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LAKE FOREST, Ill. – After selecting Florida safety Major Wright with their first pick in the third round Friday, the Bears continued to bolster their defense on the third and final day of the NFL Draft.

Chicago chose Northwestern defensive end Corey Wootton in the fourth round and Kansas State cornerback Joshua Moore in the fifth, infusing more youth into a veteran unit.
Wootton may be the most intriguing of the Bears’ five picks in the draft. The 6-6, 270-pounder had a breakout season as a junior in 2008, registering 42 tackles and 10 sacks. But he blew out his knee in the Alamo Bowl and didn’t play with the same explosiveness while recovering from the injury last season.

The Bears assign red and yellow warning flags to draft prospects with injury concerns. But Wootton, who had three of his four sacks last year in Northwestern’s final four games, didn’t receive either designation.

“Medically we passed him and we gave him a very good grade,” said general manager Jerry Angelo. “He’s healed. He just needs to get stronger, particularly in his quad area.

“He’s 15 months out [from surgery]. We think in these next couple months he is going to get a lot stronger. Hopefully he goes to [training] camp at 100 percent.”

The Bears were very impressed with how Wootton performed before he hurt his knee.

“We thought potentially he was going to come out after his junior year, so we did a lot of work on him during the season,” Angelo said. “Without cementing any grades because he didn’t come out, he did have the injury, we thought he was one of the better defensive linemen a couple of years ago.”

Bears defensive line coach Eric Washington helped recruit Wootton to Northwestern and served as his position coach with the Wildcats from 2005-07. Washington also coached defensive tackles Luis Castillo of the San Diego Chargers and Barry Cofield of the New York Giants at Northwestern.

“Eric put [Wootton] on a very high level with those players,” Angelo said. “He thought he had some special [qualities] and he certainly thinks he can rush the passer.

“We see him as a three-down player more prototypical on the left side. But again, he’s got to get himself back and going to where  he was. It’s not like his tape was poor; as the year went on he played better. He played good at the end of the year. But he still hasn’t reached the level that we saw in ’08.”

Like Wright, Moore is an athletic defensive back who skipped his final season of eligibility to enter the draft. The 5-11, 188-pounder started all 12 games each of the last two seasons at Kansas State, recording 76 tackles and three interceptions in 2008 and 64 tackles and two picks in 2009.

“Josh Moore has some very, very good traits and we like him quite a bit,” Angelo said.

The Bears feel that Moore, who left school a year early after playing for two head coaches and four different position coaches, will thrive with some continuity.

“He needs structure, and we feel we could offer him that structure,” Angelo said. “We feel that he is very passionate about football. You can take school out of the equation, put football in his daily diet seven days a week, and we like what we think he can become.”

Angelo said that the Bears were targeting three cornerbacks in the fifth round and opted to select Moore over Northwestern’s Sherrick McManis and Maryland’s Nolan Carroll. McManis was taken by the Houston Texans three spots after Moore and Carroll went to the Miami Dolphins with the next pick.

“We felt like [Moore] had the best ceiling in terms of having a chance to develop into a starter,” Angelo said. “The other two went right after him. We just didn’t feel they had the ceiling that Josh had.”
The Bears spent their final two picks on Central Michigan quarterback Dan LeFevour in the sixth round and West Texas A&M offensive tackle J’Marcus Webb in the seventh round.

LeFevour was a highly productive four-year starter in college, becoming the first player in NCAA history to pass for 12,000 yards and run for 2,500 yards in his career.

The Bears didn’t enter the draft intending to pick a quarterback. But when the 6-3, 230-pounder was still on the board, they couldn’t pass him up.

“The quarterback position obviously has value any year regardless of what your quarterback situation is,” Angelo said. “We’ve done a lot of work on Dan, given the fact that he’s played in our backyard.

“That was one that we talked about quite a bit, but at the end, we just felt that in the sixth round with his value and position, we went in that direction.”

The Bears concluded the draft by selecting Webb, a 6-8, 335-pounder who transferred to West Texas A&M after playing in 12 games as a freshman for the University of Texas.

“We wanted to come out with an offensive lineman,” Angelo said. “In the seventh, you can’t get too excited about any player, other than the fact that he does have a fit for you in terms of a need and/or what you’re trying to do from an offensive standpoint.

“We feel good about his traits. We’ll just wait and see when we get to camp and get the pads on, see the kind of quality of player he is. We know this: he’s got a lot of good physical traits. I think when you get a chance to see him in our minicamp [next weekend] you’ll see that as well.”