Upon us is the culmination. His culmination. Bears general manager Ryan Poles’ moment of truth and consequence. Anything that will happen for the rest of this season (and the next two or more, if we are keepin’ this 200) — everything, good, bad, indifferent and sideways, barring major injury to a major player who holds the keys to the franchise — will come back to and fall at his feet.
His time has arrived. His apotheosis is at the doorstep, standing on the ‘‘welcome’’ mat, finger on the Ring button. With only one word left to describe itself: finally.
Here is what we’ve all been waiting for. Hours, days, months, years in the making. What we’ve prayed for and preyed on. What’s he has been building toward. The masterful chess game of tactical moves in and around the NFL for the last nine months. All moves that have brought this entire town to a place it hasn’t visited in a very, very long time.
At the beginning of the year, when the clock struck 00:00 on the Bears’ final game, I wrote a column stating that was the precise moment Poles was on the clock to do what no GM in the history of this franchise had done before. That he had until the first 15:00 flashed on the Soldier Field game clock this Sunday, Sept. 8, at noon — then only known as Game 1 — to have in place the results of his grand scheme. Saying then, ‘‘All things that happen next for this franchise when it comes to what happens on the football field beginning in July, all on him.’’ Saying then that now is when time begins. Again.
From that time until now, we’ve watched the evolution of a GM take shape while he has reshaped the 104-year history of a franchise in front of us all. From the consideration he took in helping Justin Fields land in a ‘‘best-case scenario’’ spot, exposing that a human-before-GM gene existed within him, to the tears and emotion he didn’t hide in front of the ‘‘Hard Knocks’’ cameras while having to — but not at all wanting to — cut Adrian Colbert showed that at times (probably more often than not) this game is not just a game when it comes to how he operates.
Yet his moves have been beautifully shrewd, artfully disruptive, skillfully controversial, always intentional. It has been a masterclass in operational balancing of a professional organization on the verge of NFL irrelevancy. Now we’ll see whether all of his work is about to work.
It’s the beginning of the outcome. Which, if all falls correctly, can put Poles in an early, elevated and equal managerial stature of a Theo (Epstein) and, dare I say — gulp — a Jerry (Krause) and a Stan (Bowman) in a city that historically gives credit to GMs like it gives credit to first-term mayors. For Poles, life is the exact opposite of “Bear down.’’ Everything from here on gotta be ‘‘Bear up.’’
Getting past the not signing defensive players to $100 million-plus contracts; getting past the Bears don’t believe in black QBs as the answer; getting past past and missed draft picks; getting past everything from Chase Claypool to Luke Getsy. Poles did that.
It, too, is the optimism that acts as both tease (not judge) and jury. The optimism that has engulfed and endangered this city and all of the surrounding subs in a way that hasn’t existed here for a generation or two. Poles did that, too. Created a feeling while possibly constructing a Chicago football infrastructure that will sustain it.
Yet it almost feels too right, right? Too good to be fact while still being deserved. Almost like Poles did his job too well and we’re all waiting for the bottom to drop out in the form of an above alluded-to injury to QB1 (Caleb Williams), a midseason blow-up between offensive coordinator (Shane Waldron) and head coach (Matt Eberflus), an invasion of egos infecting the wide receiver core, the defensive cornerstones (Montez Sweat and Jaylon Johnson) resting on their contractual laurels now that they both got their bags or the impatience of impatience prevailing over our new blue-and-orange sky, making us turn on one another and on the Bears once they fall three games below .500.
And begin to blame Poles for all of it.
For the football gods this time seem as though they’ve made a conscious and conscientious decision to no longer allow the Bears to get in their own way of figuring out success. Or at least allowed us, regardless of how this might turn out, to experience what the true beginning of success feels like. Knowing that Chi pledges our allegiance to the Bears like a national anthem, the gods know our spirits come with lifted voices when we sing.
So while Game 1s can often mean nothing, for the Bears, this Week 1, Game 1 in 2024 has more significance connected to it than any game since former GM Ryan Pace’s wild-card loss in 2019. Sunday signifies the inauguration of an era that, either way, will go down in this franchise’s history. With Poles’ name, image, likeness — and vision — written all over it.