Should the Bears fire Ryan Poles?

In 2022, Ryan Poles' first year as General Manager of the Chicago Bears, winning just three games was understandable. He had made the deliberate (and correct) choice to strip the roster down, get rid of bad contracts, and tank for the best possible pick. In his second year, the team improved to seven wins and appeared to be a coach and a quarterback away from the playoffs. This was Poles' team now, with very few leftovers from the Ryan Pace era, and there were no more excuses for the GM.

In a pivotal 2024 offseason, Poles delivered on the new quarterback, using the first overall pick (sent to Chicago via trade with Carolina) to draft Caleb Williams. However, Poles decided to retain Matt Eberflus despite nearly universal calls for his firing. The result of this decision? Poles was forced to fire Eberflus halfway through the year anyway. Now the Bears are up a creek without a paddle, just trying to survive to the end of the season with a room of coaches who are in way over their heads.

The decision to keep Eberflus has had a wide ripple effect. The Bears are clearly outclassed in every game remaining on their schedule when it comes to coaches, meaning the losses will continue to stack up. Caleb Williams' rookie year is a wasted season, and his development has been stunted. The defense went from 'bend, don't break' to 'why bother.' We're not even sure if the team's highest-paid players, like Montez Sweat and DJ Moore, are worth retaining for much longer.

After three years, there is a legitimate case to move on from Ryan Poles.

Is this enough to justify the firing of Ryan Poles after just three years? Maybe not, if keeping Eberflus had been Poles' sole blunder, and GMs are typically allowed two head coach hires before their job is in jeopardy, but there are many more to add to the list. He signed right guard Nate Davis despite repeated warnings from his staff. He spent valuable third-round picks on players like Velus Jones Jr., who is off the team, and Kiran Amegadjie, who nearly got Caleb Williams killed on Monday night. He traded what became the 31st overall pick in the 2023 draft for Chase Claypool, who is no longer even in the NFL. He signed D'Andre Swift, who has been a complete bust this year except for three games when Saquon Barkley was there for the taking for just a few million dollars more.

Further, Poles has repeatedly ignored the offensive line, which is by far the biggest problem on the team. To his credit, he drafted Darnell Wright in 2023, and he's been tremendous. He also found Braxton Jones in the fifth round of the 2022 draft, and he's been an adequate starter. But the interior of the offensive line has been abysmal. The Bears have not had a starting-caliber Center since 2018, but Poles has made minimal effort to address that. He allowed right guard James Daniels to walk in free agency only to replace him with Nate Davis, a player he was warned against. This is inexcusable for a former offensive lineman himself, and Caleb Williams is now suffering the consequences of this bargain-bin-hunting attitude.

Reasons for optimism.

To be fair, it isn't all bad with Ryan Poles. His trade with the Carolina Panthers was a masterclass that eventually brought in DJ Moore and Caleb Williams. He's hit on several players through the draft and free agency, like Kyler Gordon, TJ Edwards, and Gervon Dexter Sr. He's extended veteran players who deserve their payday, like Cole Kmet and Jaylon Johnson. While he's given out some bad contracts, he hasn't approached the terrible contracts handed out by his predecessor, most notably when the Bears signed quarterback Mike Glennon to a $45 million deal.

So, while some may say that this is an open-and-shut case of a GM in over his head, I don't think it's that simple. As aforementioned, I think the catastrophic mistake of retaining Eberflus has had an outsized impact on the perceptions of his other mistakes, creating a compounding effect. But I truly don't believe the team is as bad as it looks. If you give a coach like Matt LaFleur, Kevin O'Connell, or Ben Johnson this roster, they could already be at 10 wins and firmly in the playoff race, which speaks to the job Poles has done in rebuilding a roster from scratch.

The problem right now, and the reason why the team looks so bad, is that Poles kept a lousy coach who left behind an incapable staff once he was finally fired. This coaching skill gap is even more pronounced thanks to an absolutely brutal schedule to close the season, with Chicago against some of the best minds in modern football.

That's why I'm not all the way on board with firing Poles, but I won't argue against it if that's the decision that team president Kevin Warren and CEO George McCaskey reach next month. As with former Bears quarterback Justin Fields, in a pivotal, prove-it season, Poles has left the door open to his dismissal just a bit, and the Bears just might walk through it.

Do you think the Chicago Bears should fire Ryan Poles? Sign up for a free user account today and let your voice be heard!