Most Chicago Bears fans didn’t know who Zah Frazier was when the team drafted him in the 5th round last month. There were some key reasons for this. One was that he only had a single season of excellent play in 2024. He was a new face to the draft scene and didn’t build a big following. Another is that he came from the University of Texas at San Antonio, a smaller program. That made him easier to overlook. GM Ryan Poles and specifically secondary coach Al Harris felt he had the tools necessary to become a standout NFL cornerback.
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Many people don’t know that things were almost very different for Frazier. His cornerbacks coach, Nick Graham, spoke about him on The Nicholas Moreano Show. He was involved in recruiting Frazier years ago. It turns out the program hadn’t expected to land him. He was considered one of the top prospects coming out of the JUCO circuit. In fact, he had a recruiting visit with Kentucky at that time. Graham and others expected Frazier to end up there. He didn’t, and ultimately, he signed on at UTSA.
No way Zah Frazier reaches the 5th round if he’d gone to Kentucky.
Think about it. If he goes there and ends up having a season like last year, where he nabbed six interceptions, there isn’t a chance in hell he would’ve slipped that far down the board. People don’t like to admit how much where a player went to school impacts their draft stock, but it does. If Randy Moss had gone to Florida State as originally planned instead of Marshall, he wouldn’t have fallen to the 18th pick in 1998. The same goes for Brian Urlacher in 2000. Does he fall to the 9th pick if he went to a bigger school, not New Mexico? Probably not. This revelation shows the Bears knew the calculated risk they were taking with Zah Frazier. They used his school background to their advantage, landing what they feel is a starting corner at a massive discount.
