The new deal: It's still Ben Johnson or bust for Bears GM Ryan Poles

Bears coach Ben Johnson was hired to make a quarterback out of Caleb Williams, a general manager out of Ryan Poles, a team president out of Kevin Warren and an NFL owner out of George McCaskey. That's why he's the most important coaching hire at Halas Hall since Mike Ditka.

It's too early to expect results. But it's worth noting that after six months on the job, without having played a game, the most tangible evidence of success on any of those fronts is with Poles, who was on the hot seat of public opinion, if not at Halas Hall, after the third season of his teardown/rebuild went off the tracks at 5-12 — with in-season firings of offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and head coach Matt Eberflus.

After responding to the whiff on Eberflus by hiring the hottest candidate in the 2025 hiring cycle in Johnson — a proven offensive play-caller/coordinator to work with second-year quarterback Caleb Williams — Poles prioritized roster adjustments that give Johnson the best chance to get his side of the ball right.

He fortified the offensive line by trading for All-Pro guard Joe Thuney, signing center Drew Dalman in free agency and taking Boston College offensive tackle Ozzy Trapilo in the second round of the 2025 draft. He used his first three picks in the draft for offensive players — Michigan tight end Colston Loveland in the first round (10th overall), Missouri wide receiver Luther Burden in the second round (39th) and Trapilo (56th).

With Poles' fixation on developing Williams and the offense, it seems like Johnson is calling the shots as much as Poles. And while Johnson is not officially in a co-GM role, it's pretty clear that he carries more weight at Halas Hall than previous coaches — arguably more than any coach since Dave Wannstedt in 1993-98.

So it's not surprising that the Bears reportedly have extended Poles' contract through the 2029 season to align him with Johnson's reported five-year contract. And not that big of a deal. The Bears' immediate future is tied more to Johnson than Poles.

If anything, the Bears have gotten up to NFL speed with a tacit dynamic where the coach and GM work in tandem — like Andy Reid/Brett Veach with the Chiefs, Kyle Shanahan/John Lynch with the 49ers and Sean McVay/Les Snead with the Rams. Let's put it this way: there's a far greater chance that Johnson will hire (or approve) the Bears' next GM than Poles will hire the Bears' next head coach. And if Johnson fails, they'll both be gone — likely before the end of the 2029 season.

Poles has had his hits and misses in three-plus years as general manager — but nothing defining and nothing fireable. In 2017, Ryan Pace was prioritizing a quarterback and tight end in the draft and chose Mitch Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes/Deshaun Watson AND Adam Shaheen over George Kittle — now that's a fireable GM offense — and lasted five more seasons. (And not to re-litigate the Mahomes miss, but Pace's error was not only choosing Trubisky, but being so resolute in his choice that he traded three picks to move up one spot in the draft to get him. He thought Trubisky was that far ahead of Mahomes and Watson.)

I think general managers in general should get a longer leash and Poles is a young, even-tempered GM who deserves a chance to prove he can learn from his mistakes. He hired Johnson after hiring Eberflus and overseeing the hiring of Waldron. He traded for DJ Moore after trading for Chase Claypool. He traded for Thuney and signed Dalman after signing Nate Davis and Lucas Patrick and trading for Ryan Bates. So far, so good.

One issue still to solve that could be tricky — leadership and roster makeup. Poles was resolute about building a roster loaded with good people and leaders that would promote the "winning culture" every organization cherishes. But even with a locker room that met the first part of that standard (and eight captains), the Bears' roster was lacking in trying times — allowing the disastrous Fail Mary to fester into a 10-game losing streak. Even Poles himself acknowledged the failing — challenging veterans to step up in holding teammates accountable, and promoting a "healthy friction" in the locker room.

It remains to be seen if that can be done. The 2024 Bears had a roster loaded with good guys who were good teammates, but almost exclusively players who lead by example, including accomplished veteran players who have never been on a winning team — DJ Moore, Montez Sweat, Andrew Billlings and DeMarcus Walker.

The Bears' most playoff-experienced players in 2024 — linebackers Tremaine Edmunds and T.J. Edwards — let their play do the talking. Cornerback Jaylon Johnson is one of the strongest personalities and voices in the Bears' locker room. But he has zero interest in becoming a Mike Brown type of leader. (It took the lowest moment of the season — the final-minute debacle against the Lions at Ford Field — for Johnson to lash out at Eberflus in the locker room, a big part of the ugly episode that led to Eberflus' firing the next day.)

Jaquan Brisker, maybe the player most willing to grow into a leadership role last season, was in no position to do that. He was out with what became a season-ending concussion when the Fail Mary sent the Bears' season careening out of control. Cornerback Tyrique Stevenson, the culprit of the Fail Mary disaster, is arguably the edgiest player on the team and a candidate to be a leading voice in the locker room. But he has a lot of growing up to do to even get close to that.

Truth be told, winning solves much of that problem. So if Johnson is as good as advertised, "leadership" will follow in abundance. But if the early road is rocky, Poles changing the good culture to a winning culture with many of the same players will not be the least of his challenges to be better than he has been.

But like almost everything in football, success for a general manager is mercurial and a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Poles drafted Caleb Williams with the No. 1 overall pick of the 2024 draft, then hired the hottest coaching candidate of the cycle who just happened to want them ("I want this job.") as much as they wanted him. Both moves are like putting "O" in the center of a tic-tac-toe board — an obvious tack that anybody would have made. It's not like he drafted Jalen Hurts in the second round or plucked Andy Reid out of Green Bay as an unassuming quarterbacks coach.

But Poles has the makeup to take advantage of his good fortune. And sometimes all it takes is a quarterback and a coach to make a GM. Jason Licht — famously passed over for the Bears' GM job in favor of Phil Emery in 2011 — was 27-53 (.338) in his first five seasons as the Buccaneers' general manager in 2014-2018, firing two hand-picked head coaches — and survived.

His third hire was Bruce Arians in 2019, which helped lure Tom Brady to Tampa in 2020 — and the rest is history. The Buccaneers not only won the Super Bowl in the 2020 season but they've been to the playoffs in five consecutive seasons (a franchise record) — including the last three without Arians and Brady. Licht and coach Todd Bowls signed contract extensions in June.

That's a bit of cherry-picking — guilty as charged — but still an indication of how the right coach and the right quarterback can turn a struggling GM from a loser to a winner. Ryan Poles still needs a lot to go right, but at least with Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams, he finally has the wind at his back.