Bears Fans Roast GM Ryan Poles for ‘Horrible’ Pregame Comments

If general manager Ryan Poles hopes to regain the confidence of the Chicago Bears faithful, he may want to avoid making comments like the ones he did in Week 17.

During his pregame interview with ESPN 1000, Poles addressed the team’s slow starts on offense that have plagued them down the stretch of the 2024 season and seemed to throw former coaches Matt Eberflus and Shane Waldron under the bus for the failures.

“Some of it, I believe, stems back from training camp,” Poles said Thursday. “Some of the things that weren’t addressed, they weren’t detailed enough, whatever that is. But there’s a lot to learn from this and we’ve got to make sure that we continue to fight and scrap to figure out ways to get over this hump.”

Now, most Bears fans would agree that Eberflus and Waldron both played crucial roles in Chicago’s rough season in 2024, but plenty also took issue with Poles’ comments that seemed to deflect responsibility away from him. After all, as general manager, he made the questionable decision to retain Eberflus last offseason. He also had a hand in hiring Waldron as offensive coordinator, who proved a mismatch for rookie Caleb Williams.

“You’re the lead football guy in the locker room. Isn’t it your job to make sure these things are addressed? Horrible answer and a horrible look,” one fan responded on X.

“I’ve been a Ryan Poles supporter, but saying this publicly doesn’t make much sense,” another fan wrote in a repost of ESPN Chicago host Peggy Kusinski’s viral post.

While the responses varied in terms of colorful language, a collective question seemed to emerge from their frustrations: Why didn’t Pole do anything to address the issues?

Bears’ Struggles Trace Back to Ryan Poles’ Failures

The case for the Bears to retain Poles as their general manager in 2025 has only grown weaker in the final month of the 2024 regular season. The team has looked even worse under interim head coach Thomas Brown, and many of Poles’ roster-building decisions have become the subjects of scrutiny — including how he constructed the offensive line.

The question now is: Will the Bears stand by their previous commitment to Poles as the team’s general manager in 2025 or will they have a justifiable change of heart?

The key player in this situation is team president Kevin Warren. He offered his vote of confidence for Poles leading the search process for the team’s next head coach during their joint press conference on December 2 a few days after the dismissal of Eberflus. Since then, the Bears have suffered three more humiliating losses and seen Williams’ sack count rise to a league-high 67 — just nine away from an all-time NFL record.

While the reasons for the Bears’ failures are vast, the majority of them stem back to the rebuilding approach that Poles has tried to sell to fans over the past three offseasons. A general manager will have his misses and mistakes, but Poles’ victories are getting all the more difficult to count — even when including the instances where he got lucky.

Can Bears Trust Ryan Poles to Hire Next Head Coach?

The Bears must also consider whether sticking with Poles will impact their ability to hire the head coach they want. Young, promising candidates such as Ben Johnson, Liam Coen or Kliff Kingsbury may not want to hitch their wagons to a potential lame-duck general manager, especially if they have multiple teams interested in them.

There is also a question of whether the Bears can trust Poles to make the right decision. One of the key parts of a general manager’s job is bringing in the right staff to lead the team, and he has failed miserably at that task over his first three seasons. The Bears have either fired or accepted the resignations of nine different coaches — including three coordinators and a head coach — during Poles’ roughly 36 months on the job.

More damningly, Poles passionately insisted that Eberflus was the right man for the job throughout the 2024 offseason even as outside skepticism grew about his 10-24 record over his first two seasons. He knew the Bears’ ugly history with drafting quarterbacks and pairing them with lame-duck head coaches for their rookie seasons. But rather than trying something different, he simply turned his head and said, “That won’t be us.”

Turns out, Poles was wrong, and now it falls on Warren to decide what is the best move for the franchise –even if it means going back on his word about keeping Poles as GM.