Riley Ridley Ain't Just Another Brother

With the Bears fourth round pick, they added another weapon to an offense that is overflowing with them when they drafted Georgia Wide Receiver, Riley Ridley. That last name should sound familiar as his brother Calvin was a top rookie last season, and his brother is no slouch. He was Georgia's lead receiver, and although his yardage was not impressive due to some other talented guys on the team and a run heavy offense, he did manage to pull down nine touchdowns. To get a better idea of the younger Ridley, I took a look at his games against Texas and Alabama.

So with Ridley, you're not going to see a lot of wow plays. Instead, you're going to see consistency and just an overall clean player. Here, he runs a nice curl route where he makes a hard stop to give himself two yards of separation to make the catch.


Here, he gets just enough separation to make the touchdown grab.

The quarterback throws a beautiful ball, but Ridley does a great job of running through the catch and even getting both feet down after extending with his hands to pull the ball in.

This was probably my favorite play from the two games I watched, because it shows incredibly strong hands and good concentration to pull this ball in.

Ridley also has good field awareness as he consistently would work towards the sideline and always had the presence of mind to get those feet down in bounds.

So this play is stupid, but after it has its stupid moment, he does make a nice move in the open field.

This play does show good awareness, but that juke he puts on 25 is what really stands out.

Let's finish off with the concerning part of Ridley and why he fell so far in the draft. His athleticism leaves a lot to be desired.

The only good news is that his brother, Calvin, didn't test all that well either outside of a much better 40 time. But it is concerning that somebody who isn't a great athlete has such a poor 3-cone drill as that is usually a pretty good indicator of how much separation a guy can get from a defender. I did see Ridley make some tough catches, but without separation, it's going to be very tough for him to have a big impact in the NFL.

I heard a lot of great things about Ridley leading up to the draft. Before the combine, some people were talking about him as a possible first round pick. There are some good traits there, but I just don't see how he has a big impact on the passing game for the Bears. He will provide solid depth but will have to really refine himself to be much more than that.

Chicago Bears Scouting Reports
3rd Round - David Montgomery, Running Back, Iowa State