Dennis Allen Unmasks Specific Reason Jordan van den Berg Fell Through the NFL Cracks

LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- The Bears' selection of sixth-round draft pick Jordan van den Berg once again displays how closer cooperation between coaching staff and personnel department has brought about an elevated roster state.

At least it shows they can find someone some way, at this position, because the future there is murky at best.

Why Bears coaching and personnel partnership prioritized Jordan van den Berg's athletic skillset

Van den Berg, the Georgia Tech defensive tackle from South African, simply fell through the system cracks in the view of Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen. Finding van den Berg in the sixth round and taking him there resulted from the quest to find system fits, aided by the coaching/personnel coop. It was this function GM Ryan Poles put forth as a major goal heading into the draft and then afterward.

"He was one of these guys that, for whatever reason throughout the league, kinda slipped through the cracks a little bit," Allen said during rookie minicamp. "Sometimes that stuff happens.

"But he was a player that our scouting staff brought to us and our defensive line coaches, primarily."

Jordan van den Berg's appeal

The tape doesn't lie, but it can hide what players do. It did both with van den Berg.

"They watched the tape and came to me and they were like, ‘Just do me this favor: Watch this 60-play cutup on this player,’ " Allen said. "And when you watch the 60-play cutup, when you’re going through the draft process there’s a lot of what this guy can’t do.

"Well, we tried to focus on what this guy can do. And when you watch that 60-play cutup of the things this player can do, it was pretty impressive."

With van den Berg, the Bears have the athletic type player Allen uses in his scheme. This defense is not about 340-pound road blocks. Nor is it the simple gap-shooting attack approach. He's looking for strong, athletic playmakers in he 300-pound range.

He thinks van den Berg fits this perfectly, even if he probably has slightly less exposure to American football than other drafted players. Rememeber, van den Berg didn't start playing until high school, but he moved to the U.S. at age 10 and wanted to play. There have been plenty of NFL players who didn't start playing until high school.

"Just the movement skills, the power, the athleticism, the effort, the toughness, all those things, the football character — I keep saying that bled off the tape to us," Allen said. "And he was a guy that we thought, man, this guy really fits into what we want to do.

"And there’s certainly a lot of things that he still has to improve on. But there’s a skillset there and there’s a football character there that we were excited about working with."

Ryan Poles has never drafted a starter later than Round 5

By the time a team gets to Round 6, anything a team can seize upon is valued with draft picks. In van den Berg's case, there wasn't much the Bears couldn't seize upon as ideal for their scheme.

Very few sixth-rounders are ever going to be starters, anyway. So anything is a plus.

Poles has drafted 10 players in Rounds 6 or 7 and no one has become a starter. The only two to even start once were Kyle Monangai (1 game) and Elijah Hicks (15 games) and both did it as backups filling in for injured players. The last Bears player who started regularly to come from their draft in Rounds 6 or 7 was sixth-round nickel cornerback Duke Shelley, chosen by former GM Ryan Pace in 2019. He only played in nickel situations as a starter and had this role only over two seasons.

It wouldn't be a surprise at all if van den Berg is able to get meaningful playing time as a rookie, considering how poorly the middle of the defensive front played against the run last year and failed overall to get to the passer.

They had 8 1/2 sacks from defensive tackles, six coming from Gervon Dexter. No one else had more than 1 1/2. It's little wonder they saw van den Berg as a necessary addition, along with defensive tackles Neville Gallimore and Kentavius Street (highlights shown here), two defensive tackles who have histories of being better pass rushers than run stoppers.

The idea of collapsing that pocket hasn't died for the Bears. They just waited until the sixth round to start addressing it, and usually when they or any other team waits that long value is low. They're down to hoping for a diamond in the rough at defensive tackle, and the future becomes even more clouded with Jarrett in his 30s, Street and Gallimore merely stop-gap journeymen, and Dexter entering a contract year with a new power agent — Drew Rosenhaus — on his side for contract talks.

Van den Berg could very well have the chance to be the key Bears interior defender of the future simply by being the only one left standing next year from this year's group.

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