As usual, the Bears butchered an opportunity to grab a special player with the fourth pick in the draft. Cedric Benson is a good kid and a hard worker, but he also is a straight-ahead runner with more than 1,000 carries of mileage on him from college. The Bears knew they needed to add a receiver, but passed on Mike Williams, who will be a star they will now face twice a year with the Lions. Instead, they took a receiver from a running school, Oklahoma.
Benson is destined to be another Rashan Salaam, Curtis Enis or Anthony Thomas. Like them, he played for a team (Texas) that is physically dominant over nine of the 11 teams it plays each year, so his stats are gained from running straight through gaping holes on inferior teams. Texas did not beat Oklahoma once in Benson’s four years, so he is no game-breaker. Mike Williams would have given the Bears nice bookends with the addition of Muhsin Muhammad from Carolina.
Just another horrible job by the Bears in the era of Jerry “Trade-Down” Angelo. The Bears of 1985 were built on the draft. Sorry, Jerry, you are no Jim Finks . . . or Jerry Vainisi either.
