Chicago Bears senior director of player personnel Jeff King walked into the media room at Halas Hall and said with a smile, “Ready to talk tight ends?”
That’s not always the position to talk about at No. 10 in the draft. It’s not the position the Bears have talked about in Round 1 in 18 years — or in the top 10 in 64 years.
King, a former NFL tight end himself, has a pretty good feel for the position, and for what Colston Loveland could mean to the Bears — on and off the field.
A team’s top pick is the “cover of your album,” King said. It’s maybe a dated reference for some, but it’s a testament to the Bears’ No. 10 pick being more than simply the new Sam LaPorta for coach Ben Johnson. This pick had to be representative of what they’re trying to build.
“Tough, smart, has a presence, competitive,” King said. “All of the things we are trying to build here, he encompasses that as a person. Not even getting to the field yet, you talk about the cover of the album being your first pick. He embodies that.”
Loveland will arrive at Halas Hall on Friday afternoon after spending draft night with his family in Idaho. Once he gets to town and introduces himself, general manager Ryan Poles said we’ll all notice what the Bears did.
“Just wait until he’s up there, you’ll understand,” Poles said. “There’s something different about him. Highly intelligent. He can handle a big playbook. And he’s gonna be a rookie, so there’s gonna be some things to go through, but the person, the character, the football makeup, family background.
“It’s not a joke, like, Idaho-tough. I asked him about his hand strength because not only can you see it when he catches the ball, but when he blocks, and he was like, ‘Have you ever put up wire fence in Idaho before?’ I said, ‘No.’ But that explains. He’s been doing some labor that kind of makes him who he is. When you watch the tape, you can see that. And when you all meet him, you’ll see that as well.”
Loveland grew up in Gooding, Idaho, a town of around 3,500. He said he had 100 people at his draft party and another 500 would be at the local country club. As the Idaho Gatorade High School Player of the Year his senior year and someone who starred in basketball and track and field, Loveland is probably a celebrity in his small town. He credits that upbringing to instilling the intangibles that King lauded.
“Yeah, like you said, coming from a place like this, very small town, blue-collar, great community, great family,” he said. “I was blessed. Obviously my family made many sacrifices, they sacrificed a lot for me to be here, and I know that and I appreciate that, and I want to give it all back to them eventually.
“Show humility, work hard, do the right things. I’m obviously going to continue to do that and just strive.”
For the Bears to take a tight end at No. 10 — the highest they had drafted one at that position since Mike Ditka in 1961 — he has to be good and able to do everything.
Ditka, Greg Olsen and Loveland are the only first-round tight ends in Bears history. That’s a Chicago-sized category for the small-town Loveland, but he did pretty well in big-time, national championship college football.
“I love the versatility,” King said. “We love the versatility. The ability to play in 12 (personnel) but be able to separate in the passing game. I think you saw at Michigan he had to, right? Blocking in line and do a lot of things and wear a lot of different hats.”
Poles said they watched a lot of J.J. McCarthy last year while doing their due diligence on the quarterbacks, and Loveland, naturally, stood out.
“Love (how he) competes, his fire,” Poles said. “This kid is physical, he’s tough, he plays the game the right way. When you watch the tape, there’s an energy level that comes with him. You can see it throughout the game and it’s infectious to other guys. What stands out? Obviously the dynamic skill set to separate, but also when you really study him in the run game, the blocking is way better than I think people realize.”
A Bears tight end has had more than 805 yards in a season four times, and three of those were Ditka’s. The other was Martellus Bennett. LaPorta’s 889 yards as a rookie with the Lions would’ve ranked fifth in Bears history for a tight end, eight yards behind Ditka’s third-best campaign.
Enter Loveland, who with this head coach and quarterback Caleb Williams and the weapons around him, should have ample opportunities to put up big numbers. As the No. 10 pick, one day, Loveland should be able to see his name right by Ditka’s, if not ahead of his.
He doesn’t have to do it right away. The Bears still have Cole Kmet, who King and Poles reiterated will be a big part of the offense. Wide receivers Rome Odunze and DJ Moore will lead the team in targets. But Johnson has not only a weapon but someone with the makeup that helped rank Loveland so highly on their board, even with the shoulder injury and even with the dip in numbers in a rough Michigan passing offense.
During that adversity last season, Poles observed something impressive about Loveland.
“So we spent a lot of time understanding the difficulty certain guys go through as you go year to year and as talent around them leaves. And with him, we did feel like there was a level of consistency,” he said. “And that was kind of a cool touchpoint for us, too. I asked him about that. How did you handle that? How did you handle working with a younger quarterback or somebody who you didn’t maybe have the greatest chemistry or the same chemistry you had the year before? And how he responded to that was really mature and it showed good awareness.
“It showed selflessness. It showed him being a team guy more than just him and his stats. It went down just a little bit. But you understood why and the way he explained that whole thing was really cool.”
In high school in Idaho, Loveland was all-everything. He was all-state in basketball as a junior. That same year, he finished fourth in Idaho in discus and sixth in shot put.
A few years later, as part of the Wolverines’ national championship team, Loveland was second in receiving yards (649) and receiving touchdowns (four) and third in catches (45). He has a winning pedigree. He’s done it at a high level. He doesn’t have to come in and be the team’s leading receiver, but he does have a top-10 pick cachet at a non-premium position to live up to.
The Bears believe he can.
“For where he is, that dynamic skill set that he has as a receiver, paired with the run blocking — it’s not just one part of his game. It’s the complete, really, in totality of what he can do for us,” Poles said. “But when you turn on the tape, there’s plays being made constantly. It’s a guy that you could feel confident going to in critical situations and now what we have, there are a lot of them. So that just puts stress on the defense.”
