Pompei: McClellin A 'Safe Pick'

(WSCR) Before the name "Shea McClellin" came out of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's mouth as the Bears No. 19 selection in the 2012 NFL Draft, few saw the selection coming.

With players like Whitney Mercilus and Riley Reiff still on the board, McClellin seemed like a bit of a stretch. Regardless, Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune and National Football Post said the Bears made a safe pick by drafting McClellin.

"You never know until you start seeing them out on the field and you get a while to really evaluate what kind of players they are," Pompei said. "Certainly, they took some risks outside the first round. The first-round pick Shea McClellin, to me, is a very safe pick. I think it's a conservative pick and I think it's a good pick. I've talked to a number of front office people and no one really has criticized it.

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"The only thing you can say is, 'Could you have gotten him a little bit later?'" Maybe you could have, but maybe you couldn't have. I know there were a lot of teams that liked him and kind of thought of him as the Bears did. The thin about him is he appealed to teams that played both four-man fronts and three-man fronts. The market for him was pretty big. So, they probably had to take him when they did take him."