Since last January, Ryan Poles made his stance clear. He was 100% behind head coach Matt Eberflus and his staff going into the 2024 season. One more push would get this team over the hump. After a promising 4-2 start, everything came crashing down. The Chicago Bears have lost nine straight games, their second-longest streak in franchise history, and Eberflus was fired the day after Thanksgiving. Even then, Poles seemed to resist the urge to offer any criticism of the former head coach.
That is what made his recent admission on ESPN 1000 so jarring. One of the Bears’ biggest issues this season has been their constant slow starts to games. As of now, they rank 32nd in the NFL, with just 1.3 points averaged in the first quarter. Poles was asked about where this constant issue comes from. He admitted that a good portion of the problems go back to training camp that were never really addressed. It was the first true admonishment of Eberflus’ work the GM has offered.
It still isn’t clear what happened last off-season. Some have said Poles wanted to fire Eberflus, while others say he was the coach’s biggest supporter. Either way, that admission says two things: The coaches set the team up to fail from the start, and the GM saw it coming. It raises questions of why he didn’t step in if something was wrong. Then again, what could he do? He’s the GM. He doesn’t make schematic decisions. That is the responsibility of the coaches. He had no choice but to hope Eberflus would figure out the problem at some point.
They didn’t.
There is no hiding from such a colossal failure. Ryan Poles may keep his job, but that won’t be because he’s earned it. There have been too many setbacks to justify it. He will only stay because George McCaskey hired him personally, and he is reluctant to make a change. All one can do is hope Poles learned some critical lessons from how the hiring process led to Eberflus three years ago. Maybe that will help the Bears navigate the pitfalls this time around.
