’Andre Swift wasn’t exactly what you’d call super-helpful:

Yards: Swift finished the season with 959 yards on the ground, 18th in the league, just 54 yards ahead of the Chargers’ J.K. Dobbins…and Dobbins played four less freakin’ games.

Touchdowns: The 25-year-old managed six rushing touchdowns, the same number as his teammate Roschon Johnson…and Johnson had freakin’ 198 less carries.

Efficiency: The former Georgia Bulldog’s 43.9% rushing success rate ranked 51st in the NFL…a whopping 5.7% behind the freakin’ league average.

So yeah, the Bears aren’t set at running back. Far from it. And man, does soon-to-be-sophomore quarterback Caleb Williams need a reliable RB1.

Thing is, neither are the Bears set on the offensive line. (A killer O-line would help Caleb too, eh?) Or the defensive line. Some might even say the defensive backfield and the receivers room could use more-than-a-little attention.

But Swift’s uninspiring numbers scream that the Monsters must, one way or the other, deal with the running back position in the early stages of the 2025 NFL Draft. In today’s climate, however, the prevailing belief is that high-level rushers are really, really easy to find on Day Two of the Draft—maybe even Day Three—so it doesn’t make sense to blow a first round choice on an RB.

That is, until it does make sense.

Precedence Day

Three of the NFL’s ten active first-round RB draftees ran their way into the postseason—Philly’s Saquon Barkley, Green Bay’s Josh Jacobs, and Detroit’s Jahmyr Gibbs—which, the Bears on SI abacus tells us, means there’s a 30% chance your franchise’s first round choice at running back will help drag their team into the playoffs.

Ashton Jeanty might be one of those draggers.

In 2024, the Boise State product racked up 2,601 yards on the ground to go with his 29 rushing touchdowns, numbers that could be easily and fairly construed as generational. Pairing a (theoretically) generational running back with a (theoretically) generational quarterback in Caleb Williams might be pretty darn tasty.

Thing is, Chicago’s O-line is, oh, let’s be polite and call it a work in progress, so it’s possible that Swift would have performed better running behind an elite tackle or an All-Pro guard. It’s also possible that unless the problems in the Bears’ offensive trenches are properly addressed, it’s pointless to bring in Jeanty.

But is there a trenchman the Bears could snatch up at the ten-spot who’d improve them as much as Jeanty would?

Day Two Value

Let’s take a trip back to the 2023 NFL Draft, when Chicago landed Darnell Wright with, that’s right, the tenth pick. Is Wright a good player? Sure. Is Wright a great player? Nah. Were there any equally talented O-linemen selected outside of the first round? Not many. But some.

Like Cody Mauch.

Tampa Bay snatched up the North Dakota State guard 28 picks after the Bears landed Wright. In terms of their respective PFF grades, Wright edged out Mauch by a mere 3.9 points. You know who the Bears could’ve drafted had they kicked O-line down the road?

Yep, the aforementioned Mr. Gibbs, the RB1 for the current odds-on favorites to rep the NFC in Super Bowl LIX.

Admittedly, that’s cherry picking, but Bears GM Ryan Poles—a former O-lineman at Boston College—should be able to cherry pick himself a quality blocker on Day Two, right?

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