Ryan Poles understood the stark reality of his position. Picking a quarterback is not easy. Everybody knows this. However, he understood from the outset that picking a quarterback for the Chicago Bears was much harder. It is one thing to identify a young man with terrific talent. Poles needed to find one not only with great talent but also the mental fortitude to handle playing football in a large city with diehard fans. That was often the biggest issue the Bears had in the past. They’d found plenty of guys with talent. Most of them couldn’t handle the intense pressure of playing in Chicago.
Poles thinks Caleb Williams can be different. For one, he grew up in a big city (Washington D.C.) and played most of his college football in Los Angeles. Playing under the intense lights of big-time football is nothing new to him. There is nothing small-time about Williams. Poles spoke to Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune about his plans for the quarterback moving forward. Yes, the Bears have to teach him how to play the position as a professional. However, it goes beyond that.
“It’s deeper than just game day,” Poles said. “It’s deeper than training camp. There are so many different things he has to be prepared for.”
Poles — who became an NFL GM four months after his 36th birthday — speaks from experience when he emphasizes the need for Williams to fully grasp all the obligations of being a franchise quarterback, particularly in a passionate football city with a vast conglomeration of media.
“We have to train him to be a CEO,” Poles said. “Because with all these successful championship-caliber teams, you have a head coach, a GM, a president and an owner. And then you have your quarterback. He’s going to represent one of those figureheads. And a lot of these guys don’t know how (to handle that).
“I didn’t come in trained to be a GM. No one gets trained to be a head coach. It’s ‘Hey, you did a really good job coaching your side of the ball or you did a really good job evaluating players. Now go lead a lot of people.’ But it’s a different job. And being a (franchise) quarterback in this league is a different job. So we have to be on top of training him on how to do those things.”
That CEO comment really stood out. One thing about the young quarterback that immediately became evident was how he seemed to approach everything with a business-like mentality. He and his father, Carl Williams, laid out a detailed list of goals when he was 10 years old on how he’d reach the NFL. That should give you an idea of how Williams sees things. To him, learning how to handle Chicago is just another step in the process. He’s done a tremendous job of it so far, embracing the fans in public and fielding media questions with calm, straightforward answers. If you think about it, he carries himself like the CEO of a big company would.
Professional.
We may now understand where that came from. Part of it was his father’s influence, and part was from Ryan Poles’ training regimen. If you look at the most successful athletes in Chicago sports history, they seem to have a similar trait in common. Michael Jordan was that way. Walter Payton was that way. Jonathan Toews was that way. They were calm and professional to the cameras but maniacal competitors during games. Williams is on that same track. Poles has to be happy with the results so far.
