Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Bears selecting Dillon Thieneman?
Bears beat reporter for the Bigs. Herb Howard is joining us. Herb Howard is here from the Bigs. Herb immediately showed he was going to be somebody asking meaningful questions. He's going to ask a question that everyone else in the room is going to want to know the answer to.
What then happens that they can't get out and get snapped before them? It's a great question.
Well, thank you so much, Herb, for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.
It's always fun with you guys. You are absolutely amazing. I listen to you guys when you don't invite me, so it's nice to see you.
with Rahimi Harrison-Grody on 104.3 The Score.
You know that man's music by now. We are happy to have him here talking about the NFL draft, the Bears, and more. It is Herb Howard at Herb Howard, 411 on X, Bears reporter for the Bigs Media. Follow the Bigs Media on YouTube for the latest on Herb. He joins us in studio here on Rahimi Harrison-Grody. Herb, thanks for coming in.
be here thanks the pleasure to be here thank you so very very much my favorite compliment in life is to be a great football press conference question asker you excel at it though thank you very much I don't know why I said it that way my brain doesn't always work but uh yeah you I mean you do you ask legit questions that everybody wants to know there was no better example of that I thought than your sit down with Ryan Poles and Ben Johnson at the combat or not at the combat at the owner's meetings yeah
I want to say this because how Herb got on my radar is because I didn't even meet Herb. I was just watching press conferences from my desk where I was confined to at CBS2 back in the day. And I was like, who is this guy asking these questions? Whoever this is, I need to get him on our show to talk about football and his –
Twitter mentions, or not mentions, his messages were closed at the time, so it's not like I could just send him a message. So I had to ask around, I was like, does anybody have Herb's number? It took me a while to get your number to get you on the show, but I'm so glad that I did. I'm so glad that you're here today with us.
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Chapter 2: How does Herb Howard view the Bears' draft strategy?
He should have done it that night.
Well, actually, let's stay on this question-asking theme because there will be a press conference today for the Bears' newest Got to go meet the kid. Got to meet the kid. I know you're going to be out there. We've said so much about him. So much has already been written about him. I'll ask you the question that was asked of me earlier.
What do you still want to know about Dylan Thienemann and his play and his personality and all that kind of stuff?
I'm not really sure. I've been thinking that through since the pick came in last night. What do I really want to know from him when he gets here? And I'm not really sure. I feel like this is the time of year where you're just going to get the right answers. They're going to say the right things. Not to say that it's disingenuous, but it's just I know what it's going to be.
They're going to be a really smart player. I'm going to work hard. I'm going to do whatever the coach is asking me to do. So I understand what this is about to be, and that's cool. I'm just more excited to see him get on the grass. What does that look like, and how does D.A. go about utilizing this arsenal that he now has on defense. You don't usually think of defensive players as weapons.
Now he's got weapons because how versatile and interchangeable they are. You talk about Kobe Bryant, Dylan Thieneman, and Kyler Gordon. As a quarterback, you walk up to the line of scrimmage and you take your pre-snap picture of what this defense looks like, and then that informs you about what's probably about to happen. And then if at the snap – Three of those guys move like that mic is.
Mic drop. Happens to all men. If at the snap, three of those guys rotate in a way that you weren't expecting, that's a good way to confuse a quarterback and create turnover. So, you know, they created a lot last year. They'll have to manufacture something this year, and they've got the weapons to do it.
I mean, that's how I felt, Herb, is that – Because of his physical traits that Dylan Thienemann possesses and because of what his job was that he really well explained last night at the University of Oregon, you have an understanding of how this fits together, which is fantastic because...
As a coach, that means that you've done your job because when the media can understand how this defense looks to a layman, that gives you an indication of their plan. The other team has to stop it. But there's also a big part of Bears fandom, people like me, a lot of other observers saying, okay, all of that is well and good in your secondary. I don't want people to get to the secondary.
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Chapter 3: What questions should be asked about Dylan Thieneman's fit on the team?
There's a lot of talk about They've got to go find another center who's going to ultimately replace Bradbury. I think the Bears like Luke Newman a lot. He had a really good camp last year. I think they're going to continue to try and develop him.
I'm not saying that they won't dip their foot into the center market in this draft, but if they don't, it won't surprise them because they like Luke Newman.
Well, and Jeff King said, you know, that was one of the questions I really appreciated all of his press conference. I liked hearing from him. I wonder when the sense of humor is going to have to leave Jeff King because the job will wear on you and we the media will as well. But he said that he was like, there's not a lot of centers like period. They're not a lot on the board.
And then he went into the discussion as to why. And it makes sense. It's more profitable now for them to stay in school. It's a specialized position. Like, what did you take away from what he said about it?
I think he's got an accurate description of what's happening at the collegiate level and how that then translates into the NFL level. Even talking about older players starting to become the norm now. You think that's going to become the norm? You talk about guys being 23, 24, 25 years old coming in.
I think that's just kind of reading the tea leaves accurately with what is happening in college football. It makes sense for the athletes and the NFL teams just have to adjust to it. The better ones will adjust sooner than later and start to kind of plot their future based off that.
I look at what they've done so far, and I have nothing to complain about because it's only been one pick. Is there something, a result that could happen today that would make you feel very differently than maybe we feel in this moment after everybody gives this team an A for what they did in the first round where that could go south quickly depending on 57 and 60?
Not really that I could see. I'm not in favor of them moving up, right? And so if they do leverage those two second-round picks and they turn them into one pick that's maybe, you know, late 30s or early 40s or something like that, like, I'm not for that. I think they can just kind of stand pat and continue to take the best player available.
I don't think there's a position that they could draft where I'd be like, that's crazy. I don't like that at all. Maybe tight end, right? That wouldn't make a ton of sense to me. But other than that... I don't think there's anything they can do if they stand pat and take the best player available that I would be like, yeah, that's a terrible receiver.
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Chapter 4: Why is the Bears' secondary a focus of concern for fans?
Serious about those brownies. I was like, I got you. I'm going to slide up there tomorrow. I got you.
They had a whole spread from Rinaldi's over here. Yeah.
Shout out to the Bears, too. It's very easy for jaded media members like us to take that for granted. We expect to be fed. The Bears feed us pretty well during these events, I got to say. Indeed.
Well, I love that. And they have Diet Dr. Pepper, which I was always a big fan of at House Hall. It made my day. Sure.
Soda's bad for you.
They have lots of water, too.
Are you in my DMs on Instagram? Yes. Stop judging.
I'll get you some Deja Blue water.
How about that? Are we really going to talk about what we consume?
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Chapter 5: What insights does Herb provide about Ryan Poles' comments?
There's no alignment. And now you're just drafting players
people right and then you don't have a real offensive system i mean in caleb's rookie year you go through three four play calls like that's insane but it also does not allow you to pick for any particular vision so now you have a coaching staff with continuity with clear direction clear vision and now you can't say this guy absolutely fits what we want to do or no he absolutely does not and you can take him off our board you gotta have the right makeup
I was just drafting people. You said people. I don't think it's people. It's just traits. It's just traits. And let me look at these stats from the combine. That's what I saw in not only the players that actually came in, but then to see the usage of those players as bears under the previous regime. And you could even argue last year to a degree when the guys like Ruben Hippolyte,
Last year, I disagree, though. Every draft is going to have guys that are not going to blossom with any team. They pretty much had fits last year with their draft. I mean, look at the first three guys they took. Colston Loveland, we all know how good he is. Luther Burden was a bit of a revelation. Ozzie Trapillo became a left tackler.
Ozzie Trapillo was real tracy, though. He was a right tackle. They wanted to move him to left. And he did, and he was fine. I think he was still traits-y more than he was scheming.
But he fit in their scheme. Shamar Turner, I guess we'll wait and see. Yeah, Hippolyte is the dud so far, but I talked about Luke Newman. Kyle Menungai, those guys were all... scheme fits. That was a successful draft last year.
This is a wild thing to say in year five.
It is, but I think that goes previous to last year.
Matt Eberflus, though, did talk about wanting a three technique. The idea that you were still going to draft people to fit a scheme wasn't typical or wasn't unique to just this one situation. This was something the previous head coach wanted. I'm not saying he wronged Matt Eberflus, but You can't change people as much as he thought you could.
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Chapter 6: How does the Bears' coaching staff influence player selection?
You start to recruit certain guys to do certain things, and you're able to replicate that success over the long term. I think it's not very, very different in the NFL.
It's a really interesting conversation in regards to Ryan Poles because previous to last year, it's all legit. But I also think about the coaching and obviously that you could put that on Poles or Trace Armstrong, the fact that Matt Eberflus was here. But the beautiful part about it is going back to last year, you have a coaching staff, Herb, that, oh, my God, what develops players.
And, of course, all coaching, to some degree, you're going to have wins in development. But I don't remember a coaching staff saying,
In recent Bears history, Matt Eberflus, Matt Nagy, however far you want to go back, where you could look at player to player to player, that from the point that they walked into Hallis Hall last year, Colston Loveland, Luther Burden, and then they, like, legitimate Kyle Menungai, real development.
Colston Loveland, Luther Burden were dynamic playmakers in college. Kyle Menungai led the Big Ten in rushing in college. What I look to for what you're saying is more evidence of what you're saying. It's what happened when those linebackers went down. That's crazy. And how all those guys, linebacker after linebacker. Marco Jackson, how you doing? Came in. Noah Sewell. How you doing?
They came in and they continued to produce at a high level. Look at Nashawn Wright, who came from relative obscurity to have so many interceptions. That's the proof of the development that you're talking about. Ogbogb Amiga, how you doing? Absolutely.
Not on the team.
The names just keep on coming.
Herb, I know we've got to get you to Hallis Hall, so we're going to try to do our best. We're taking him to Hallis Hall?
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Chapter 7: What challenges does the Bears' roster currently face?
And maybe he did business with John Lynch, who then also had a snark about it. But then again, he did the same thing in trading up for Trey Lance. Maybe we've seen this pattern.
That was the first thing I thought of. I thought about John Clueless, John Fox. John Fox was on a need-to-know basis. No, we're not going to tell you that we're... We're not even going to tell you we're getting a quarterback, let alone moving up to get the quarterback. Oh, and Glennon, while we're at it, we're not telling you either. QB1.
Or half the scouts. Nothing communicates security like being afraid of telling your staff your decision as the executive.
Oh, Ryan Pace.
So we've been there is our point. So the comments after Ty Simpson was taken... Let's just listen to Les Snead, the Rams GM, talk about what he liked the most. And then Sean McVay was also asked about his quarterback that he has, I'm assuming, to be the eventual successor to Matt Stafford.
I think right now he's still becoming, but I would say the journey that he's had. I think the thing you appreciate is persevering, right, through the ebbs and flows of going to Alabama, earning the job, getting his first, you know, let's call it, start the opening game against Florida State, and they lose that game. I grew up in Alabama. The sky was falling in the state of Alabama.
But to see probably that, you know, from that point forward, how they progressed as a team, him as a quarterback, into the playoffs. That's just the perseverance that you have when you go through, let's call it, hard things. We'll see. He's going to compete with Stetson.
We'll see. He's going to compete with Stetson.
But you took him with a 13th pick in the draft. I guess, going back to what Grody said earlier... Yeah, competition is a good thing, right? The way they talked about Dylan Thienemann. Same difference, right?
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Chapter 8: How do the Bears' draft decisions reflect their long-term vision?
We don't.
That's true. We don't have to think about what Pittsburgh does with Renegade in the fourth quarter when they are down. We don't have to think about those things. Mason Rudolph. Just bears.
Mason Rudolph.
Is that who I'm thinking of? It is who I'm thinking of. You are correct. Thank you, Marshall.
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