The Chicago Bears stunned the NFL world as they traded a haul to move from the third pick to the second pick to draft their quarterback of the future, Mitchell Trubisky. This, just weeks after the Bears gave Mike Glennon $18.5 million guaranteed to be their starting quarterback. The Bears insist that Glennon will start, and because John Fox hates rookies, that’s likely the case. However, this was also said of Blake Bortles, Jared Goff, and Paxton Lynch. However, the reality of the NFL set in and these rookies all ended up starting at some point in their rookie campaign. Kicking Trubisky in halfway through the season after Glennon dominated first-team reps means that chemistry can’t be built. Because of that draft pick, I’m not touching a single Bears pass catcher this year in fantasy football.
First off, the wide receiver and tight end depth charts in Chicago are a mess:
WR1 Kevin White
WR2 Cameron Meredith
WR3 Markus Wheaton
WR4 Kendall Wright
WR5 Eddie Royal
TE1 Zach Miller
TE2 Dion Sims
Only two of these players have ADPs at Fantasy Football Calculator, with Kevin White going in the tenth round and Cam Meredith going in the eleventh. There’s no oversight here because Wheaton, Wright, and Royal have virtually no upside. The tight ends aren’t even worth mentioning in fantasy football circles.
What, then, of Kevin White and Cameron Meredith? In theory, there will be a ton of targets to go around, as the Bears lost Alshon Jeffery to Philadelphia. That clears up about eight targets a game that went towards Jeffery. If the Bears dole that out between White, Meredith and newcomers Markus Wheaton and Kendall Wright, and there’s not much to go around. The whole situation is full of question marks about everyone involved.
How long is it Glennon? Will Kevin White actually play? Will Cam Meredith play well his sophomore year? While the answer to the last question is probably yes, but I fear he will suffer from draft day inflation. He’ll be the only player in town worth drafting and will end up in rounds seven or eight based on pre-fantasy football draft hype. Don’t reach for Meredith, because the Bears are a mess and Trubisky/Glennon yo-yoing as the starter (which will undoubtedly happen) will cause uneven results. Get him in the ninth at the earliest, and if you feel the need to take him earlier, just resist that urge. Cameron Meredith had a great breakout 2016, but the offense is too messy to invest a pick. It could as easily be Kevin White, or it could be an equal distribution between the two.
UPDATE: Since writing this, the Bears selected TE Adam Shaheen with the #45 pick, but he’s not a redraft commodity. Rookie TEs start notoriously slow in their first season, and it takes a ton of touchdowns to make them sporadically relevant based on touchdowns. Don’t expect a high-octane offense that ends with Glennon or Trubisky rifling touchdowns to Shaheen.