Cole Kmet really didn’t know what to expect going into the 2020 NFL draft. The Notre Dame tight end was a bit of a mystery. There was no denying his pure physical talent, but his limited production for the Irish and splitting time playing baseball made it difficult to project what he could be in the NFL. Most agreed he was probably the most complete tight end in the draft.
Then again experts felt the class, in general, was weak at that position.
So Kmet had no idea which teams had significant interest in him by the start of the NFL Combine. That is until he encountered the Chicago Bears’ people. The rookie told the story on the TE1 podcast with Greg Olsen.
“So my first time meeting up with them was at the combine but it was informally. So they kind of like tugged me to the side real quick and were like, ‘Listen up. We’re not doing a formal with you. We don’t want people knowing we like you. But we like you. Here, drop a couple plays for us and we’re keeping an eye on you.’…
…Our leader for like the tight end group for the combine was one of the Bears scouts. So he was kind of keeping an eye on me. We had him and then Clancy Barone, the tight ends coach, just tugged me over real quick and just told me, ‘Hey, we’re interested. Keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll try and reconnect at your pro day.’
Obviously, my pro day got canceled because of what’s going on but yeah. They kept an eye on and I had a formal meeting over Zoom and the rest was kind of history from there on.”
Cole Kmet saw a true dream come true
This sounds rather familiar. One thing about GM Ryan Pace is that when it comes to the draft, secrecy reigns supreme. He does not want any other team to have the slightest inkling of what he has planned. The prime example is of course his cloak and dagger campaign to draft Mitch Trubisky in 2017. Nobody from the media to other teams had a clue the Bears were interested in the North Carolina quarterback.
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That’s what made the trade up to get him such a huge surprise.
It seems that was the case again with Kmet. Most everybody thought the Bears were looking at other positions like defensive back. When they took the big tight end, plenty of people were shocked. That included Kmet himself. That shock soon gave way to utter joy as the Lake Barrington native realized he’d get to play for his hometown team.
A fun feel-good story to be sure.
