Chicago Bears: Combine scores of every prospect they’ve met with
By Erik Lambert
The Chicago Bears are better than most teams at keeping who they meet with before a draft secret every year. Yet there are inevitable leaks.
Thus far they’ve met with a handful of interesting prospects since the East-West Shrine game. Ones who are expected to at least have a modest possibility of being available to them in the 3rd round this coming April. GM Ryan Pace and his staff got a chance to see the majority of them down in Indianapolis for the scouting combine.
What does the new data acquired there potentially do to the stock of these players? Here are the numbers and what they could mean.
Running backs:
Miles Sanders (Penn State)
- 40-yard dash: 4.49 seconds
- Bench press: 20 reps
- Vertical jump: 36 inches
- Broad jump: 124 inches
- Three-cone: 6.89 seconds
- 20-yard shuttle: 4.19 seconds
One of the unquestioned winners of the combine week. Sanders hasn’t gotten nearly the hype his former teammate Saquon Barkley did coming out of Penn State. However, it’s clear the kid is a pretty good athlete in his own right, posting rock solid numbers across the board. The Bears have been keeping tabs on him since the pre-draft process began. It’s easy to see why.
Benny Snell (Kentucky)
- 40-yard dash: 4.66 seconds
- Bench press: 16 reps
- Vertical jump: 29.5 inches
- Broad jump: 119 inches
- Three-cone: 7.07 seconds
- 20-yard shuttle: 4.33 seconds
Coming into the combine, the best way to describe a player like Snell was a carbon copy of Jordan Howard with his bigger frame and considerable power. After this performance, he may instead be a slightly poor man’s version of Howard. He tested considerably slower than the Bears starter who had a 4.58 in 2016 and didn’t distinguish himself in any of the other drills.
Bryce Love (Stanford)
- 40-yard dash: N/A
- Bench press: 16 reps
- Vertical jump: N/A
- Broad jump: N/A
- Three-cone: N/A
- 20-yard shuttle: N/A
Kudos to Love. He’s dealing with a torn ACL and could’ve just elected to not show up at the combine at all. Instead he decided to meet with teams anyway and even managed a respectable number on the bench press given he’s only 5’10 and 203 lbs. Such things will reflect well on him along with the explosive tape he provided prior to the injury.
James Williams (Washington)
- 40-yard dash: 4.58 seconds
- Bench press: N/A
- Vertical jump: 36.5 inches
- Broad jump: 118 inches
- Three-cone: 7.01 inches
- 20-yard shuttle: 4.25 seconds
Not being the primary running back for a program makes it difficult to get noticed going into a draft. That’s why the combine can be so crucial for somebody like James Williams. He has good size and caught a whopping 202 passes as a running back for Washington. So he has versatility. The test scores show some possible explosion to his game, but how much is unclear.
Trayveon Williams (Texas A&M)
- 40-yard dash: 4.51 seconds
- Bench press: 19 reps
- Vertical jump: 33 inches
- Broad jump: 121 inches
- Three-cone: 7.44 seconds
- 20-yard shuttle: 4.44 seconds
Big things come in small packages all the time. Teams likely pick on Williams for only being 5’9 but he showed how dangerous he can be last year for the Aggies with 2,028 yards from scrimmage and 19 touchdowns. He’s got some speed, accelerates well, and can catch the ball. Elusiveness isn’t his biggest asset but it’s not hard to see his potential fit in the Bears offense.