Chicago Bears Free Agency: Not Resigning O’Donnell Could Haunt Poles

While Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles continues to look for bargain-basement deals, letting Pat O’Donnell go could come back and haunt him.

As the Chicago Bears hit the second wave of free agents, it appears that general manager Ryan Poles continues to look for bargain-basement deals on players.

There have been a number of good names that teams gave away but Poles refused to deal. He is looking for dirt cheap-priced players and won’t spend above that, no matter what.

One of those moves could come back to haunt Poles. When free agency started, he allowed punter Pat O’Donnell to walk away. Not only that, O’Donnell walked his way onto the Green Bay Packers, Chicago’s most hated rival.

Poles hasn’t found O’Donnell’s replacement. The pickings at punter are a little slim. O’Donnell ranked 14th in the league with a 46.2 yards per punt average. Of the available punters, Michael Palardy ranks 19th and Riley Dixon ranks 21st. There is also Kevin Huber, who is basically the same as O’Donnell (46.4 yards per punt), and Corey Bojorquez. Bojorquez averaged 46.5 yards per punt, but he struggled mightily down the stretch of the season and got his punt blocked in Green Bay’s playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers. They felt the need for an upgrade and went with O’Donnell.

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While some view O’Donnell as just average, he gave the Bears some consistency. He also made some big punts in key situations. Additionally, he was a great holder for Cairo Santos as he broke the Chicago Bears record for most field goals made consecutively.

Now the Bears have to find someone else. With what is out there in free agency, it makes Poles’ job tougher. Will he end up picking someone up who isn’t as good as O’Donnell, or does he draft a punter?

If Poles chooses the second option that makes things even tougher. The Bears only have six picks in this year’s draft. They have a lot of holes to fill and Poles appears to be going with very cheap options. That means he needs to succeed in the draft. Using a draft pick on a punter when there are so few picks available puts undue pressure on building the roster.

In his haste to start part one of the roster overhaul, Poles might have gambled that he could find O’Donnell’s replacement easily. What he ended up doing, however, is creating a hole and using precious draft picks to fill it.

We really see that the 2022 version of the Chicago Bears might look uglier than the 2021 version. The fans have to “bear” with another tough, losing season. They hope, however, that it is just a one-year situation and that looking back in a few years they’ll realize that these were the tough moves that had to be made. Of course, they held those hopes before, so let’s wait and see what happens.