UPDATED Terps fever: WR Heyward-Bey dazzles at Maryland pro day

We’ve gotten a late start on our review of the pro day action today, other than our item on Alabama left tackle Andre Smith earlier this afternoon. Sometimes actual football news gets in the way of digging around.

There were a couple big ones today with Oklahoma State, Maryland, Tennessee and as we mentioned Alabama all holding workout sessions for their draft-eligible players. These are big sessions that most every NFL team is going to cover, so we’re not unearthing anything real surprising here. It’s not believed the Bears were at Oklahoma State.

*** At Maryland, wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey reportedly put on a show in positional drills. One guy to keep an eye on there is guard Jamie Thomas. The Bears are believed to be keeping an eye on him, and they’re certainly monitoring Heyward-Bey.

*** Southeastern scout Mark Sadowski made the trip from Auburn to hated rival Alabama and saw Smith’s workout. It will be interesting to see how safety Rashad Johnson gets some momentum moving forward. We had one quarterback coach tell us he liked quarterback John Parker Wilson because he has some moxie to his game.

*** It’s believed Midwest scout Jeff Shiver was at the Kentucky pro day. Safety Marcus McClinton could be worth monitoring.

UPDATED

*** The Bears were also reportedly in attendance at BYU on Thursday, a duty that either fell to Marty Barrett or Teddy Monago. The Cougars had a couple of linemen worth looking at in tackle Dallas Reynolds and guards Travis Bright and Ray Feinga.

*** Enough draft speculating. If the Bears had not signed Josh Bullocks, or added a safety before the first minicamp practice Tuesday, it’s a good bet Zack Bowman would have been forced into the role. The Bears would prefer to keep him at cornerback. But, hey, someone would have to line up at free safety, right?

*** We wrote earlier in the week that we expected the John St. Clair situation to be resolved by the end of the week and we’re going to stick with that, although the calendar is working against us at this point.

*** And finally, we save a little nugget for last for those who have stuck with us all day and into the evening … picked up an interesting note late Tuesday night, later than we wanted to return to blogland any way.

The $40 million, four-year extension defensive tackle Tommie Harris signed last summer includes an $8 million de-escalating roster bonus in the final year of the deal, 2012, that requires him to go to be a Pro Bowl selection every year and be on the field for 74 percent of the defensive snaps, a figure he’s reached just once during his career. Obviously, Harris didn’t hit it in year one, failing to be named to the all-star game or trigger the play-time clause.

According to records, Harris was on the field for 56 percent of the snaps last season, meaning he would have been well short of the number even if he had not missed the Philadelphia game with an injury and then been suspended the final week for the game at Detroit.

Thanks as always for reading. We’ll see what turns up on Thursday.