by Eddie Levine
Well, it is draft day… again. While I'm not eating pancakes at the moment, I'm still sitting here thinking about tonight's draft. This year, the Chicago Bears hold the 25th pick in the first round after an astounding 11-6 record, an NFC North title, and a heroic playoff run that fell just short, putting the final stamp on the beginning of the Ben Johnson Era. Last year the Bears shocked everyone by taking tight end Colston Loveland with the 10th overall pick despite Penn State tight end Tyler Warren being the consensus top player at his position. There were other surprising picks along the way to round out an overall solid inaugural rookie class for the head coach.
This year is different. The Bears come into this season and this draft with a word this cynical fan has come to dread: expectations. The expectation for Bears fans is that the team continues to win, and continues to draft gritty football players, or as Coach Johnson would call Luther Burden, for example, “dawgs.” The expectation is to beat the Packers twice a year and go deep into the playoffs. But I, like many other fans, fear that “We’ve seen this movie before.” A hotshot offensive mind with a successful first year and sky-high expectations going into year two. Now I will admit, I think Johnson is different. For a former software engineer, he fits the part of football genius. Emphasis on both football and genius. Showing traits in both the meatball sports department with a calm balance of halftime adjustments that made for cinematic magic for the Bears' 2025 season.
At pick 25, it’s sort of no man’s land for the first round. Hard to trade up, sometimes even harder to trade back. Fans may be upset when the Bears draft a player that experts deem a reach, but for the first time in my adult life… I trust this regime? I'm sure they'll do something to shatter that. They always do.
As for Draft Day the movie, it's just god-awful, oh my god. Written in a boardroom. Pure NFL propaganda. So much so, that when Commissioner Roger Goodell walks out on the stage, he is greeted by loud enthusiastic cheers from NFL fans. Completely spitting in the face of the long-standing tradition of blanketing Goodell with boos as he officially starts the draft. A tradition that even ol’ Roger himself has come to embrace, or resign himself to. But oddly enough, it’s fitting. The NFL draft has grown to be an event larger than the game it represents. It kicks off the part of the NFL Calendar I like to call Propaganda Season. This is the time of year that teams can control or at least attempt to control the narrative about their team for the upcoming season. “This guy is in the best shape of his life.” “Oh, this kid that fans harassed on Twitter for being drafted to their team is actually having a great training camp.” Or my personal favorite, “Yeah, he's just got a minor soft tissue thing… he's week to week.” It offers hope for fan bases, allows them to write fan fiction in their respective subreddits, creates new jerseys to sell, and provides months of content for teams’ PR departments centered around a chart of fresh draft picks being shown off like prized cattle. All for a kid’s game. And like this awful movie, I eat it all up, and you probably do too. Go Bears.
****
Eddie Levine is the director of Climate Change (2022) and The Mime In Me (2023).