Bump and run with Jerry Angelo

Hey gang:

In Brett Favre's continuing quest to impact everyone's life for good or evil -- including people he has never met -- my flabbergastingly great feature story on the Bears secondary (and how its talent stacks up against Super Bowl winners and NFC North foes) has been held until Thursday's edition of the Herald. There wasn't enough room to squeeze it into Wednesday's paper thanks to Favre's latest dash from the throes of retirement.

In any case, I enjoyed my first intimate chat with the Bears' ninth-year general manager.
Since I had to choose one direction for my story, it didn't allow me to delve into everything Angelo and I discussed. Since most recent Super Bowl champs have had at least one first-round pick in their defensive secondary (but the Bears have none), I wanted to know about his drafting philosophy.

Here are some excerpts from our talk -- some of which are in the article and others that are free to you as a patron of exquisite blogs everywhere.

On scouting and drafting CBs:
"Cornerback is a very difficult position to find because you’re looking for athleticism and size," Angelo said. "You try to find a big guy with top talent, it’s hard to do. They go very high in the draft. They usually get drafted a round, even two rounds (earlier) than another position because of the value of that position. So it’s not a matter of we don’t put any emphasis on it. We drafted guys here. It all starts with your first and second corners. You’ve got to have two quality corners, particularly your first guy. We feel good. We get our guys back, we’ll feel a lot better about the position. If we don’t? Yeah, it’s a concern. It is.”

Of course, when he refers to getting guys back, everyone is waiting on Peanut Tillman's back and Zackary Bowman's hamstring to heal. Because the Bears had these guys in-house (though Tillman wasn't 100 percent at draft time), Angelo and his staff decided corner wasn't a "need position" for the 2009 draft. Nonetheless, Angelo used the team's fourth pick (a middling fourth-rounder) to nab Vanderbilt CB D.J. Moore.

Moore is listed at 5-foot-9, 183 pounds, which isn't much different than Wake Forest's Alphonso Smith (5-9, 183). Denver traded a 2010 first-rounder to Seattle in order to grab Smith with the 37th overall pick on draft day.

"(Smith is) on the short side. He ran a pretty good 40 -- not a great 40 -- so he went in the second. I’m not comparing Moore and Smith. All I’m saying is he’s a playmaker like Smith on the short side. Didn’t run a great 40, so he dropped (in the draft). He’s short, didn’t have top-end speed, but he had great ball skills and he’s a really good athlete. A top athlete. We took him because of the value of the position, again. We just felt like at that time, given his value and we want to stay with value throughout the draft. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. In this case we did.”

Speaking of value picks, strong safety Al Afalava looks like a sixth-round steal based on his play at Bourbonnais as well as the Bears' first exhibition game. At the minimum, he looks certain to be the rookie that contributes the quickest to the Bears' cause. But judging by Angelo's general take on safeties, maybe Afalava wasn't such a steal even if he turns out to be excellent.

“You’ll see a lot of really good players -- and even great players -- at that position usually go later in the draft," Angelo said. "There’s more emphasis on size and speed. It’s about the measurables. Safeties usually don’t have great measurables. They usually don’t have…they don’t really run fast. They don’t jump real high. They’re kind of ‘blah’ on tape. There’s no flash. So people usually wait. But you look at the history of the position. There have been a lot of good ones that have gone late and in free agency. So we know if we’re looking for safeties, we can wait. Corners? You’ve got to take them and you’ve got to pay retail for them if there’s a need.”

LW