Sources: The Bears have their GM
Adam Schefter is reporting that the Chicago Bears have offered the General Manager’s job to Kansas City Chiefs’ Assistant Director of Player Personnel, Ryan Poles.
Bears are finalizing a deal to hire Chiefs’ Assistant Director of Player Personnel Ryan Poles as their next general manager, per league sources.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 25, 2022
Poles has been with the Chiefs since 2009, the 36 year old has been very respected within the Kansas City front office that even when others around him were let go, the Chiefs kept him around. He had been the director of college scouting during his tenure, which just so happened to land the Chiefs players like; Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Justin Houston, Eric Fisher, Chris Jones, Tyreek Hill, Dontari Poe, and Eric Berry. There’s more than a couple Pro Bowl players in that group.
Some thought the decision was between Pittsburgh Steelers VP of Football Ops, Omar Khan and Poles going into yesterday’s interview with Khan. It seems that while putting a cap wizard like Khan in the GM seat would make sense for an organization that has had some terrible cap managers throughout the years, flipping the way NFL front offices do business wasn’t in the cards for the Bears and went with the traditional scouting first GM.
Today, George McCaskey was seen picking Poles up from O’Hare and there was a growing sense that he wouldn’t leave the building without a contract in hand.
The Chicago Bears are top secret about literally everything, but here's chairman George McCaskey looking like a walking billboard while he picks up Ryan Poles for a GM interview at one of the busiest airports in the world. 🤣😂 pic.twitter.com/s80DCpiakO
— Brendan Sugrue (@BrendanSugrue) January 25, 2022
For Poles, this is a full circle moment, having been signed as an undrafted free agent by the Bears.
And so it comes full circle: Ryan Poles signed with the Chicago Bears as an undrafted free agent coming out of Boston College.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 25, 2022
It was also reported that Poles, who was a hot commodity throughout January and had his pick between Chicago and Minnesota, really wanted to be in Chicago. The Bears also really wanted the best candidate as well.
Ironically, Jim Caldwell was also in the building today. The former Indianapolis and Detroit head coach has been rumored to be a perfect fit with the likes of Poles. While he might not excite many around Chicago, he was probably the most successful Lions head coach since that a-hole Wayne Fontes (yes, I’m still bitter over that cigar smoking troll job way back when). Regardless, people believe the experience of Caldwell will help the inexperience of Poles.
Whether that comes to fruition, is yet to be seen.
Of interesting to note, Poles has expressed to ownership – and the search committee – he wants to choose his head coach *AND* Bears ownership appears to have granted him his wish. It seems as if McCaskey has grown some in the process, and he’s willing to allow (what seems to be) a great executive do his thing. This is the best thing Tom Ricketts did when he brought Theo Epstein into the fold. He hired him and then got out of the way. We all know how that turned out for the Chicago Cubs, hopefully it has similar success for the Bears.
Either way, I am excited to see how things play in the coming days.
