Caleb Williams won’t lack for targets any time soon.
After selecting a Sam LaPorta-type tight end with the 10th pick overall on Thursday night, the Bears used the first of three Friday picks on University of Missouri wide receiver Luther Burden III, who Pro Football Focus ranked as the second-best wide receiver in this year’s draft.
Burden and Michigan’s Colston Loveland join DJ Moore, Rome Odunze, Cole Kmet and Olamide Zaccheaus to give the Bears six receivers capable of catching 50-plus passes in 2025. Better yet, they are all under team control through at least 2027, and so is Williams.
Louis Riddick, an ESPN analyst who had stints as pro personnel director for two NFL teams, loves the potential of what Bears general manager Ryan Poles and new coach Ben Johnson have assembled.
“Chicago is poised to take off,” Riddick said after the Bears took Burden with the 39th overall pick. “Think of Amon-Ra St. Brown, what Ben Johnson did with him in Detroit. That’s Luther Burden … a guy can run the jet sweeps, (will) own the middle of the field, lightning in a bottle … There’s an embarrassment of riches for Chicago. There are no excuses. They’ve got to put it together.”
Broadcast partner Booger McFarland agrees. “They’ve making the game easy for Caleb Williams,” McFarland said.
Forgive Bears fans if they hold their applause until the end. They were excited for Williams’ rookie season and watched a 4-2 start into a 5-12 record, in part because Williams was running for his life.
There was an expectation Poles would use one of his high picks on a left tackle but the draft didn’t work that way. But credit the Bears for maneuvering their way to an additional second-round pick Friday night, using a trade with Buffalo to give them four picks in the first two rounds, the most in this year’s draft.
They followed their Burden pick by selecting tackle Ozzy Trapilo and defensive tackle Shemar Turner. They currently hold three Saturday picks (in the fourth, fifth and seventh rounds). They haven’t yet added a running back, so look for them to consider a sleeper to compete with Roschon Johnson for a role alongside D’Andre Swfit.
Three of the first nine players taken in the first round were tackles and there wasn’t another one drafted until the 29th overall pick. That shows how scouts viewed the drop-off after Will Campbell, Armand Membou and Kelvin Banks Jr.
Poles was also motivated to add a running back with one of his high picks. But Ashton Jeanty was taken by Las Vegas with the sixth pick and the Bears didn’t value North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton (taken by the Chargers with the 22nd pick) highly enough to spend their first-round pick on him.
You wonder if the Bears wanted one of the two Ohio State running backs, TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, on Friday night. If so, they had their pockets picked.
Poles was holding the seventh and ninth picks in the second round but watched Cleveland and New England select Judkins (36th) and Henderson (380 before the Bears got their turn.
Poles could have followed the Burden pick by taking highly regarded tackle Aireontae Ersary with the 41st overall. But instead the Bears moved down 15 spots in a trade with Buffalo. It allowed Chicago to turn a third-round pick into a second-rounder (62 overall) and transform a seventh-rounder to a high fourth-rounder (109). The Bills moved up to select South Carolina defensive tackle T.J. Sanders.
With Ersary off the board — picked 48th by Houston — the Bears selected Boston College’s Trapilo at 56 and then came back for Texas A&M’s Turner with the 62nd pick.
Trapilo, who stands 6-8 and weighs 309, could be forced into early duty at left tackle if Braxton Jones isn’t fully recovered from the broken leg he suffered in December. He will join second-year player Kiram Amegadjie in competition during training camp.
PFF ranked Trapilo as the ninth best tackle in the draft. They say he projects as a “swing tackle at worst,” praising his versatility and football IQ. He wasn’t high on wish lists when the draft wanted but could prove valuable.
Turner adds youth to a defensive front anchored by Grady Jarrett and Andrew Billings. He’s a job threat to Zaach Pickens, a third-round pick in the 2023 draft.
But the headline is Burden becoming the second first- or second-round wide receiver selected by Poles in the last two drafts. He was one of the most coveted recruits in the 2022 prep class, picked Missouri because he wanted to stay close to his home in St. Louis.
Burden is only 5-11 but stands tall with his athletic prowess. He turned down basketball scholarships from top schools to pursue a football career. Burden’s best season at Missouri was 2023, when as a sophomore he caught 86 passes for 1212 yards and nine touchdowns. He had 61 for 676 and six in ’24.”
The Athletic’s Dane Brugler had Burden listed third among wide receivers in the draft class. He praised both his “physicality and contract balance of a running back” and “his ability to stop on a dime and leave defenders falling all over themselves.”
PFF calls him the ideal “five-tool” multi-sport athlete for the receiver position, comparing him to Deebo Samuel. That’s quite a weapon to put alongside a solid pro in Moore and a rising star in Odunze, who caught 54 passes for 734 yards after being selected ninth overall.
It isn’t in the DNA of a typical Bears team to open it up on offense but it looks like that’s about to change.
