The incoherent ramblings of a belligerent Bears fan.
Man, it was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it?
I know some Chicago Bears fans actually wanted a loss in week 18 for draft position but that wasn’t me. I’m all for tanking if a team needs a QB, especially if there’s an excellent prospect coming up in the draft, but I wanted the win against the Packers. I wasn’t expecting it, but I was damn glad it happened.
Monday I was hopeful we would hear the Bears were making an additional change, but no news came down. It wasn’t surprising. It was probably expected.
I hadn’t planned on writing about Tuesday’s end of year pressers this week. I was probably going to write up why it was the wrong decision to keep Ryan Poles, but I didn’t think there would be a need for a Hot Take Tuesday column until I heard the nonsense coming out of Halas Hall.
Where to start? I suppose we should start with Ryan Poles, who instilled zero confidence in me when I heard him talk to the press today.
Poles is very comfortable in front of the media when it’s all yucks and “Hey, we have Caleb and Rome rah rah!” But when he’s in even the slightest uncomfortable press conference, he loses eye contact, becomes unsure of himself, and does not look like a confident leader. Poles wasn’t as bad as he was at Thanksgiving, but he wasn’t much better.
Poles’ answer about the offensive line was laughably bad.
I think my favorite part of the day was the Chicago Tribune’s Dan Wiederer asking Poles a question about Caleb Williams and mentions the “disruption and stress” that Williams faced Poles interrupted him and asked, “What disruption and stress?”
Is Poles that clueless or is he just pretending to be? I certainly hope it’s the latter but it’s hard to determine at this point.
Let’s move onto Kevin Warren. Ryan Poles reports to Warren, so it would be important to get his stance on Ryan Poles’ contract status being he only has one year left on his contract. We also know how important it is for coaches to know they are walking into a stable situation and that the GM will be there. Kevin Warren preached stability last year, so clearly, he wants to extend Ryan Poles, right? What does he think about keeping Ryan Poles here long-term? “When we say long-term, a year is a lifetime,” Warren said.
Excuse me?
Now look, I don’t think Ryan Poles should have been retained, but now that we are here, you can’t lame-duck him with a new head coach. You want to let the new head coach know that there’s no stability and set off red flags all over an interview process? Tell the candidate that Poles may not be here in 2025 and see how it goes. If the Bears are playing coy and planning on extending him, just do it. What they did today serves no purpose.
It certainly seems like Poles is going to go into this upcoming season as a lame duck and that just shows just how ridiculous the Bears are. Could you imagine if they draft the QB in 2024, hire the head coach in 2025 and bring in a new GM in 2026? You literally couldn’t do it more backwards than that.
And now, let’s get to George McCaskey. The leader of this circus. Where to start with George. Let’s start with his response about the fans chanting “sell the team” against Seattle. George responded that he was more bothered by all the Detroit fans who were in the stadium the previous week against the Lions. A good answer, one would think. Until we found out from The Score that George McCaskey was selling suites to Lions fans!
Hypocrite. But it gets worse from George McCaskey. Oh, does it get worse. Teams stay bad because of ownership. That couldn’t be more true here.
McCaskey was asked if he thought it was important to make sure the general manager was extended to make sure the football operations was aligned. George’s response, “In the interviews I’ve participated in, that was never a factor.”
Can we just talk about how clueless he is? I hate to be so damn brutal, but it’s just a clown show. Let’s examine it, shall we, George? Let’s look at the interviews you’ve participated in. Marc Trestman was hired in 2013. Phil Emery was hired in 2012. So no, George, it wasn’t an issue, Emery had three years remaining on his contract.
In 2015, Ryan Pace and John Fox were brought in at the same time, so no, George, it wasn’t an issue.
Let’s jump ahead to 2022, Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus were brought in at the same time, so no, George, it wasn’t an issue.
In 2018 when Matt Nagy was hired on January 8th, 2018, was it an issue then? No, it wasn’t George. Why? Because Ryan Pace received an extension on January 1st, 2018, through the 2021 season.
So no, George, it was never an issue due to your circumstances. But of course, it’s a damn issue.
These press conferences were a complete joke. This coaching search seems to be one as well. The list they’ve compiled is laughably bad. Yes, there are some legitimate candidates on there, but some of the other names on there are just head-scratchers. David Shaw? Mike Kafka? In the words of Jeff Berckes and Lester Wiltfong from Bear and Balanced, “I mean, what are we doing here?”
If Mike Vrabel heads to New England, it’s a very good possibility that Ben Johnson ends up in Chicago, but if Johnson takes a job elsewhere or stays in Detroit, Bears fans should have very little hope they get this coaching search right.
I was hopeful with the addition of Kevin Warren that, perhaps, the Bears would start running things the right way, but based on how the first two days of the 2025 offseason have begun, there’s no reason to think anything is any different at Halas Hall.