How the Chicago Bears narrowed in on Darnell Wright as their top draft pick

LAKE FOREST – Bears general manager Ryan Poles and offensive line coach Chris Morgan flew to Knoxville, Tennessee, in early April.

Their plan? Run Darnell Wright ragged. It was April 8. The Saturday before Easter.

“We brought him in deep water to see if he could swim or not,” Poles said.

The 21-year-old Tennessee offensive tackle passed the test. The Bears drafted Wright with the No. 10 overall pick Thursday night. They traded back one spot, swapping their No. 9 pick for Philadelphia’s No. 10, and still landed their man.

Wright should slot into the starting right tackle job. Last year, Larry Borom and Riley Reiff both started at right tackle at various points. Borom remains on the team, but Reiff left in free agency, signing with the Patriots.

The Bears probably wouldn’t have felt so certain about Wright if not for that workout in Knoxville earlier this month.

“That’s probably the most extensive and intensive one-on-one workout that I’ve heard of in my coaching career,” Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said.

The workout consisted of multiple elements. First, Poles and Morgan put plays and concepts up on a board and had Wright learn them and commit them to memory. Later, Wright had to regurgitate it all back to them. Then they went out on the field and Morgan yelled out play calls. Wright put the plays into action. Morgan would throw in wrinkles.

What if the linebacker moves here? Or there?

Morgan would change the play at the last minute. They wore him out mentally. Then they wore him out physically, running him through conditioning drills.

“We got him exhausted [until] the kid had no fight in him,” Poles said. “His body language was excellent. He stayed aggressive, finished.”

“There’s a difference between a practice – you’re taking water breaks,” Wright added. “There [was] no rest. You definitely see what you’re made of a little bit in that little session.”

Wright said that when he was out there on the field, he didn’t hear anything except for Morgan’s voice. It was easy to forget that Poles, an NFL GM and his potential future employer, was standing on the sideline watching him.

“You just get to the zone of your footwork,” Wright said. “I don’t know, you don’t really hear everything else. You don’t see everything else around you. It just kind of, you know, starts flowing.”

‘He has the talent’

It would’ve been easy to leave. Wright arrived in Knoxville as a five-star recruit in 2019. He played as a true freshman and started 16 games over his first two seasons.

Then everything fell apart.

Former Vols head coach Jeremy Pruitt and the rest of the coaching staff was fired in January 2021 after an investigation found recruiting violations within the Tennessee program. A number of players left the program via the transfer portal.

Wright decided to stick it out. For about a 10-day period after the staff was fired and before Heupel was hired, the Vols had no coaches. There was no staff to tell the players how to train. No direction. Wright said that remains the most adversity he has faced in the game of football.

“We just had to keep the main thing, the main thing,” Wright said. “Going in there working out by myself. Just trying to handle my business as a professional. Knowing the things that I could control and knowing the things I can’t control.”

Wright built a bond with his teammates at Tennessee. He felt there was no reason to leave.

That loyalty showed Thursday night. Heupel said he went to Wright’s draft night party in Knoxville and was amazed at how many of Wright’s teammates showed up.

“That shows how he cares about the place that he’s at,” Heupel said. “And it also shows that he cares about the guys he is in the locker room with. He has an unbelievably tight bond with his teammates.”

Heupel and the new coaching staff arrived and moved him to left tackle. With all the transfers and uncertainty created by the coaching change, the Vols needed someone with experience to play left tackle. Wright started all 13 games at left tackle that season and led the team in total snaps.

The following season, they moved him back to right tackle. Heupel said moving him to right tackle was more about finding the right combination of five linemen for the Vols, not because Wright couldn’t handle the left side.

“He has comfort in playing both sides,” Heupel said. “Ultimately, where Chicago initially puts him, I don’t know because I don’t know their roster, but he’s comfortable with both, he has the talent to play both and I think that versatility to him will help himself throughout his career at that level.”

Bears second-year pro Braxton Jones will likely enter training camp as the starting left tackle. Poles indicated that was the case. Wright will come in and compete for the right tackle job. That could give the O-line a solid, young base moving forward.

‘I embrace expectations’

There is a weight on Wright’s shoulders now. That comes with the territory of being the No. 10 pick in the draft.

Wright is the first offensive lineman the Bears have drafted in the first round since Kyle Long in 2013. The Bears haven’t taken an offensive lineman so high since they selected Jimbo Covert with the No. 6 pick in 1983. Covert won Super Bowl XX with the Bears and is now in the Hall of Fame.

Poles is trying to rebuild this Bears roster. From the beginning, he said it has to start in the trenches.

“I embrace expectations upon myself,” Wright said. “I have expectations upon myself bigger than just football. I have expectations to take care of my family. I don’t know what my role for the team is but whatever that role is I’m going to take it full on and do my best I can.”

At 6-foot-5, 333 pounds, Wright has tremendous size. He couples that with unfair athleticism for a man his size. He ran the 40-yard dash in 5.01 seconds and he topped 29 inches in the vertical jump.

That speed has always been natural for Wright. He noted Friday that he was tremendous at playing tag when he was a kid. He has all the tools Poles looks for in an offensive lineman.

Heupel believes Wright has the football IQ and maturity to succeed, too.

“You talk about how he handled himself at the Senior Bowl, the combine, all the [team] visits he went on, and managing that and navigating it in a really positive way, I think has put him a position to be a consummate pro,” Heupel said.