The Chicago Bears are repeating history with hiring Ryan Poles

First, it appears that Poles will get to name his head coach and not be encouraged into an arranged marriage.

His agent is Trace Armstrong who represents a lot of head coaches and football executives so Poles has a good connection there.

Second, he is a former college offensive lineman–he almost made the Chicago Bears as an undrafted free agent.

That can be beneficial for Justin Fields as you have someone in charge who sees the game from a lineman point of view. Bears legend Olin Kreutz has pointed out in The No Name Football Podcast numerous times that if Fields can understand his line protections, he will be a better quarterback and protect himself better.

Kreutz has noted the Bears like to surround their developing quarterbacks with former quarterbacks. They tend to see the game through the pocket and not through the line. That leads to quarterbacks not understanding blocking assignments very well. Maybe a former offensive lineman will encourage the new coaching staff to build seeing the game through a lineman’s point of view into Fields’ development.

You would think a former offensive lineman would make sure to not neglect the line like Pace did.

Poles’ three different bosses…

Another reason the Bears can get better results with Poles is the different football executives he studied under in Kansas City. Unlike Ryan Pace, who reported to Mickey Loomis the majority of his Saints career, Poles had three different football bosses at Kansas City.

Scott Pioli was his first boss. While Pioli’s time in Kansas City was not great, Pioli won three Super Bowls in New England as Bill Belichick’s personnel director. That means Poles was able to learn the Patriots’ way of acquiring players.

His second supervisor was John Dorsey. Dorsey’s time as general manager helped acquire a good amount of the players who won the Super Bowl in 2019 and went to the Super Bowl last season. Dorsey studied under Packers legendary general manager Ron Wolf. Hopefully, Poles learned some of the Wolf teachings from Dorsey.

Poles also navigated through the issues during Dorsey’s tenure that led to the Chiefs firing Dorsey. Hopefully, Poles picked up Dorsey’s eye for talent as well as learned how to not manage the front office as Dorsey did.

Finally, Poles served as current Kansas City Chiefs general manager, Brett Veach’s right-hand man in the draft.

Poles was part of the front office group that picked quarterback Patrick Mahomes—after Pace famously traded up to select Trubisky in the 2017 NFL Draft.

While he never left Kansas City, it is almost like he worked for three different teams with his bosses’ different backgrounds.

While Emery may have given Poles his initial training, Poles had a lot of roles within Kansas City to give him a well-rounded football front office resume.

He also worked with current Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard and former Cleveland Browns general manager Ray Farmer.

Other teams in the league thought highly of Poles. He was a finalist for the New York Giants general manager job this year and the Carolina Panthers opening last season. He was also on his way to Minnesota for his second job interview before the Bears closed the deal.

He is getting rave reviews as a home run hire.

Time will tell if Poles will be successful. The hope is he can finally stop the one part where the Bears history keeps repeating itself and that is his tenure ends in failure.