Have Bears Finally Found an Edge Rusher to Develop?

Perhaps they can allow Austin Booker to get on a field first before anointing him the new Mark Anderson.

It was Anderson, you may recall if old enough, who came to the Bears in Round 5 of the 2006 draft after the trade of Marty Booker for edge rusher Adewale Ogunleye still wasn't enough to build a complete rush rotation. Then Anderson, as a rookie, stormed to 12 sacks as the Bears defense led the way to Super Bowl XLI.

There seems to be a push everyone to believe in Booker as the unsung pick or steal of the draft as the fifth-rounder by the Bears at No. 144. 

Pro Football Focus lists him not among the biggest draft steals but with the honorable mentions for biggest steals. ESPN's Matt Miller is calling him the "best value pick" of the fifth round as a player he had rated 87th on the big board.

The Athletic's Dane Brugler even was saying "could have been drafted on Day 2."

"He's got a slippery way about him," coach Matt Eberflus said of Booker. "Some rushers just have that ability to work around the tackle on the outside. There was a couple other guys who were like that in the draft this year, but he's definitely one of those guys.

"He's just got a natural ability to just rush the passer and understand that when he gets to the top of the rush, if he gets stuck he can work back inside. We saw a lot of that on tape as well. But most impressed by his hustle and his disposition in the way that he plays the position."

It's Booker's play the Bears found impressive last season because he hadn't impressed anyone enough to even be a starter before last season started, and then he had the most sacks (8) for a Kansas player since 2016. When he was at the combine, no one was wowed by his performance.

Booker ran 4.79 in the 40 and had a 32 1/2-inch vertical leap. He did have a 10-foot broad jump, which rates among the top 27% of defensive ends.

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'It definitely wasn't what I wanted to get out of it, but I felt like the football portion of it went amazing, the drills went great," Booker said of the combine. "Definitely didn't run as fast as I wanted or as high as I wanted to jump, but they know I have that on-field speed and that on-field athleticism."

What the combine performance also didn't take into account was all his measurements. He has 33 7/8-inch arms and an 81 3/8-inch wing span.

What this told the Bears, combined with him being only 21 years old, is he will fill out tha 6-foot-4 1/2, 240-pound frame.

They actually had begun watching him long before that combine and a strong Senior Bowl week.

"This kid came on the scene," scout John Syty said. "I think we all started watching him probably in October, November, and then we've had a bunch of touch points ever since.

"Went down to Mobile at the Senior Bowl and had one of the better weeks there as a rusher, going against some really talented prospects that went a lot earlier on the other side of the ball. And we had a chance to see him at the combine, the Big 12 pro day and we had him in here for a top 30 visit."

It was enough to get Ryan Poles to trade back into the draft using next year's fourth-rounder, after he had exhausted his picks.

So the Bears literally have banked their future at edge rusher on Booker.

They've done this sort of thing in the past. Poles thought he had a project edge rusher in 2022 with Dominique Robinson but he has produced two sacks in two years.

Before that, the Ryan Pace regime did exactly the same thing the Bears did with Booker, and traded a future fourth-rounder for the fifth-round pick to get Trevis Gipson. That move paid off with 10 sacks in three seasons, seven in one of those, and then he didn't fit what they planned to do with a new scheme and was released. He played half a year for the Titans in 2023 and had a sack.

So the Bears don't exactly have a good record of finding and developing edge rushers. Leonard Floyd, drafted in 2016, had the most sacks from the edge for them by one of their draft picks since Anderson. And some would question whether this actually worked out well because he didn't perform well enough to be kept around for his fifth year even after they picked up his option.

The Bears player drafted by Poles with the most sacks is not even a defensive lineman or linebacker. It's Jaquan Brisker with five sacks.

Defensive tackle Gervon Dexter had 2 1/2 sacks last year as a rookie. He has the most sacks by a Poles defensive lineman.

So much is riding on Booker developing.

If he can do something like Anderson once did as a rookie, it would be well beyond anything they could have anticipated and also exactly what they need to help Montez Sweat from the opposite side of the defense.