Chicago Bears 2024 Rookie Preview: Kiran Amegadjie

It’s hard for football players to make it to the NFL. It’s harder still for players who come from an Ivy League school. At the start of the 2023 NFL season, the Ivy League was represented by just 9 of the 1,696 active NFL players, just half of one percent. Now, as we head into the 2024 season, that number has increased to 10.

Kiran Amegadjie, an offensive tackle from Yale, was drafted by the Chicago Bears with the 75th overall selection in the 2024 NFL draft.

For NFL draft analysts, Amegadjie was an exciting prospect. He’s got elite size, standing six-foot-five and weighing in at 318 pounds, plus some elite measurables. He boasts an 85.5′ wingspan, the 7th-longest wingspan measured at the Combine since 1999. On top of his massive frame and long limbs, he’s freakishly athletic and is an absolute mauler in the run game.

So why did he fall to the third round?

Unfortunately, Amegadjie’s 2023 season was cut short with a significant quad injury, one he’s still slowly ramping back up from. Because of this, he ended up playing just 234 snaps in 2023, as opposed to nearly 700 snaps in each of the two previous years.

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The second reason for his relatively low ranking on the draft board is the talent level in the Ivy League. Naturally, schools like Yale and Harvard aren’t exactly the football powerhouses one sees in the SEC. The pass rushers Amegadjie spent the last few years blocking are nowhere near the quality of NFL pass rushers like Myles Garrett or TJ Watt.

If Amegadjie is ever going to be a quality starter on the offensive line, he’ll first have to get used to NFL talent, and that can only come with a lot of experience.

Big things are coming for the big man, but not yet.

Despite his injury and the talent gap that Amegadjie will have to overcome, scouts and draft analysts still loved him as a prospect. He’ll be a brick wall on the offensive line if he can develop the technique and footwork to pair with his elite size and athleticism.

But if he is to be a success in the NFL, it won’t happen soon. Probably not at all as a rookie. For one thing, he’s still rehabbing from that quad injury. For another, the Bears, for once, have a decent starting offensive lineup. Braxton Jones is the entrenched starting left tackle, the position Amegadjie played, and unless he regresses badly, there’s no reason to expect the Bears will try to move on from him.

Maybe Amegadjie will be kicked inside. The Bears still have question marks at both guard spots (mostly health-related), and Amegadjie has experience playing at left guard in college. That might be the best spot for him as a rookie and maybe even into his second year. As Bryan Perez wrote after the draft, the return on investment for the third-round pick used on Amegadjie won’t be immediate, but it could pay off in spades a few years down the line.