NFL Draft Day 2: Four Bears Headed to the League

Day 2 of the 2022 NFL Draft concluded a few minutes ago and saw a wild evening of trades, QBs falling like stones, and runs on WRs in the second round and Baylor Bears overall. Four different Baylor players heard their names called tonight, the first time that has happened in the first three rounds of the Draft since Paul Dickson, Buddy Humphrey, Charley Horton, and Larry Hickman did it in 1959. Interestingly, Dickson, Humphrey, and Hickman were all drafted by the same team that year, the Los Angeles Rams.

The Rams, now back in Los Angeles once again, did not select any Baylor player today, but four other teams—all from the AFC—did beginning with the Houston Texans, who took hometown hero Jalen Pitre 37th overall in the second round. Pitre went immediately after Breece Hall from Iowa State (to the Jets, God bless his soul), giving ISU and Baylor the first two Big 12 draft picks of 2022. The complete list of Baylor players picked so far, their draft positions (round and overall), and their teams, is as follows:

• Jalen Pitre—Round 2, #37—Houston Texans
• Tyquan Thornton—Round 2, #50—New England Patriots
• JT Woods—Round 3, #79—Los Angeles Chargers
• Terrel Bernard—Round 3, #89—Buffalo Bills

I couldn’t find a leaderboard tracking this in real time, but from what I can tell, with 4 picks so far in this draft, Baylor is tied with Ohio State and LSU for fourth-most of any college team behind the national champion Georgia (9), national runner-up Alabama (6), and future conference mate Cincinnati (5). Choosing other, less-fortunate programs completely at random for the sake of comparison, that is 4 more than the University of Texas, which has 0, and the same as Texas A&M and Oklahoma combined, each of them having 2. It is also more than the rest of the Big 12 combined (3). In addition to Cincinnati, future new Big 12 member Houston (2) had a good couple of days, though.

If you are looking for names to watch tomorrow in Rounds 4-7, you could easily see Kalon Barnes, Abram Smith, and Trestan Ebner join the ranks of the NFL-bound Bears. Barnes, in particular, seems to have a lot of helium coming off his sizzling Combine performance. It’s also possible that someone like Raleigh Texada could sneak in, too. We will see!

But for now, congrats to all four of our draftees, the teams that drafted them, and the fans of those teams. You are getting four amazing players and people!