Chicago Bears: Their history in drafts with no 1st rounder

The Chicago Bears went all out to make themselves competitive when they traded for star pass rusher Khalil Mack, including the surrender of future picks.

Thanks to this deal and the one for Anthony Miller back in April, Chicago will not have 1st or 2nd round picks in 2019 and no 1st round pick in 2020. There’s no doubt that’s a siginficant loss in draft currency. Some people are panicking over it. While the Bears look like they have the strongest roster they’ve assembled in years, they’re leaving themselves vulnerable with so few long-term assets at their disposal.

So I decided to dig into other times during their long franchise history where they didn’t have 1st round picks going into a draft. Were they able to still have any sort of success or was it a consistent down period that hampered the team as many feared. As one would expect, it was a mix of both and like any draft it depended on the year.

1970 – Grade:  C-

The early 1970s were and still are considered by many to be the true Dark Ages of Bears football. The team was utterly hopeless during that period and poor drafting was a big reason why. Chicago had no 1st or 2nd round picks in 1970 but still had 15 selections total. They’d finished the previous year 1-13, so they would’ve had high choices but after missing out at the #1 pick in a coin flip, they decided to give them away via trades instead.

All told the class was a bust. Seven of the picks never even played a down for the team. Those who did like Ross Brupbacher, Jimmy Gunn, and Glen Holloway were unremarkable. Top choice, 3rd rounder George Farmer had one decent season at wide receiver but wasn’t much beyond that. It was a class that merely further the teams’ slide into irrelevance.