Chicago Bears fans have been riding high for the last 20 months. Since Ben Johnson was hired, things have been looking and pointing up, and the results on the football field certainly show that.
But on Sunday, the Bears decided to send Gervon Dexter to the Atlanta Falcons. Many Bears fans were really upset with that decision, and it has sparked a debate on social media about Ryan Poles and the job he’s done as a General Manager.
So let’s take an objective look at the job he’s done. And when I say objective,
I certainly have my own opinion on Ryan Poles, and I’m sure that subjectivity will come out in this. But let’s take a look at the job he’s done as objectively as possible.
The Draft
When you look at the draft picks, let’s look at the drafts from 2022 to 2024, before Ben Johnson arrived. In 2022, Poles didn’t have a 1st thanks to the Justin Fields trade that Ryan Pace executed, but he did draft Kyler Gordon and Jaquan Brisker in the 2nd. Gordon, despite what’s going on now, has to be considered a very good pick. He is a borderline Pro Bowl talent and received a second contract. Brisker was a solid selection. He was a solid contributor to the Bears, but a scheme change and concussions prevented him from receiving another contract.
Braxton Jones ends up being a great value as a 5th-round pick, and Elijah Hicks still being around, even as a Special Teamer, as a 7th-round pick is another nice selection. Every other player drafted that year made very little positive impact on the Bears. I would consider that draft a passable draft. Certainly not a home run, but good enough.
In 2023, Darnell Wright has been an excellent pick. Yes, he was a top 10 pick, so the expectation has to be high, but he’s arguably the best player in the league at his position, so that certainly clears that bar. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else to come out of this draft. Dexter was a fairly solid 2nd-round pick based on production. I don’t think you can say the same about Tyrique Stevenson. Zacch Pickens was off the roster quickly. Roschon Johnson, even though it was a 4th-round pick, as a running back, I think the expectations needed to be higher than that. Tyler Scott, Noah Sewell, Travis Bell, and Kendall Williamson all did very little in a Bears uniform. Terell Smith showed some promise but couldn’t stay healthy. Wright was an excellent pick, but it can’t carry the entire class, where no other players really made any kind of significant impact from this class. Dexter to a degree, but he’s a member of the Falcons.
The 2024 class is headed by Caleb Williams. Does Poles get credit for taking the obvious number one overall pick? He gets credit for not overthinking it, but I never gave credit to Ryan Grigson for drafting Andrew Luck; I don’t give Poles much credit for drafting Caleb. Rome Odunze, to me, hasn’t lived up to top-10 caliber play, although it’s only been two years. Kiran Amegadjie is gone. Tory Taylor has been an average punter at best; that’s not acceptable when you spend a 4th-round pick on a punter. And there’s certainly hope for Austin Boker still.
It’s tough to grade that class at this point; Caleb Williams leads the class, but how much credit do you get for a no-brainer pick?
We look at the 2025 class, and there is a lot of promise there, but that’s where it gets murky because everybody knows that Ben Johnson is the top guy in football operations now, and we wonder how many of these selections were driven by Johnson and how many were driven by Poles.
And while Poles was the top guy in football operations before that, it’s also fair to wonder what types of picks were made specifically for Matt Eberflus. And we know the coaching staff that Eberflus brought in certainly didn’t cut the mustard and could have hindered the development of some of these middle-round and late-round players.
The drafts before Johnson aren’t horrible, but they are well below “good enough.” I would say he gets a below-average grade here.
Free Agency
Free agency has certainly become more challenging for GMs with the accelerating cap. Rarely do big-time players become available in free agency these days, and you need to make trades for bigger players. When you look at some of the key free agent acquisitions, it’s tough to make a lot of overwhelming positives.
There weren’t really any significant free agent adds in 2022 as Poles was tearing down the roster. I don’t think anyone needs to freak out over Byron Pringle.
2023 brought the Bears Robert Tonyan, Lucas Patrick, and Nate Davis to the offense (Yikes). Yannick Ngakoue was a defensive addition that didn’t do much. Andrew Billings made a positive impact in Chicago. I don’t think Justin Jones was that bad. TJ Edwards was a very good acquisition, and while Tremaine Edmunds was productive, I don’t think he ever approached the production that should have matched his salary.
In 2024, D’Andre Swift didn’t do much but has excelled under Ben Johnson. Coleman Shelton was a serviceable center. DeMarcus Walker didn’t add much to the defensive line, but Kevin Byard was a really nice addition to the secondary.
In 2025, Dayo Odeyingbo and Grady Jarrett have not been good. Were those Poles guys or Dennis Allen guys? Drew Dalman was an excellent addition to the offense. Was that Poles or was that Ben Johnson?
What you end up seeing is that these decisions are largely done as a collective unit. When Swift was signed originally, everyone said, well, that’s Shane Waldron; he loves running backs and needs a running back. The linebackers that were signed were because Eberflus loved linebackers.
It becomes challenging to assess Ryan Poles with two different coaching staffs because we just don’t know how much say the previous coaching staff had in the moves they were making, but they were certainly a part of the process.
Regardless of that, we don’t see a free agent acquisition like Ryan Pace had with Akiem Hicks, where he takes a good player but sees greatness and watches them grow into that player.
Trades
Trading has been interesting for Poles. The Bryce Young/Caleb Williams trade, in my opinion, will go down as one of the great trades in NFL history from the Bears’ perspective, especially if Caleb becomes the guy we think he can be.
Chase Claypool was one of the worst trades the Bears have ever made. Poles lit the 32nd pick of the draft on fire. That’s hard to do.
The Keenan Allen trade didn’t reap the benefits the Bears probably had hoped, but it wasn’t terrible.
Both the Jonah Jackson and Joe Thuney trades have been home runs. Jackson for a 6th and Thuney for a 4th seem like highway robbery at this point.
I still support that Montez Sweat trade. I think a lot of Bears fans criticize that one, but I think Sweat has been mostly what he has needed to be in Chicago, and they needed to trade that 2nd round pick to get him.
Even sending some of the players out of town, I think he got great value for DJ Moore. I think he could have done better on the Khalil Mack deal.
Overall, I think Poles’ trades have been way more positive than negative, but that Claypool trade definitely knocks the grade down a bit because the writing was on the wall in Pittsburgh. Those fans celebrated that trade. They knew what Claypool was, but somehow Ryan Poles didn’t.
Cap Management
Poles has had very good cap management up until this year, and things certainly got questionable this year, but was it his fault, or George McCaskey’s?
Up until then, the Bears have had plenty of cap space and hadn’t passed out too many major contracts, so it’s been easy to maneuver for Poles. He did have to get some bad money off the books when he first took the job and did pretty well with that overall.
When the Bears entered this offseason, we finally needed to see some creative cap management, and we saw none. Now, to be fair, the only way to do that type of creative management is having ownership that is willing to spend additional dollars.
Was George McCaskey willing to do that? If he was, then Poles’ decisions on spending this year were very poor. This feels like the 2019 Bears when they came off the great season and let a few key players go and only signed Buster Skrine. The Bears could have added impact players, but they simply subtracted key players and added new ones in their place (that were better scheme fits). They didn’t sign any impact players to strengthen the roster. It was largely lateral moves.
However, if McCaskey wanted to limit future spending because he knew a massive Darnell Wright extension was coming this summer, and a Caleb Williams extension in 2027 is going to be even larger, he may have hamstrung what football operations was allowed to do.
I tend to believe it’s more than the latter and not the former.
Coaching Hires
This is another tough one to assess. Ryan Poles’ first coach, Matt Eberflus, is arguably the worst in franchise history. But the counterargument to that was that Trace Armstrong had already packaged Eberflus to the Bears and Poles didn’t have much of a say.
Poles’ second hire, Ben Johnson, is arguably already one of the best coaches in the league. But Rick Smith credited Kevin Warren a great deal with landing Johnson. So do we give Poles very little credit for either hire?
Another tough call.
Final Assessments
When I look at Ryan Poles, I look at a guy who largely failed prior to Ben Johnson’s arrival.
Not all of this was his fault, but he had almost zero success on day three of the draft, his coaching staff was inept, they mishandled Caleb Williams’ rookie year, and made very few strong free agent acquisitions. The cap management wasn’t challenging in this era; however, he did have more strong trades (Caleb Williams, Montez Sweat) than disastrous ones (Chase Claypool).
The records were poor, the coaching was poor, and I think the argument could absolutely have been made that Poles should have been fired along with Matt Eberflus.
But that decision was not made. The decision was made to keep Poles and pair him with Ben Johnson.
With Johnson largely running football operations now, the assessment for Poles has changed. What decisions were largely Ben’s and what decisions were largely Poles’? Nobody knows except for those in the rooms with those two individuals. So to be fair to Poles, we have to assess him collectively as we did with Eberflus.
Poles, when he isn’t quite the top banana, has had more success. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s certainly much improved over where it was with Eberflus and Poles working as a tandem.
I think it’s fair to say that Ryan Poles was a poor general manager, but sometimes, people improve and get better at their jobs. Has that happened with Poles? Or has Ben Johnson taken the big decisions off his plate, and that’s why things are moving in the right direction?
Whether it’s an improved Poles or Johnson’s input (or both?), regardless, things have turned around. The biggest key to really rounding this roster into shape is finding better players on day three. A lot of fans like to say, who cares? It’s day three picks, but when you look at Ryan Pace, who most fans didn’t like as a GM, you’ll see a big collection of day three hits like Eddie Jackson, Jordan Howard, Adrian Amos, Tarik Cohen, and Darnell Mooney.
Poles hasn’t had that. He had Braxton Jones and perhaps something with Austin Booker. Last year he may have scored with Kyle Monangai, and this year he may have done the same with Jordan van den Berg and maybe Malik Muhammad. If the day three picks also improve, the Bears roster is going to continue to strengthen and become a championship contender.
There’s plenty to question with Poles, but in the end, if Poles and Johnson become a strong pairing that results in a strong roster, it’s irrelevant who is more responsible, as long as the success is there.
When Ryan Poles first arrived, he failed, but perhaps Poles 2.0 can have success in Chicago. It’s amazing what the right coach and right quarterback can do for a football team.
