If you follow the recent media updates, most insiders have expressed the belief that GM Ryan Poles will remain in place this off-season. The Chicago Bears plan to have him lead the search for the next head coach. Adam Schefter said it. Albert Breer said it. Most would take that as gospel. However, Bill Zimmerman of Windy City Gridiron isn’t one of them. He’s long had his own quality sources connected to the team. Even after hearing the updates, he isn’t convinced Poles is safe.
He laid out why on his Bears Banter podcast. It starts with who has been reporting the information. Zimmerman has good reasons to believe that Breer and Schefter are connected directly to Poles in some way. They are basically his media mouthpieces. So when they say expectations are that the GM will stay, it’s his way of putting public pressure on team president Kevin Warren. Why? Mainly because Warren isn’t a fan of Poles and would like to remove him. Poles can sense this and is trying to avoid the ax.
All of these reports that he is probably safe aren’t from inside information; they’re more from Warren’s comment in November that the plan was for Poles to stay. A lot has changed since then.
His hand-picked coaching staff was a complete disaster. Several experts have criticized his roster construction, especially the work on the offensive and defensive lines. He also owns the two longest losing streaks in franchise history, with 14 games between 2022 and 2023 and 10 games currently this season. This is before you get into misfires like Chase Claypool, Nate Davis, Velus Jones, and Ryan Bates. People have no reason to trust he can get all of this fixed. The only reason many still believe he’s safe is because the McCaskey family hired him personally.
Everything comes down to Warren. How much power does he actually have? If he is first in the pecking order, as many believe, then the decision to fire Ryan Poles belongs to him. Don’t forget he had no say in the GM’s hiring. Poles arrived in 2022, while Warren didn’t until May of 2023. That lack of familiarity would always be something significant if the Bears didn’t win. Warren would probably prefer to bring in somebody of his choosing. All of the media buzz isn’t from the organization. It is from Poles trying to save himself.
