Rarely in Bears history has everything fallen into place perfectly for them as it did leading up to and including this draft. It was almost too easy. Anybody could’ve spotted USC quarterback Caleb Williams’ talent and taken him No. 1, then followed by saying yes to Washington wide receiver Rome Odunze at No. 9.
General manager Ryan Poles was very fortunate. But he also was extraordinarily prudent and prepared.
This will be a landmark draft for the franchise and a milestone in Poles’ young career — not only because of the talent he brought in with those top two picks, but because he has his roster brilliantly positioned for this moment. It’s a tremendous accomplishment for a general manager who had the worst team in the league just two seasons ago.
“I would have never guessed that it lined up the way that it did, so we’re all excited,” Poles said Saturday. “A lot of hard work went into it and it paid off, for sure. Now it’s time to start a new chapter for this organization.”
He’s been on that lately.
For most of Poles’ time with the Bears, he readily acknowledged that while he didn’t have anything to do with their tumultuous history, he understood that he’d be swimming in those waters. He grasped the aggregation of frustration over decades of incompetence — it’s why this job was open in the first place — and he accepted that it’d be the backdrop for any moves he made.
He’d definitely had enough of that after drafting Williams on Thursday, saying sharply, “I’m done talking about it. Those days are over. We’re bringing players in here that really want to change everything.”
That started by hiring a general manager with the capability to change things.
Poles would be the first to admit he has caught some breaks, beginning with Lovie Smith’s Texans pulling off a comeback in a meaningless game at the end of 2022 to hand the Bears the first pick in the draft. Unenthralled by that quarterback class, Poles flipped it for an arsenal of assets from the Panthers.
He traded with the right team. The Panthers plunged straight to the bottom, handing the Bears the No. 1 overall pick to take Williams.
“We’ve done a good job getting the roster where it is,” Poles said. “It makes me feel really fortunate about some of the things that happened to allow us to build the roster a little bit more efficiently than if everything was flat.”
But he deserved to have a few things go his way after taking over a team that his predecessor, Ryan Pace, had wrecked by mismanaging quarterbacks, overspending and selling off future draft picks all to assemble a team going nowhere. Poles began his tenure by offloading superstar Khalil Mack for financial reasons and without a first-round pick.
When Poles caught breaks, he made great decisions. Of the seven draft picks he made in the first three rounds over 2022 and ’23, five figure to be starters this season on a team competing for a playoff spot. He also landed a viable left tackle in Braxton Jones as a fifth-round pick.
He spent carefully in free agency and added playmakers in wide receiver Keenan Allen and running back D’Andre Swift last month, setting up an unusually advantageous situation for Williams. Most quarterbacks drafted high in the first round land in dumpster fires. This is far from it.
Now Poles and the Bears have a four-year window to make an aggressive push for the Super Bowl while Williams is on a cheap rookie contract estimated at less than $10 million per season.
And now everything has lined up for the organization. Not only is it at the onset of an incredible opportunity, it has every reason to be confident it has the right man in charge to maximize it.