5 Biggest Mistakes of Ryan Poles' Bears Tenure So Far

Who knows if Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles will have the final call on who is the team's next head coach.

It might be team president Kevin Warren who has the final say.

After just firing Matt Eberflus, who is quite possibly the worst head coach to ever roam the Bears' sideline, who could blame him? Poles' list of mistakes is quite glaring for someone who only took over in 2022.

Ryan Poles' 5 Biggest Mistakes With Bears So Far

1. Deciding to keep Matt Eberflus is Poles' biggest mistake as general manager

To be fair, the defense was humming at the end of last season. The club had won four of the final six games. So it is not like Poles did not see something that was not there.

However, after botching a lead against Cleveland during that final six-game stretch that was preceded only two games before by blowing a double-digit lead in Detroit, the hints were there that Eberflus was not going to help this team win in the margins.

Plus, there was Jim Harbaugh, who would have been the perfect head coach for Caleb Williams' development, willing to jump back to the NFL. Poles did not even consider seeing if Harbaugh would be interested in returning to the franchise that drafted Jim in the first round.

Now, Harbaugh likely would have scared the McCaskeys, but that is what the franchise needed if it was going to be a serious organization. Instead, Poles chose Eberflus, and his blunders in close games left the team 4-8 and losing in nationally embarrassingly fashion.

It got so bad that the franchise made Eberflus the first in-season firing in franchise history. Think about that: a team that has been around since the NFL was founded in 1920 and has employed the overmatched Marc Trestman finally decided to break a century-plus precedent by canning the Flus.

Poles might be better than some of his predecessors at realizing it is time to move on from a major mistake, but this was an avoidable one had he been bold enough to move on last offseason. If the team wanted a leader of men as they reported to be targeting, last offseason would have been the best since Dan Quinn and Mike Vrabel were on the coaching market.

Now Poles gets a do-over, only this time, he will be closely supervised by his boss.

Who knows if Kevin Warren will be a better approver than chairman George McCaskey, but at least Warren has had to deal with head coaches when he was the Big Ten commissioner. That is at least a step from George, who still thinks being just a fan is a good thing despite the Bears being the only business entity that makes him a billionaire.