Bears General Manager Ryan Poles praised his top draft pick, offensive tackle Darnell Wright, after Wright “crushed” the Bears’ conditioning test. It turns out there’s an excellent reason for that: Wright accidentally trained to take the wide receivers’ version of the test, which made the offensive linemen’s test a breeze.
Wright said the Bears’ players were given written expectations of what they’d have to do to pass their conditioning tests, and as Wright worked out on his own to get ready for training camp, he mistakenly went off the wide receiver test. Like every team, the Bears expect their receivers to be able to finish a series of sprints a lot faster than the linemen can, but Wright got himself into shape to do what the receivers do.
“I was looking at the wide receivers’ running portion of the workout, so I was doing theirs. So then I came back and obviously we have different, so,” Wright said.
Wright, who weighed in at 333 pounds at the Scouting Combine, said he lost 16 pounds of fat during his training and feels like he benefited from it.
“More distance and lower time,” Wright said of the receivers’ version of the test. “It definitely feels better, it’s a little bit of an adjustment as far as training power, still, but I think I’m more powerful because I didn’t lose any muscle mass. You definitely feel a step quicker.”
And the Bears feel good about a rookie who did more than was required of him.
