Bears punter Tory Taylor on surprising fourth-round selection: 'Thought I may have gone a little bit earlier'

Having followed the script in a universally lauded first round, the Chicago Bears shook things up in the 2024 NFL Draft's fourth round.

That's when, with pick No. 122, the Bears took Iowa punter Tory Taylor, making the former Hawkeyes booter the first specialist taken in the draft with the earliest selection for a punter since 2019.

It was stunningly premature in the eyes of many, but not Taylor, who thought he could go even earlier.

"I kind of thought I may have gone a little bit earlier to a couple other teams," Taylor said this week on The Sick Podcast with Adam Rank. "A few special teams coaches rung and texted me on the day saying, 'Hey, really hope you're a such and such once the day ends.' And I kind of thought, oh, don't just say it let's make it happen. But a lot of the time, it's really up to I guess the GM and things like that and whoever makes those sort of calls, but, at the end of the day if they wanted me they should've come and got me.

"But I'm glad they didn't because I'm at the Bears now. It's literally perfect."

It was clearly a perfect fit for general manager Ryan Poles, who pounced on Taylor because he "didn’t expect him to get much further."

Though it was long before the Poles regime, Chicago has a bit of a history taking punters early.

Taylor, an Australian native who shined in college at Iowa, is the third-earliest punter taken in Bears common draft history (since 1967), per NFL Research. The Bears used a third-round pick on Chris Gardocki in 1991 and a second-round pick on Todd Sauerbrun in 1995. Gardocki and Sauerbrun were each All-Pros, with Gardocki winning a Super Bowl and Sauerbrun going to multiple Pro Bowls, but none of those accolades came while with the Bears.

Taylor's aiming to change that