Chicago Bears' 2009 Draft: What Not to Do

With the 2009 NFL Draft rapidly approaching, Chicago fans look to the draft to help fill some of the holes that were so apparent in the way the Bears played throughout the 2008 season.

With the vast number of mock drafts available on the Internet, even before the Combine or the Senior Bowl, fans everywhere are trying to weigh in on their teams' needs and the players they think will be most able to step in and make an impact right away.

For the Bears, however, the urge to correct what is being seen as their greatest positions of weakness might prove to be an unfortunate exercise in futility.

Most bloggers and NFL analysts believe that the Bears will take a wide receiver in the first round with the 18th overall pick. The thinking here is that it will give the Bears' present and future quarterbacks a solid option to throw to. 

With the disappointment the Devin Hester Experiment yielded, it would not seem to be a bad idea to draft a player who could change that aspect of the Bears offense.

Still, there are so many good reasons not to draft a wide receiver with the first-round pick, choosing to instead draft other positions that might not get the recognition of a wide receiver but are of great need and importance for the Bears' future.

Some of the receivers that are most often mentioned include Jeremy Maclin, Darius Heyward-Bey, and Percy Hardin. All three were solid performers in college and will probably be drafted in the first or second rounds of this year's draft. However, there are too many ifs associated with drafting a No. 1 receiver.

For one thing, wide receivers taken in the first round historically have the highest "bust rate" of all positions. Combine this statistic with the unsteady quarterback situation that continues to plague the Bears, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a receiver that could realistically be expected to transform the Bears' offense.

Other issues surrounding this choice include the lack of height among this year's crop of receivers. The truth is that the Bears' defense was equally mediocre in 2008 as their offense, and they can't turn a blind eye to that when establishing their draft board.

Whether the talent on defense that might have been available at No. 18 is questionable as well, there are some positions that the Bears can realistically address this year that are as close to being "can't misses" as you could hope for.

One thing that Bears can do for the team's future is to draft a center and a right offensive tackle who would both be ready to step in and take over for the aging veterans who currently fill those spots on the depth chart.

Tait and Kreutz are only signed through 2009 and 2010 respectively. If they draft two players as their backups in the first two rounds, they give them both at least two training camps and two seasons to contribute on special teams and learn from the veterans they would eventually replace.

This year's offensive line crop is much stronger than most other positions, and if the Bears are the conservative and stubborn franchise they've been in the past, they will not invest any more serious money on defense—maintaining that coaching changes and shifting responsibilities will suffice in working out the kinks that were so apparent to fans this year.

With a few exceptions, teams cannot go into the draft planning to solve all of their problems. It makes far more sense to draft in the hopes of building a strong franchise in the future.

I'd love to think that there would be one or two players that the Bears could take in the offseason that would make them Super Bowl contenders once again right away, but that very rarely happens.

So my question to Bears fans is: Would you rather remain mediocre—routinely going 9-7 and missing the playoffs like we did this season for the next few years—or suffer through a 5-11 season once, clean house in terms of coaches, lose a few underperforming and overpaid veterans, and go back to the Super Bowl?

To me, the answer is simple.