How quiet trip to Tennessee convinced Chicago Bears to draft Darnell Wright
In retrospect, the Chicago Bears decided to draft Tennessee football offensive tackle Darnell Wright after a grueling workout at the Vols indoor facility on the day before Easter.
For the Bears brass, the point of the trip to Knoxville was to see if Wright would quit under extreme stress. If so, he would possibly drop on their draft board.
But he never did.
“(Bears offensive line coach Chris Morgan) kicked my (expletive) to be honest,” Wright said. “He just wanted to see what I was made of. It was hard, but I didn’t quit.
“I think he respected that because he put me through the ringer.”
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On Thursday, the Bears picked Wright No. 10 overall in the NFL Draft.
He was the highest drafted Tennessee player since safety Eric Berry went No. 5 to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2010. And no Vols offensive lineman had gone that high since 1991, when Charles McRae (Tampa Bay Bucs) and Antone Davis (Philadelphia Eagles) were picked No. 7 and No. 8, respectively.
The Bears chose Wright over offensive lineman Peter Skoronski, from nearby Northwestern, who many mock drafts projected they’d take. The Titans picked Skoronski at No. 11.
So why were so many prognosticators wrong about the Bears’ preferred offensive lineman?
Well, they weren’t at that private workout at UT on April 8. Only a few people were there, including a Vols athletic trainer and the Bears' essential staff.
“We brought him in deep water to see if he could swim or not," Bears general manager Ryan Poles said. "And he accepted the challenge and he showed us the grit and the mental toughness to be able to fight through fatigue and all of those things that we look for."
How trip to Knoxville was a first for Bears GM
Poles had spent more than a decade as a premier scout for the Chiefs, and he valued seeing prospects in person.
He became the Bears GM in 2022. In that role, his flight to Knoxville marked the first time he took a trip with a position coach to see a draft prospect in a private workout.
Wright had steadily climbed the Bears’ draft board. During the season, he shut down Alabama edge rusher Will Anderson (No. 3 pick, Texans) and stifled Clemson’s Bryan Bresee (No. 29 pick, Saints) and LSU’s B.J. Ojulari. Wright did not allow a sack in his final 19 games for the Vols.
Then Wright impressed the Bears at the Senior Bowl, the NFL Scouting Combine and during a visit to their team facility. But they wanted to test his mental toughness and endurance.
“We were out there working,” Wright said of the workout at UT. “You’re 15 minutes in (to the workout), and you’re going back to back to back (plays). But then you’re still going back to back to back for another 10 minutes. And then maybe another 10 minutes passed.
“(Morgan) just wanted to see if I would quit, and I wouldn’t quit.”
How Josh Heupel prepared Wright for workout
There were questions of whether UT’s up-tempo offense hurt the draft stock of quarterback Hendon Hooker and wide receiver Jalin Hyatt. Some mock drafts projected them as first-round picks, but they weren’t selected there.
Wright, on the other hand, was helped by the Vols’ pace.
UT runs the fastest operating offense in college football, averaging 2.94 plays per minute of game clock in two seasons under coach Josh Heupel.
In 2021, Wright dropped his weight from 360 pounds to 335 to prepare for the pace of Heupel’s offense. He trimmed off a few more pounds for the 2022 season, when he earned All-SEC first-team honors.
And Wright dropped into the 320s for part of his pre-draft workouts like the one the Bears put him through.
All of it paid off. And now Wright will get paid for his hard work.
“It took the right team and the right coaches who know what they’re looking at,” Wright said. “I’m only scratching the surface of what I can be, and (the Bears) know that.”
Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. Email adam.sparks@knoxnews.com. Twitter @AdamSparks. Support strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: NFL Draft 2023: Chicago Bears' picked Darnell Wright after quiet trip to Tennessee
