Chicago Bears: Poles Already Showing He Has Team On RIght Path

Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles is showing in his second year that he is a big improvement over the previous regime.

The Chicago Bears were sinking deeper into irrelevancy with their poor play and poor front office choices. Ryan Pace was the general manager between 2015 and 2021.

While the Bears had an incredible 2018 season and had two playoff appearances during his tenure, the team had zero playoff wins. In fact, they managed to score just 24 points in the two playoff losses.

Additionally, the Bears had a 48-65 record with Pace as the general manager.

After a 6-11 2021 season, the Chairman of the Board, George McCaskey, decided that a change was needed. He searched and chose Ryan Poles to lead the rebuild.

Poles was a part of the Kansas City Chiefs brain trust and had a hand in helping the franchise go from irrelevancy to two-time Super Bowl winners in a short period of time.

Now Poles got the opportunity to build his own team and have the final say.

We have already seen that the team is in better hands with Poles than when he took over.

Yes, the Bears had a miserable 3-14 record in Poles’ first season. They finished the season losing 13 of their last 14 games and 10 consecutive.

That was part of the plan for Poles, however. The Bears were a mess when he took over. They only had five draft picks and were in salary cap hell.

Poles took that initial season to tear things down. He did what the Chicago Cubs did with Theo Epstein. Epstein tore everything down and rebuilt the minor league system. Yes, there were some lean years, but eventually the Cubs ended a 108-year title drought and gave multiple generations of Cubs fans something they never saw — a World Series winner.

Poles is trying the same and is showing great discipline

Poles is doing something similar. He got rid of all of the big contracts, even if he said goodbye to popular veterans. He replaced them with team-friendly contracts.

It was a bold move by Poles. The fans were not happy with the roster he assembled. Of course, there were some who have rose-colored glasses and have positive thoughts no matter what they do.

For realistic fans, though, this was not good. Additionally, the NFL analysts also were not impressed.

The results were what many expected — the Bears finished with the worst record in the NFL. That gave them the number one pick, however, and some options to make some moves.

In addition to the top pick, Poles’ savvy contract signings ended up giving the Chicago Bears the most salary cap space in the league. They had nearly $100 million to spend, far and away more than anyone else.

With that money, the fans expected Poles and the Bears to be in on every free agent imaginable. Poles, however, stuck to his plan. This would not be an overnight rebuild. While he would add some key players via free agency, he wanted to build a multi-year playoff contender. To do that, he needed to not overpay and get handcuffed with bad contracts in the future. This is something Pace and other Chicago Bears general managers were unable to do.

Poles has signed once young, athletic talent at good contract terms. What he has done, though, is add draft picks. He feels that the best way to rebuild the roster is through the draft. As a result, he had acquired more draft picks.

Last year, he turned five draft picks into 11. What was more impressive was that despite all of those trades he was able to keep his best two picks — two second-round picks.

With all of the moves Poles made he has done something that Pace failed to do. As it is now, the Bears have eight picks in the top 150. This is something very big. In the past four drafts, the Chicago Bears had nine combined picks in the top 150.

Fun fact: #Bears have eight picks among top 150 spots in this year’s draft; they had a total of nine top 150 picks in previous four drafts combined: 2 in 2019, 2 in 2020, 2 in 2021 and 3 in 2022.

— Larry Mayer (@LarryMayer) April 14, 2023

What’s interesting about this fun fact is that the most picks in the top 150 the Bears had were the three in 2022. Who was the general manager? Ryan Poles. So, as of now, he will have had 11 picks in the top 150 over the past two seasons while Pace’s Bears had just six in three years combined.

Poles has a chance to do even more when draft weekend arrives. He has the option of trading some more and acquiring additional picks, likely in the top 150. Furthermore, he also added draft picks for future drafts. He already has two first-round picks in 2024 and two second-round picks in 2025.

Poles stuck to the plan he had and it is about to pay off for the Bears. After showing that he is not afraid to trade for draft picks, expect some when this year’s draft begins. His discipline and vision have the Chicago Bears on the path back to relevancy.