Jeff Schwartz

as a guy who's three years removed from high school, and the testing numbers being off the charts, it just ended up assuring everybody that what they were seeing on film is really legit for what it can project to at the NFL level.

And even when you're comparing him, whether you're talking Emmanuel McNeil-Warren or even Caleb Downs, these safeties who are projected as first-round picks, none of them throughout their career have shown as a playmaker the sideline-to-sideline range that Dylan Thienemann has shown he can do.

He can be a guy, if you just want to line him up deep.

as a center fielder, as a single high guy, as a free safety, and just let him stay back there and look for passes to pick off.

He can do that at a really high level.

He plays with anticipation, and the ball skills are what are really off the charts for Thienemann.

There was a pass that I was just breaking down across the street at Fox 32 before I came over here where one of the strongest-armed quarterbacks in college football this past season

was Penn State's Drew Aller.

And in an overtime game against Penn State, Drew Aller is trying to throw just a pass up the sideline to his tight end who had snuck out of the backfield.

Dylan Thienemann eyeballs that, begins to run the alley, presses the line of scrimmage, and then recognizes Drew Aller's going up the sideline at the last moment, stops his feet, flips his hips, and Aller's trying to throw a dart just over the hands of Dylan Thienemann.

Thienemann goes up and is able to high point the football on a pass with a lot of velocity from about 20 yards away.

But those types of ball skills from any defensive back, let alone from a safety, are rare, are unique.

And so that showcases just the most recent version of the playmaker that Dylan Thienemann showed himself to be in college football.

And so he's not 6'4", he's not 220, but he is a player who tackles with urgency, and he is a player who's shown he can make plays on the football as a pass defender at as high a level as anyone in this draft cycle.

The way that the board felt, the patience that Ryan Pohl showed here, we were just talking about it a bit earlier in the show, for the Bears and how they would look for things.

The fact that Thienemann was there, you had Caden McDonald there on the defensive front, you had defensive ends who many were mocking to the Bears.

Did this showcase that for the way the Bears view their current roster, that they ended up viewing safety as the biggest need or that Thienemann was the best player?

And, you know, there were so many folks who were talking about Dylan Thienemann coming off the board earlier.

Top 20, perhaps even earlier into the top 15.

That never felt as realistic to me.