Lincicome: The six saddest words you'll ever hear? “The Bears are on the clock.”

Apologies to the old fireside poet, but the six saddest words of tongue or pen are “The Bears are on the clock.”

This NFL draft could very well have gone on without the Bears, as it did in fact, as have the last few NFL seasons come to that. Yet an obligation had to be met, a duty to care. Just because every draft is a mock draft for the Bears, they could not just do nothing.

In anticipation, I believe the game jerseys were already laid out with the new Bears' names stitched on the back, Flotsam, Jetsam and Scraps.

Nevertheless ...

In the latest version of wretched excess, the NFL plunked itself down in the neighborhood of its newest companions, the gamblers and the point spreaders, in the neon town without clocks or modesty.

Huge young men wearing bedazzled tuxes and strangely stitched outerwear, hugged their parents and trooped from station to station proclaiming their joy, posing with the salaried commissioner of it all, Roger Goodell, holding up jerseys for the photographers with the number 1, whereas when it came to the Bears turn the number would be much higher.

The draft is where, because they can, professional football landlords point their fingers and say, “I'll have one of those,” and millions of witnesses cheer or moan loudly while TV grunts with big hair natter on about how great are football creatures known as the “Pancake King” and “Sauce.”

Still, the system is accepted and anticipated from all sides, complaints generally saved for poor judgment rather than for the affront to freedom of choice and human dignity.

What happens in Las Vegas does not, unfortunately, stay in Las Vegas (though let us hope that all that poor tailoring was left in the hotel closet) because rookie rosters will be filled with the debris of the day.

This is OK with the new Ryan, name of Poles, who replaced the old Ryan, name of Pace, who says he believes in fresh Bears rather than recycled Raiders or Eagles or whatever.

“I believe in homegrown talent,” the new Ryan said prior to his actually having to grow any. “I believe in drafting the right players and developing them here.”

Not that the new Ryan had any choice in the matter since the old Ryan left him an empty holster, without options, or a promising draft position. The future that faces the new Ryan was frittered away by the old Ryan at least twice, the only lasting fragment being young Justin Fields, around whom all tomorrow shines.

To contrast the two management styles, the old Ryan once explained that “if you have conviction on a player, you have to get him.” Welcome, Mitch Trubisky, hello, Justin, in other words.

This is an established Bears tradition, commonly known as stupidity justified by infatuation.

The new Ryan is full of caution, some might say unfamiliar reason. “You can talk yourself into anything,” he said.

This was a draft without pain for the latest Bears brain trust (we must trust there are brains there) because nobody makes mistakes on the second day of the draft, that shadow world where even dedicated talent sniffers must shuffle their notes to find out who is who.

Inevitably, Tom Brady comes up, the 199th pick in 2000, or Richard Dent, the 203rd pick by the Bears in 1983, raising the question, does anyone really know what he is doing?

No one is worthless even drafting late on the second day. The Bears had to be not surprisingly astonished to find quality players who have all the tools necessary to make a significant contribution and who will be given every opportunity to challenge for a job. Yadda. Yadda.

There are treasures to be found for scouting systems that have done their homework, provided that they majored in alchemy, and on the day of or even the day after, what the Bears got were exactly what the Bears wanted.

The obligation to draft somebody, anybody, by the Bears is less option than punchline, since, inevitably, the joke is on them.

To believe the Bears have found enough help in the NFL draft to get the Bears back to respectability is about as promising as finding a nonjudgmental dentist.