Texas Football: 247 tabs Cedric Benson as Bears worst 2000’s draft pick

Former Texas football legendary running back Cedric Benson was noted by 247Sports as the worst draft pick of the 2000’s thus far for the Chicago Bears.

In the early-to-mid 2000’s, the Texas football reached the height of its player development in terms of the pure amount of talent they churned out for the NFL Draft. Texas churned out a number of stars throughout the 2000’s to the next level, but a lot of that player development waned for the program in the last decade.

Looking back on the former Longhorns that made their way to the next level in the early rounds of the NFL Draft since the turn of the century, it wasn’t all positives around the media landscape in recent analysis. A piece from 247Sports this week that listed out each NFL team’s worst draft pick since the turn of the century did have one prominent former Longhorns mentioned.

This piece from 247Sports tabbed former star running back Cedric Benson as the worst draft pick of the Chicago Bears since 2000. That’s a hot take considering the late and great former Longhorn Benson had a solid run in the NFL. But the reasoning for this could be that Benson was taken by the Bears with the fourth overall pick in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft, and most of his production came with the Cincinnati Bengals.

During his brief three year run with the Bears, Benson registered 1,593 rushing yards, 3.8 yards per carry, and 10 rushing touchdowns. It wasn’t until Benson landed with the Bengals that his production really started to trend in the right direction. During his four seasons with the Bengals he registered more than 4,700 total yards from scrimmage and 22 total touchdowns over the course of four seasons.

Benson was definitely better for the Bengals than he was with the Bears. But naming him as the worst draft pick in total of the 2000’s for Chicago is a bit tough and undeserved. I would put the likes of defensive end Michael Haynes and offensive lineman Marc Colombo (both former Bears first round picks of the 2000’s) ahead of Benson in terms of the worst draft picks since the turn of the century for this team.

Here’s more on what this piece from 247Sports had to say on the naming of Benson on this list.

"Cedric Benson lasted eight years in the NFL — no small achievement. But he never lived up to his draft status in Chicago. The running back out of Texas was the fourth overall pick of the 2005 NFL Draft. His three-year tenure in Chicago was marked by multiple arrests, and only modest production. Benson died in a 2019 motorcycle crash that also claimed the life of his passenger. He was 36."

It is fair that his production in Chicago did not live up to the billing of his fourth overall selection in the 2005 NFL Draft. The likes of Green Bay Packers superstar quarterback Aaron Rodgers, future Hall-of-Fame outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware, New England Patriots offensive guard Logan Mankins, and workhorse future Hall-of-Fame running back Frank Gore were all picked after Benson in the 2005 draft. And each of those four players from the same draft class had no less than five Pro Bowl selections to date.

Benson played eight years in the NFL, and was a solid running back in the process (mostly during his four years with the Bengals). He tragically passed away in a motorcycle accident at the young age of 36 back in August 2019.