The video surfaced a little before 11 p.m. Monday. Undercover, of course. And shared on social media by Eric Bohn, whose Twitter bio identifies him as “your trusted resource for Chicago’s Northside and the North Shore residential real estate market.”
In this case, he was moonlighting as an impromptu P.I. — with his cellphone ready.
This, after all, is what we do in 2022. See, share, then open the floor to reaction.
Bohn’s covert video documentation showed what certainly appeared to be Chicago Bears Chairman George McCaskey strolling through O’Hare International Airport with a man who certainly appeared to be Kansas City Chiefs executive director of player personnel Ryan Poles, a finalist for the Bears general manager job.
Finally! In the third week of the Bears’ hunt for a new GM and head coach, we had eyes on the process, evidence of McCaskey with boots on the ground, meeting Poles at the airport and leading this all-important search party into a new in-person stage.
From there, it turns out, everything escalated rather quickly. After Poles’ second interview with the team Tuesday — this time at Halas Hall in Lake Forest — he agreed to become the Bears general manager. The team announced the hiring Tuesday evening.
At 36, he will jump into a front-office position that, under the Bears structure, offers great latitude and freedom to carry out his vision. He will be responsible for jump-starting a franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2010 season and finished 6-11 in 2021.
Poles’ first order of business is hiring a coach. He’ll do so, presumably, with a focus on how the new leader can implement a plan to lift quarterback Justin Fields to new heights.
Many around the league see the Bears’ turnaround efforts as a heavy lift. But in Poles, they have united with a leader who understands the climb and has seen what high-level NFL success looks like.
The Chiefs have gone to the playoffs in eight of the last nine seasons. This Sunday, they will play in the AFC championship game for the fourth consecutive January and are favored to reach the Super Bowl for the third consecutive season.
The arrival
Back to that airport encounter for a moment. By Tuesday morning, Bohn’s video of Poles and McCaskey heading out of O’Hare had more than 700 likes and close to 300 retweets. Many of the replies went as you’d expect.
There was predictable sarcasm. From @puttinonfoil: “Wow. George running an Uber now.”
There were jump-to-conclusions responses. From @Eric11Lackey: “Personally, I love this. Ryan Poles is our next GM as long as he accepts. George is adding that extra personal touch, him picking him up saying ‘you’re my guy, When you’re my guy, you’re family.’ This is a huge sign of respect to the candidate.”
And then, naturally, there were next-level social media sleuths who froze the video, zooming in and seeking clues to figure out something. About anything.
Wait … was that, in McCaskey’s right hand, a chauffeur sign that reads “Canandaigua”? Wasn’t Poles a football star once upon a time at Canandaigua Academy in the New York town of his birth? What a clever and clandestine way to welcome a prospective hire to Chicago! (Except McCaskey, in a pair of jeans and gym shoes, was also wearing a Bears mask and a Bears jacket. So much for a stealth operation.)
Still, McCaskey and the Bears did what they needed to do. After a lengthy round of virtual interviews with at least 14 other GM prospects, they zeroed in on a candidate they felt strongly about. And with the Minnesota Vikings also vying for Poles, the Bears left nothing to chance.
Fifteen days after firing Ryan Pace from the GM role, they tabbed Ryan Poles to take over.
A year ago, Poles was in the running for the same position with the Carolina Panthers. That process invigorated him, helping him crystallize his vision and articulate principles for how championship football teams should be built. During an interview last winter with the ABC affiliate in Rochester, N.Y., Poles expressed his appreciation for that experience.
“That whole process might have been one of the bigger events in my life,” he said. “And especially as a personnel man. Once you finally put out your philosophy on how you want to run your front office, how you want to build a team, what type of coaching you like, the type of players that you look for, you put that on paper. And you spend weeks and weeks and weeks doing that.
“And when you present it in a good way to (team) ownership and another head coach, you gain confidence in yourself on how you want to do things. But you also get a different perspective on your own team and how you want to move forward in your own career.”
Making progress
When Tuesday morning began, it seemed as if the Bears were simply taking the next step in a long search.
Moving past the virtual phase of the interviewing process, Poles became the first known candidate for either of the open jobs to meet with the team at its headquarters in Lake Forest. According to league sources and multiple national reports, the Bears also were working to line up second interviews with GM candidates Eliot Wolf and Monti Ossenfort while trying to schedule in-person meetings with potential coaches Dan Quinn, Matt Eberflus and Jim Caldwell.
Poles’ Tuesday interview, however, ended with contract negotiations.
Poles was also scheduled to meet with the Vikings this week for a second time. That’s something McCaskey and the search committee remained aware of. In New York, meanwhile, the Giants coaching search has heated up quickly after they hired Joe Schoen as their new GM on Friday. (Schoen spoke with the Bears about their GM opening Jan. 16.)
Schoen has close ties to one head coaching candidate many Bears fans have been pining for most: Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who appears to be emerging as a top target for the Giants.
It’s entirely possible Daboll will follow Schoen to the Giants. And while that hardly would register as a knockout punch for the Bears, Daboll landing a new gig anywhere outside Chicago will leave a chunk of the fan base feeling jilted.
At the same time
This is all simply part of the deal, the way searches often evolve and change. And on Tuesday, the Bears made good on one of McCaskey’s biggest vows. As he emphasized Jan. 10: “We prefer to hire the GM first.”
That strategy always made sense. Yet for more than two weeks, the Bears pushed through the first phase of virtual interviews for both jobs simultaneously, meeting with at least 10 coaching candidates and at least 13 GM prospects.
Bill Polian, who is assisting with the searches, presumably came in with a master plan on how to help the Bears smoothly handle the two hunts.
“With Bill’s guidance,” McCaskey noted, “we’re going to be able to find a partnership of GM and coach that will work.”
Still, some around the league have emphasized that if the Bears were promising that their next GM would have complete oversight of the football operation, that now means allowing Poles to conduct his own coaching search via his own methods with his own list of candidates.
That’s where the push to schedule second interviews with coaching candidates before hiring a GM has caused a bit of head scratching. At the very least, it’s something McCaskey and Bears President and CEO Ted Phillips will have to explain.
And when Poles has his opportunity to express his vision publicly and offer an update on the next steps of the coaching search, more light will be shed on the direction that will lead the Bears to their next GM-coach union.
‘Down the road’
For the last 13 years, Poles has climbed through the Chiefs organization, starting as a player personnel assistant and working through a series of college scouting roles on his way to executive director of player personnel. Poles has worked under three general managers: Scott Pioli, John Dorsey and Brett Veach. At each step, he has filed away experiences that can help him in his effort to build a championship contending team with the Bears.
As Poles became more established in the front office in Kansas City, he leaned on valuable advice he was given to think through every major the decision the Chiefs faced as if it was his own, writing down notes on what he would have done, whether that matched the team’s actions or not.
“(That way) you’re getting repetition as a lead man in the front office,” Poles told WHAM-13 in New York last year. “That experience has been great. It has given me a ton of confidence.”
Veach, Poles noted, also taught him a lot about staying aggressive and understanding the value of anticipation.
“It’s looking down the road and talking about the things that could happen,” he said. “What’s our Plan A, B, C and D and moving accordingly. It’s just thinking ahead and anticipating moves that are on the horizon. … And there are pros and cons of being aggressive in the front office. But it’s all about timing and where your roster is and what you’re going for.”
For the Bears, the timing felt right Tuesday to entrust Poles with massive responsibilities. It’s now the new GM’s duty to roll from here.
