Six hundred and two days after the Bears made a franchise-defining trade for Raiders edge rusher Khalil Mack, the final piece exchanged hands Saturday night:
Colorado offensive lineman Arlington Hambright, whom general manager Ryan Pace drafted in the seventh round.
He’ll forever be remembered as the answer to a trivia question — if Bears fans remember him at all. Hambright was the second-to-last member of the blandest draft class of Pace’s tenure.
All seven players the Bears selected filled a need. One even warranted a parade — Notre Dame tight end Cole Kmet had St. Viator friends drive past his Arlington Heights home Saturday morning, honking their horns.
Utah cornerback Jaylon Johnson might not get that kind of love, but he’s something to dream on: a Week 1 starter who fell to Round 2 in part because of concerns surrounding his surgically repaired shoulder.
The rest, though, were familiar to only the dorkiest draftniks in the Bears’ fan base. The Bears took an edge rusher from Tulsa, a speedy receiver from Tulane and a cornerback from Georgia State. Their final pick, Tennessee State offensive lineman Lachavious Simmons, played his final game in front of only 2,728 people.
Small-college status doesn’t preclude him from future stardom — just ask North Carolina A&T’s Tarik Cohen — but it gives fans less to grab onto at first.
This is new territory for Bears fans. In Pace’s first draft five years ago, he took all six players from power-five conference schools — the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12. In 2016, his first five picks came from large schools. The next year, he drafted quarterback Mitch Trubisky second overall and Eddie Jackson — an Alabama standout whose stock plummeted after he broke his leg — fourth.
Picked in the first round in 2018, Roquan Smith was the middle linebacker for the national champion runner-up. Georgia’s leading receiver, Javon Wims, landed with the Bears in Round 7. Second-rounder Anthony Miller, for whom Pace traded up, was the all-time receiving leader at Memphis.
Last year, Pace traded up to take a running back — David Montgomery was considered at the time the offense’s one missing piece. Then he took Calvin Ridley’s brother.
This year, by comparison, is low on star power. Until you start to consider the Mack trade. And you should.
In exchange for Mack, Kmet and Hambright, the Bears gave up the following: running back Josh Jacobs (Round 1, 2019); cornerback Damon Arnette (Round 1, 2020) and receiver Bryant Edwards (Round 3, 2020). The Raiders got a 2019 sixth-rounder from the Bears, too, which they traded for another pick who was traded for two more picks.
Anyone without spiky shoulder pads and silver facepaint can see the deal was a win for the Bears — particularly because Arnette was thought by some to be a third-round pick, at best, this year.
The Bears didn’t draft a quarterback, but they used the draft to land one. Nick Foles cost them a fourth-rounder this year — and $24 million guaranteed — in a trade with the Jaguars.
Montgomery should at least partly be included in the Bears’ draft haul, too — they traded their other 2020 fourth-rounder to the Patriots last year in a package for the running back.
Neither trade will be the heist that the Mack deal appears to be. But both Foles and Montgomery will contribute in a must-win season — something that would have been no guarantee for any fourth-round pick, regardless of the size of his college.
