The Bears signed their seven 2020 draft picks for four-year contracts Tuesday. The group is made up of the following players:
Round 2 (43): TE Cole Kmet, Notre Dame
Round 2 (50): CB Jaylon Johnson, Utah
Round 5 (155): OLB Trevis Gipson, Tulsa
Round 5 (163): CB Kindle Vildor, Georgia Southern
Round 5 (173): WR Darnell Mooney, Tulane
Round 7 (226): OL Arlington Hambright, Colorado
Round 7 (227): OL Lachavious Simmons, State of Tennessee
The following is a look at each player.
Kmet was a three year taxpayer at Notre Dame. He emerged as a game maker last season, setting career highs in all catcher categories with 43 catches, 515 yards and six touchdowns despite missing the first three games with a broken collarbone.
A Bears fan who grew up in Lake Barrington, Kmet starred in football and baseball at St. Viator High School in Arlington Heights. His father Frank was a lineman for the Bears practice squad in 1993, who also hails from the Chicago area, attending Hersey High School in Arlington Heights.
Johnson was a two-team All-Pac 12 pick in Utah, where he played in 38 games with 29 starts in the past three seasons and had 102 tackles, seven interceptions, two of which returned for touchdowns, 21 pass breaks and one sack.
The 6-foot, 195-pound player’s best year was 2018, when he hit career highs with 41 tackles and four interceptions. Last season, Johnson won the All-America Second Team. He started 13 games, ranking third in the Pac-12 with a team-leading 11-pass break.
Gipson started for two years in Tulsa, where he earned first-team All-American Athletic Conference honors last year as a senior after setting career highs with 49 tackles, eight sacks and 15 tackles for loss. As a junior, he recorded 46 tackles, four sacks and nine tackles for loss. Gipson forced eight fumbles during his college career, tying for second in the nation with five in 2018.
The Bears selected Gipson in the fifth round with a selection they acquired in an exchange with the Vikings in exchange for a choice in the fourth round in 2021.
Vildor began his last two and a half seasons at Georgia Southern, where he was named the Sun Belt Conference first team last year as a senior after recording 27 tackles, three loss tackles, two interceptions and six pass breaks.
As a junior in 2018, Vildor started all 13 games and was named the Second Team All-American and Sun Belt Player of the Year by Pro Football Focus after compiling 42 tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss and four team leading interceptions. and 11 pass breaks.
A four-year starter at Tulane, Mooney played in 49 games and caught 151 passes for 2,529 yards and 19 touchdowns with a long catch of 86 yards. He had a great junior season in 2018, catching 48 passes for 993 yards and eight touchdowns. It followed last year with 45 catches for 670 yards and five touchdowns.
Mooney ran a 4.38 in the 40s in the NFL Combine, tied for the fifth fastest among all prospects. He was not surprised by his time.
The Bears picked Mooney with a fifth-round pick they earned along with a seventh round from the Eagles in exchange for two picks in the sixth round and one in the seventh.
Last season as a Colorado graduate student, Hambright started all 12 games as a left tackle and was named an All-Pac 12 honorable mention by league coaches. The 6-4, 300 pound transferred to Colorado after earning his bachelor’s degree in the state of Oklahoma last May.
Hambright began his college career at Garden City Community College in Kansas before enrolling in the state of Oklahoma, where he made a red jersey in 2017. In 2018, he started the first five games before sustaining an injury that left him on the sidelines until he returned for the Liberty Bowl.
Simmons played in all offensive line positions except center for four seasons in the state of Tennessee, appearing in 41 games. During a post-draft media conference call, the 6-5, 315 pound described himself as a “bloody guy on the field.”
Simmons was the only player from a historically black college and university (HBCU) selected in this year’s NFL Draft. His grandmother nicknamed him “Pig” as a child because of the way he devoured some of his special dishes.
