ESPN ranks Bears’ 2022 rookie class among NFL’s best

The Chicago Bears’ 2022 rookie class was one of the 10 best in the NFL this year, according to ESPN’s recent ranking of all 32 draft classes.

The Bears checked in at No. 8.

Here’s the formula ESPN used to create its rankings:

To rank the rookie classes, we started with Sports Info Solutions’ Total Points metric. Based on game charting, Total Points takes every element of a play and uses all of that data to evaluate each player on a scale that allows you to compare between positions: How many points do we estimate that this player either earned for his offense or saved for his defense? You can read more about it here. We then adjusted some teams up or down based on the importance of certain positions or how well players did in ESPN tracking metrics and Football Outsiders’ DVOA.

ESPN.com

“The Bears used two second-round picks on defensive backs in the 2022 draft, and those were their major rookie contributors,” ESPN wrote. “But the Bears also had a lot of minor contributions from useful rookies, with six different players falling between three and 10 Total Points on the season.”

Is ESPN’s praise for Chicago Bears rookies legitimate?

It’s certainly encouraging that GM Ryan Poles’ first draft class ranked this high, but ESPN’s summary of each player wasn’t exactly glowing. Take this nugget about left tackle Braxton Jones, for example:

“Fifth-round pick Braxton Jones started the entire season at left tackle and did about as well as you would expect for a fifth-round rookie, near the bottom of the league with a 3.6% blown block rate and 12 sacks allowed.”

Feels a bit backhanded, doesn’t it?