LAKE FOREST, Ill. (AP) — When it comes to choosing a direction in the NFL draft, the Chicago Bears have some flexibility.
And if they can replicate last year's success, they'll really be in good shape.
“We feel prepared. We put in the time,” general manager Ryan Poles said on Tuesday. “When we’re on the clock, I’ve got a ton of confidence things are going to work out just the way we planned them to be. If things start to shift and move, we’re agile enough to make adjustments if that’s moving up, moving back, we’ll be ready for anything that comes our way.”
The Bears have seven picks in the draft, starting at No. 25 on Thursday, as they try to build on a breakthrough season.
Chicago went from finishing last in the NFC North to capturing the division championship with an 11-6 record in coach Ben Johnson's first year. Quarterback Caleb Williams made big strides in his second season and threw for a franchise-record 3,942 yards.
The Bears advanced in the playoffs for the first time in 15 years by beating the rival Green Bay Packers in a wild-card game before losing an overtime thriller to the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round.
It was quite a ride for the team and the fans. A big part of that success was what happened on draft weekend, and the Bears hope to do it again.
Poles drafted four big contributors on offense last year. He took tight end Colston Loveland with the No. 10 pick, added receiver Luther Burden and offensive lineman Ozzy Trapilo in the second round and selected running back Kyle Monangai in the seventh.
Loveland led Chicago in receptions (58) and yards (713) and tied for the team lead in touchdown catches (six). Trapilo played in 14 regular-season games before tearing the patella tendon in his left knee in the wild-card win over Green Bay, an injury that is expected to keep him out for most of next season.
The speedy Burden had 652 yards receiving, and Monangai ran for 783 while forming a productive tandem with D’Andre Swift.
Can this year's picks have a similar impact, particularly on the defense?
“Colston Loveland shows up every week," assistant general manager Jeff King said. “Luther Burden shows up in big games at critical moments. Kyle Monangai carried the load when we had to lean on him. Right? That goes to more the character than the talent. And they’re really talented. So. Yeah, if it lines up like that defensively, sure. But we’re going to have to not lean on last year. We have to divorce ourselves from that success and start over.”
The Bears had just 35 sacks last season. Their only player in double digits was Montez Sweat with 10, and no one else had more than six.
Chicago also lost its top four safeties in free agency, including three-time All-Pro Kevin Byard and Jaquan Brisker. The Bears did sign former Seattle Seahawk Coby Bryant, but they could still use help there.
King said they won't necessarily be drafting for need.
“If it’s equal, the need may come into play here or there," he said. “But at the end of the day, you’re not going to go wrong by taking the best football player. I think we all agree with that.”
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NEW YORK (AP) — The man who recently pleaded guilty to New York's Gilgo Beach serial murders told his ex-wife while in jail that he killed most of his female victims in the basement of the family’s dilapidated home, the latest episode of an NBC documentary series shows.
His ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, said in a teaser for the episode airing Thursday that Rex Heuermann also told her that the eight women he has admitted to killing were his only victims.
Ellerup says later in the teaser that he told her that he killed seven of them in the basement of the family's house in Massapequa Park on Long Island while she was away.
“I said to him, ‘So Mr. Heuermann, I understand that you are confessing to me on these murders. Can you please tell me how many of these women did you kill’?,” she said in the 90-second clip. “He said, ‘Eight’.”
Ellerup said she intentionally didn’t use her former husband’s first name as a way to “put a wall up” between the two.
“When he started talking, it started feeling like that’s the Rex I know,” she said. “But I didn’t want to see that one. I wanted to see the one I needed to see.”
The latest and last installment of “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets” will be available on NBC’s streaming service Peacock. Another documentary, “Killing Grounds: The Gilgo Beach Murders,” also comes out Wednesday on Amazon's streaming service, Prime Video.
Ellerup's attorney, Robert Macedonio, declined to discuss what other new details are revealed in the new episode of the Peacock documentary, the first three episodes of which aired last June.
“This has been an extremely emotional and painful process for the family to endure and come to terms with the allegations that Rex Heuermann was the Gilgo Beach serial killer,” he said in an email. “Ms. Ellerup would like the focus to remain where it belongs — on the victims and their families, who have suffered immeasurable and lasting losses.”
Vess Mitev, a lawyer for the couple's two grown children, Victoria and Chris, said the two “echo the sentiments of their mother, and wish only to move forward as best they can, given this remarkably dark chapter in their lives.”
Heuermann’s lawyers didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Earlier episodes of the documentary showed the family struggling to reconcile their memories of the architect, who had an office in Manhattan, with the portrait of the killer described by authorities.
Ellerup, who divorced Heuermann after his arrest in 2023, steadfastly defended her ex-husband’s innocence during those earlier episodes. But her daughter eventually conceded her father “most likely” committed the brutal killings that bedeviled investigators and drew intense interest from true-crime watchers for years.
The saga came to a close earlier this month when Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, admitted in Riverhead court to murdering seven women and also killing an eighth he had not yet been charged with over a 17-year span.
Heuermann said in court he strangled the women, many of them sex workers, and dismembered some of their bodies before dumping them on a desolate parkway not far from Long Island's Gilgo Beach, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Manhattan.
He’ll be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Follow Philip Marcelo on X: @philmarcelo.
