The Chicago Bears have decided to give Tyler Bray yet another year’s commitment at the NFL level, extending one of the most unlikely playing careers around.
Think about this: Tyler Bray not only entered the National Football League way back in 2013 but he did so as an undrafted free agent. He’s still humming along with a brand new contract, courtesy of the Chicago Bears who have decided to bring him back for his seventh NFL season.
Seven years is a long time for any player to last in the NFL, but Bray is an interesting case. Even the very top of his draft class was considered to be among the worst in league history, and the Chiefs were lucky to pull Eric Fisher from the ashes of such a dumpster fire at No. 1 overall.
More from Arrowhead Addict
- Former Chiefs cornerback in legal trouble in Las Vegas
- Chiefs Kingdom: Get ready to break contract news
- Chiefs news: Travis Kelce wants to host fan ‘chug-off’ in Germany
- Podcast: Breaking down the Chiefs biggest roster battles
- KC Chiefs send Dave Merritt to NFL coaching accelerator
The best quarterback from that entire draft class is likely Mike Glennon, who has a total of 35 touchdown passes in his career (or about as many as Patrick Mahomes had through 11 games last season. Other memorable names from that class include Geno Smith, E.J. Manuel (who is oddly now on the Chiefs roster), Matt Barkley, Landry Jones, and Ryan Nassib.
Bray has lasted longer than almost all fo those players and certainly much longer than some of the players taken near the top of the whole affair—prospects like offensive tackle Luke Joeckel, linebacker Jarvis Jones, cornerback Dee Milliner, and defensive linemen Bjoern Werner and Sharrif Floyd.
It’s not as if Bray has even proven himself in relief of the quarterbacks above him, like an unexpected prospect who showed everyone what he was truly capable of with some movie-moment highlights to his credit. Instead, Bray is honestly as unproven as he ever was before. He has a single appearance to his credit in the final week of the 2017 season, a game in which he went 0 for 1 in relief of Mahomes in the last game of his tenure with the Kansas City Chiefs.
It was easy to assume Bray’s tenure in the NFL would go once the Chiefs were finally ready to move on from their developmental project, but Bray has turned into an untested veteran who clearly is a coaching favorite for one reason or another. Maybe he’s a strong leader on the sideline. Maybe he’s brilliant in the film room. Maybe, just maybe, coaches like Matt Nagy still believe he could be a quality player if given the chance. There’s no way of knowing.
But we can know for sure that Bray has upended his doubters and put together a longer-than-average NFL career. Here’s to another year in the NFL!