LAS VEGAS — Jake Butt’s Mackey Award — the honor bestowed annually upon college football’s best tight end — tells you he was quite the head-turning player at Michigan.
But he was no Colston Loveland. The talented TV analyst, who spent most of a brief NFL career with the Broncos and retired from the Bears in 2021, figured that out on a visit to Ann Arbor when he eyeballed Loveland in a Wolverines practice for the first time.
“I was like, ‘Who the [expletive] is that?’ ” Butt told the Sun-Times. “He’s different.”
Ten seasons, 70-catches-a-year different? That’s Butt’s prediction for the Bears’ first-round pick.
Michigan H-back Max Bredeson, who often lines up at tight end and is a tremendous blocker, calls Loveland one of his “best friends in the world.” He cautions anybody against doubting Loveland’s toughness at the point of attack. Everybody knows the route running is elite.
“But what made Colston so special,” Bredeson said, “is he was a different-level celebrity [in college] but knew everybody in the building’s name down to the fifth-stringers, the bottom, the grinders. He knew everybody. The most humble person possible. He was just the best person.”
Maryland coach Mike Locksley predicts former Terrapins linebacker Ruben Hyppolite, the Bears’ fourth-round pick, will be an “unbelievable” pro who adds exceptional value on special teams and becomes a locker-room linchpin.
Terps linebacker Michael Harris has a story of being assigned to room with the veteran Hyppolite at his first college training camp and waking to the sound of heavy breathing — it was his roomie doing an astonishing number of break-of-day pushups.
Teammate Daniel Wingate, another linebacker, still can’t believe how fast Hyppolite is for the position.
“The fastest, and it wasn’t even close,” Wingate said. “His speed is just something totally different. Linebackers aren’t supposed to run like that.”
And though Rutgers’ Kyle Monangai lasted until the Bears took him in the seventh round, Scarlet Knights coach Greg Schiano promises the 5-8 running back is much more than meets the eye. If Schiano could introduce the school’s No. 2 all-time rusher to a room full of Bears fans, what would he say?
“I think the way I’d introduce him is, ‘Get to know this guy, because he’ll probably own the world someday,’ ” Schiano said. “He was in our business school and did extremely well, which is very challenging. He’s an incredibly bright, bright young man that just happens to be a really, really tough football player. He was very much looked up to in our program by our players.”