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I live in Chicago area but I grew up in Milwaukee and am a lifelong Packer fan. It has been absolutely a blast watching the after-game meltdowns for the past few decades. Chicago is more a Bear town than any other team. I actually fear the Packers' reign of terror re: the Bears is over and they may be on the right track with their coaching decision and I think Poles may be the best GM they had in 20 years.

I can therefore be more objective of their draft choices since I want them to make bad ones. I think Loveland (vis-a-vis Warren) was a great choice for what Johnson wants to do. Warren is obviously a top tier TE but, as I said, Loveland fits the scheme Johnson wants to run better than Warren does. Warren is a bit more derivative of what they already had, even if better than Kmet who I think was underutilized last year because they didn't have a clue what they were doing on offense. (As for TE3 for them, Durham-Smythe was a depth guy and the Bears didn't have another TE under contract. He was added as special teams/blocking TE and the Bears always knew if they didn't add a receiving type TE in the 1st, they were going to add one in the 2nd.) The Bears had their eye on Graham and the 3 tackles as the primary choices at 10 but they were gone. There also was a chance that they might have taken Jeanty but he too was gone. So the Bears followed their board and picked the guy they liked the best in Loveland. Like we both said, we'll see.

I do think the Bears' 2nd round choice was a bit odd. While Burden appears to be a "value" pick for them--a guy who has rated as a 1st round guy going into 2024 but didn't do much this past year and he dropped down. They passed on several OL and DT they definitely could have used even if they did get their DT later in round 2. They also need a RB but the two guys they were looking at, the OSU guys were picked right before them in Round 2.