Obviously, the big Bears story the past couple weeks has been the Seth Wickersham article on ESPN about Caleb Williams and his dad. I’ll go into more detail on this on my Touchdown Bears Podcast on my YouTube channel, but in a nutshell, Caleb and his dad really did not want to come to Chicago early in the predraft process last year and thought about every possible way to avoid Caleb being drafted by the Bears. Williams finally addressed it on Wednesday, and as you might expect, it was always going to be somewhat awkward to explain away something like this. By the way, you can check out my YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@TouchdownBears

The concerns Caleb and his dad had about coming to the Bears were fair, given the team’s history of quarterback ineptitude and organizational dysfunction. But once Williams made his visit to Halas Hall, he decided that he wanted to come to Chicago and try to turn the franchise around. It’s definitely not ideal that this story came out, and it’s not a good look for Caleb and his dad. But now that the Bears got him the offensive-minded HC he wanted, some more weapons like TE Colston Loveland, and a much-improved O-line, hopefully everyone can just move forward.

In regards to the draft, I already gave my thoughts about the Bears’ picks on my podcast a few weeks ago, but I’ll briefly touch on their offensive prospects again here with more of a focus on their potential fantasy impact. I really like the Loveland pick, and I think he can be an impact player for the Bears right away if his shoulder is healthy. His speed and quickness give him the ability to get open quickly and threaten the defense at all three levels of the field, and he can be a matchup nightmare. Like any rookie, he’ll need some time to acclimate, but if healthy, I think he’ll overtake TE Cole Kmet as the top fantasy tight end in this offense by midseason.

WR Luther Burden III has been dealing with a soft tissue issue this week. He has arguably the best run-after-catch ability of any receiver in this draft class, so he could be a very interesting player in this offense. He’s likely to mainly feature in the slot, but HC Ben Johnson could potentially use him in a Deebo Samuel-type role as well where the focus is on getting the ball in his hands on jet sweeps, reverses, screens, etc. But with so many mouths to feed in this offense, I’m not sure at the moment if Burden will get enough touches per game to be a big fantasy factor. I think we’ll know more when training camp and preseason come around.

RB Kyle Monangai is a bit undersized at 5-8 and isn’t the fastest guy, but he’s a tough physical runner with good contact balance and was very productive at Rutgers. He will likely battle RB Roschon Johnson for the "thunder" power back role to RB D’Andre Swift’s lightning. He is a seventh-rounder, so temper your expectations accordingly, but I think he’s got more than a decent shot to be a contributor. The thing about Johnson is that he wasn’t given much of a chance to be more than a short yardage/goal line back last year, so it’ll be interesting to see how Ben Johnson and this coaching staff view him. He does have an upright running style, which isn’t ideal. This will be one of the top position battles in training camp.

End.