Windy City Gridiron
Ryan Poles concluded his fifth draft as the general manager of the Bears in April, headlining the class with Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman. It’s exciting to imagine what could come from his haul in the 2026 NFL Draft, especially seeing the success Chicago had from their rookie class in 2025.
The general belief within the NFL scouting community is that it takes three years to evaluate whether a draft pick was good or not. This coincidences with the fifth-year option deadline, and it gives players a long enough runway period to get acclimated into the league while putting some accountability on the table once contract extensions become a possibility.
As of this writing, two of Poles’ draft classes as general manager of the Bears have concluded at least three NFL seasons: the 2022 and 2023 classes. There’s a possibility some of these rankings change as the years progress, but there’s enough film and data on these players to know who the good picks were.
These rankings will factor in peak production, longevity, and draft status. For example on the latter: a player who fizzled out as a third-round pick would be ranked lower than a seventh-round pick who fizzled out due to the higher expectations that come with the earlier draft selection. Without further ado, here’s my ranking of all 21 draft picks the Bears made in those two years.
Originally drafted as a wide receiver in the third round of the 2022 NFL Draft, Velus Jones Jr. only ever caught 12 passes for the Bears. He eventually made the change to running back to improve his chances of making the 53-man roster with a better group of weapons in 2024. His pre-draft specialty as a returner didn’t pan out, as he fumbled four times in 27 games before the Bears released him midway through his third year in Chicago.
Zacch Pickens didn’t even make it to his third year with the Bears, as he ended up a roster cut before the start of the 2025 season, which would’ve been Year 3 in his stint. Their 2023 third-round pick didn’t make much of an impact in two years, tallying just 1.5 sacks and 39 tackles. The only reason Pickens isn’t in last place is because he didn’t actively cost the Bears games like Jones did.
Hand up: I really liked the Tyler Scott pick at the time it was made. The speedster from Cincinnati entered the NFL as a fourth-round pick in 2023 and caught 17 passes for 168 yards as a rookie. He only caught one pass the entire 2024 season, though, and he didn’t offer much value as a special teams defender. The Bears ended up releasing him before the 2025 season, too.
One of Ryan Poles’ “favorite human beings”, Travis Bell was a seventh-round pick in 2022 at defensive tackle but never played a regular season snap with the Bears....
