Clay Harbor: Bears got a 4th-round steal in cornerback Malik Muhammad

0:00Clay Harbor come into the studio and he's here with us now. Clay, good morning. How you holding up? I'm doing good, man. We got a couple days out of our system from this draft and I think we're able to look at a little more logically. So I feel like it maybe changed our perception of it a little bit more than when me and David were sitting there watching it together. How did it change yours? Have you come around to being a little bit less critical and maybe more understanding of the overall plan or the other way around? Let's critical. At first, you come in there and you think, okay, free agency. You got to attack some ed rushers. You got to get a defensive tackle in here to make this team better. What are the problems on this team? They're giving up the second most yards before contact per carrying NFL, five yards of carry, 29th in the NFL, 29th in past rush one, wait, win rate, 29th in pressure percentage. Let's get some defensive linemen in free agency. Okay, they pass on free agency and go, okay, that's smart. You're not overpaying. We're going to attack the draft, right? Okay, here comes a draft. We're going to get some ed rushers.

1:03Don't think I'm in falls in your lap. I don't blame them for that. But then the second, in the third round, come around and you go tight end and wide receiver and then I'm like, okay, so you're really not attacking the position that was the position of need. You can look at any statistic. You can watch the game with your eyes. I watched every single game every all 22. It's clear as day, your biggest problem on your team was defensive line and not addressing that, yes, is concerning. After I take a step back, I understand I really like the players I got, but I still am a little skeptical about them not getting any past rushers or run stoppers. Well, and added to that frustration, maybe the idea that in the off season, you were flirting with Max Crosby. The pair's going to make a move. Are they talking, Max? They're talking about it. Wow, they might do it. He's been traded. Oh, he didn't go to the bears. So you almost felt like if you're that deep into a conversation

2:05with a guy that could change everything about your team, why would you then ignore that position as you move forward? It's like they told us this is a need. And then the month later, never mind. It's so weird because you were involved in Crosby to the point that they were, meaning that they recognize that's the need that exists. And to me, the strangest part about all of this, Mollie, David is the the diode, Nangbo, and Shamar Turner aspect of it. And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to bash on these guys. There are some world. I mean, I don't think the world is reality, but in some world, these guys could come out and be really good impact players. Once a game thing, it's reality. Last night, David, I wanted to see if I could find any context to the season I saw from Dio before he got injured. And the best I could do was your guys at PFF, David's a big PFF guy, right? And this is what I saw with my eyes and film out of 102 graded players,

3:06115 graded players, Dio ranked 102 in overall grade of 115 in past, was grade 96 out of 115. And past, was 1 percentage 80 thought of 94. Shamar Turner was lower. One of the few guys that were actually worse than Dio and all those metrics with Shamar Turner congrats to him. So you have these guys, and this is grades when they were healthy, 100% healthy. They're not taking them when they were on the sidelines recovering from their Achilles, Dio second and Achilles injury. Shamar Turner's ACL, he was injured, pre-draft 2 had some injuries in college. This is when they were healthy. So now you're telling me you expect these guys to come back better after a Achilles in an ACL. To me, that's illogical and irresponsible roster building to try to expect that. I've seen a lot of injuries in my years and in football and a lot of time to those serious injuries, especially in Achilles and a defensive end in Ed rusher explosive guy. I got a ways 280 to 90. It takes a year or two to recover from that to get back to full strength.

4:11That's hard to accept. I would like the next time when they reference that hope or that confidence that they're going to be able to rely on either player or both players give me a comparison, give me an example of somebody Dio towards Achilles in November and to count on him in week one is less than a year. Same with Shamar Turner who towards ACL in October. I know that these days technology and athletes are in such great shape that sometimes the old timetable is now a dated concept. At the same time, it's still a torn ACL for a player that is in a contact sport. I just think relying on both of those guys as you point out is is odd for a team under Ben Johnson that has been pretty practical in their approach. Anything is here. You got to look at it. You remember, their big thing was with Dio is okay, we need to move him inside. He's not going to be able to give us a lot from the edge. We haven't

5:13had a chance to really move him inside here. So now you're thinking about moving Dio inside. Then Shamar Turner, you come out trying to play him at defensive tackle. The first few games I watched him at defensive tackle. It's going to take a while for this guy. You move him out to edge, not great in the past rush, but he was a solid runstuffer. So now you got these guys kind of flip, flip flop in positions, but that still leaves you limited at both. At edge, and I know you brought in a number of guys, James Lynch, Neville, Gallimor, Contavia Street to put on the inside, but you need to do more runstopping. You had one of the worst run defenses in the league. And even before we can start talking about past rush, which I think is hand in hand with stopping the run into your defensive line, I think that's where you got to go. You got to figure out how you can even get to the third and long. You can't count on 33 turnovers. And that's why the Bears defense was decent last year. And I'm not saying decent. I think they're 23rd and scoring, but they had a lot of turnovers. And that's fickle as much as you want to say. You preach it. I've seen a lot of teams. Hey, we got to get turnovers. We got to get turnovers. And I love Al Harris.

6:17I think DA is good at creating turnovers, but it's concerning. The day before the draft, we came in here and we talked about who we would take and how we would line up the board, et cetera. And I think our discussion centered around the fact that even though they're picking at 25, if you want to fill one of those positions, you're going to have to overdraft. You're going to have to take someone that might last to 35. That might be someone taking it 45. I mean, you just couldn't afford to wait until you got to pick 57. It just wasn't it wasn't reasonable to wait. And what I did not understand about the draft, I think, you know, you had to take a theme in when he was there. It was a great pick. I have no problem with them doing that. But then the confusing part to me was why weren't you on the phone

7:21moving up in that draft, whether it was late in the first round or whether it was early in the second round, why weren't you taking combining some of your second day picks or even one of the you don't want to trade next year's pick. It's a better draft. But whatever you had to do to get in a position to answer one of those big needs, I did not understand why that wasn't part of their didn't influence them. I didn't understand. And then what really confused me is after the fact the idea that oh, that's okay. We're just going to rely on our we're going to coach our way out of it. We got our coaches and they're going to I mean, how are the what the coaches going to be like, Dr. Frankenstein? Are they patching together people to create a player? I don't know how you do that. No, you're you're exactly right, Molly. I went back and I listened to a couple of the clips from the last show last night. And then me and David were talking about this and went

8:24back and watch my last mock draft. And what I said at the time was I go, I switched because I had the bear's taken a safety, a safety, a safety. And to my surprise, Emmanuel, Miguel Warren lasted to the late second round. I had them going safety, Emmanuel, Neil Warren and my early mocks. And I switched to TJ Parker. And I said, the reason I switched because the more I watched this film and hear that the consensus boards, I do not think that there is the pocket of ed rushers and defensive tackles are going to be gone before 57. So I think you got to go ed rusher first and there's going to be a number of safeties available later. And at that point, I figured Dylan was going to be gone. So I think they probably had something similar in their plan, maybe even trade back and get one of those ed rushers at 30 to 35 or defensive tackles at 30, 35 pick up some more and then get the safety later. Maybe EMW last to 57, like you did, then you have a chance to get them there. But when Dylan Thiniman showed up on the board, I think they thought, okay, we can't

9:26pass up on this guy. Now we're going to have to do some willing and dealing. And Paul said, at his press conference, he said, okay, we've got a lot of analytics to show that there's going to be a number of guys that will be there available for us when we're picking at 57. I think he overestimated the amount of guys that we're going to be there. And I love Logan Jones. I know coach Farronics was just on here. I'm really excited about him. And you know, I'm a tight end, David. I love tight ends. Tight end, one of the most underrated positions in football, but a tight end at 60, 69, maybe a little bit ambitious. Over time, a lot of these different scenarios that were going over and what they should have done and who was available and all this, that will pass and it'll dissipate and we'll look at just, okay, here's your roster, here's your depth chart, here's your player. When you do that, once we do that, when you look at Sam Rausch, who's going to be your third tight end, what kind of player are the bears getting in him? I really like Sam Rausch. And let me just quote this. I saw this on something how he Roseman said, if we went into every draft and filled every hole,

10:30we probably didn't have a good draft. Okay, so how he Roseman, one of the best GMs in the entire NFL when it comes to the draft, except for when he drafted me in the fourth round. I'm teasing. Thank you, how he, but I really like Sam Rausch. And I think the consensus boards definitely had him lower. But when it comes to value, I think each coach, each team, each offensive coordinator, value players a little bit differently. Most teams, the third tight end, doesn't have much value at all. You're going to be a special teams player. You're probably coming in for injury, maybe five carry, maybe five plays of games, 10 plays of games. Trust me, I was the number three tight end for a, for a good chunk of my career. Sometimes you're not doing much. You're collecting the check and you're like, thank you for my lack of work this week. I'm still getting paid. But with the bears, Sam Rausch is going to have an opportunity here. And here's why I like this guy. He is a devastating blocker. I think he's a second best blocker. Some people say the first second best blocker in this draft class. You can put him in line. He can handle the dn. And if you look at his draft grades, just like when you look at cold comments, draft grades on pro football focus, some people say,

11:33well, it's draft draft, draft grades are here. You know what? When a guy's taken a kindergarten test, first when he's taken a NBA test, it's different. When you're trying to block a defensive end, Sam Rausch was blocking big time edge rushers. He's blocking big time outside linebackers. They're not arc releasing them to a safety. They're not putting them on defensive backs. Cold comment. Like I said, this guy would block dn's. He's blocking outside linebackers. Some of these tight ends, you get to sit back side. You arc release of the safety. Oh, that's a plus for the grade. The difficulty of the block is much different when the guy's 300 pounds, six foot six with arms that can he can tie shoes standing up. Okay. So Sam Rausch is a guy who knows going to give a ton of effort. If the guy's on the ground, he's still blocking him. He's finishing every play. If Deandre Swift squirts out for 30 yards, you know, some guys let him go. He's chasing them down for some reason. You're not going to catch him, bro. I know you're on a 4-7. You get a 38-and-a-half inch vertical. Extremely explosive. A 10-6 broad jump at 270. Huge athletic profile. Only problem

12:33with him is I watched, I was watching film last night. The guy sometimes he, he's wearing some boxing gloves. Like he just, he struggles to catch the ball. And then I did some more research because he looks a little clunky sometimes. And I found out that he has first percentile arm length. His arms are barely 30 inches. He's six foot six, six foot seven. He has 30 inch arms. He is the fifth percentile wingspan. So this guy's T-Rex. So it's interesting that he is such a good blocker because his arms are literally so small. But the problem with that is when he's running and sprinting. He's trying to pluck a ball from below his knees when you're that tall. And you have these short arms. It makes a little difficult. So I think that's where the drops come in. But overall, I think Ben Johnson talks about makeup. He talks about football character. This guy, you can tell lives and breathes football and will do anything to help his team win the game. I like this. They're going to be so multiple when they bring these three tightens in the game. You can split out. You can get tight. All three of them can block. All three of them can catch. All three of them can run. I'm excited to see what Ben Johnson does with these guys.

13:36And he is specifically an inline tight end. In other words, they they're not going to be able. They weren't able to get the left tackle if they didn't get move up again. I mean, left tackles were all gone. But they got a guy that will be able to help your left tackle. It will aid Braxton Jones. Whoever it may be that has that starting spot. It will help defend the the blind side of the quarterback. And it will help the running game. Because if he gets out and can block like that, that's having like another offensive lineman on the line. Yeah, he's here 25 reps in the bench press. His athletic profile. And when you look at the agility drills, I mean, I was blown away. They had him as a second most athletic tight end. As according to his weight and size and the entire NFL draft. So freak athlete, really good blocker. The thing that's surprising, Molly, is he spent a lot of time in the slot during past plays. He split. So he can split out. He's really good in line. He's he's a true inline tight end. But he's an

14:40inline tight end that can split out. So I think that works in your favor too because Ben Johnson's going to be able to do whatever he wants here because he can come in with these three tight ends. Guess what? Now they're bringing base package, heavy package. Then he can split all three of these guys out. And now you're getting mismatched. Pick your poison. You got three linebackers on Colson, Loveland, Qualcommett and Sam Rouse. They're not going to be able to guard him if you keep your defensive backs in there. I don't care if the guy likes Sam Rouse, even if you have a physical safety, he's going to be able to block him outside the field. Again, regardless of who else was available or maybe the fact that you were overdrafting him based on position. Xavier and Thomas is a threat because of his speed. What do you think his role will be for the Bears next year? Well, let's remember this. You know, the kickoff, which hurt me, I loved kickoff. Molly, I was a core four special team guy as a tight end. I always thought that's where I could bring value when I saw the kickoff dip to 23% of the returns two years ago. I'm like, man, they just really killed the kickoff. That was one of the funnest plays in football. Running down

15:43field, you got trap blocks. You don't know who's blocking you. You're trying, you're good to a wedge who's literally four offensive lineman with her arms locked together and snarling. And you have to go and try to split up the wedge. But last year, over 75% of the kickoff returns were returned. So I think day one, four to eight, 195 pounds. You put this kid as your kickoff return in your power turn. I know they got a cleaf raiment. Sorry, Khalif, you're about 45 years old. You don't run a four to this is going to be my return man. And then you find some gadget plays. You got two plays here where you're pitching them a ball. You got another play where you're getting some sort of offensive touch there. Ben Johnson is a guy that relies heavily on I should do a good job of scheming these guys open. I'm not saying he's the most polished route runner, but he's got speed. He's got good change of direction. And I think he's a guy that with Antoine Randall L working with them. He's going to have a good career.