Ask 10 Chicago Bears fans who they want Ryan Poles to draft with the 9th overall pick, and you might hear 8 or 9 different answers at 4 or 5 different positions on the roster.
Ask 10 different NFL Draft analysts, and you’ll find a bit more of a consensus.
Fortunately, the fine folks at the NFL Mock Draft Database have done the hard work for us and collected as many mainstream media mock drafts as they could to give a sense of what the predictions hold.
Now just two weeks from draft day, the most common pick for Bears in mock drafts is Ohio State offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr. at 26.7 percent of mock drafts.
He makes a lot of sense as an athletic specimen with long arms at one of the biggest positions of need on the roster.
It’s no surprise that the next most frequent pick for Chicago is another offensive lineman, Peter Skoronski from Northwestern.
His lack of arm length leave many questioning whether his NFL future will be at guard instead of offensive tackle, but that hasn’t stopped mock drafts from pairing him with the Bears at the 9th overall pick.
Coming in third most often, and growing in mock draft popularity, is Ohio State wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Some Bears fans aren’t crazy about the idea of using a first round pick on a receiver after trading for D.J. Moore and Chase Claypool, and others argue that you can never have too many good wide receivers for a young quarterback.
Johnson Jr., Skoronski and Smith-Njigba represent nearly 56 percent of every mock draft pick for the Bears this year. That still leaves room for quite a bit of variety and unpredictability in what could happen on draft day.
More hype seems to be building for other offensive tackles like Broderick Jones from Georgia or Darnell Wright from Tennessee to be possible first round picks for Ryan Poles, but neither has appeared frequently enough in mock drafts to crack the top three.
