Bears stay smart, stick with tackle in the draft

CHICAGO - The ESPN guys were talking about the possibility of the Bears taking a running back from Arkansas in the first round and then a quarterback from Louisville in the second.

Was this bad information, some sort of sick joke, or was I going to have to take a flamethrower to the team's war room?

The Bears might not have a legitimate quarterback or a legitimate running back, but unless they have a legitimate offensive line, it doesn't matter if they have Peyton Manning and the Adrian Peterson who matters.

So their first-round pick was . . . offensive tackle Chris Williams from Vanderbilt.

Peace covered the land Saturday, or at least it should have covered the greater Chicago metroplex.

Williams is not a pick who makes the heart flutter, but that's where the Bears are right now. They're stuck. They have committed time, effort and money to Rex Grossman with limited results, and either Grossman or Kyle Orton will be their starting quarterback in 2008. At running back, they have Cedric Benson, who seems to be headed toward Curtis Enis Land, the non-Viking Adrian Peterson, Garrett Wolfe and now Tulane's Matt Forte.

You would have had very good reason to point out the burning need to fill either of those spots with the first-round pick, but if the Bears truly are interested in making 2008 better than 2007, they need offensive line help.

Lots of it.

And there's always this: general manager Jerry Angelo has shown no talent for identifying quality quarterbacks and running backs in the draft.

The Bears are further behind at running back than they are at quarterback. That's why they decided to take Forte with their second-round pick, rather than one of the two highly rated quarterbacks who were available, Michigan's Chad Henne and Louisville's Brian Brohm. Whether they chose the right running back is open to debate, but they made the right move by ignoring the quarterback position at that point.

"This is the direction we wanted to go," coach Lovie Smith said.

In the first round, the Bears had their choice of tackles, including Williams, Pitt's Jeff Otah and Virginia's Branden Albert.

"This was the best year of offensive tackles I have seen in my tenure in the league, and I think that is a collective opinion around the league," Angelo said.