The compliments for Bears GM Ryan Poles in free agency have slowed now as the contract signings have reached a trickle.
If everyone around the NFL takes a good look at what's going on, they should start to issue another set of compliments to Poles soon. Maybe Michael Lombardi will even want to give him one.
It was Lombardi, a former NFL analyst and the king of Bill Belichick trumpeters, who mocked Poles for signing edger rusher Montez Sweat to a four-year, $98 million deal after trading a second-round draft pick to get him.
"He's got 35 sacks in five years, he's never had double digit sacks," Lombardi complained angrily in an often-replayed sound bite, as if it was his own money.
Since Lombardi shot off his mouth, Sweat had a double-digit sack season and then a down year in 2024 when the entire team also went down the drain.
"This guy just got (a) Myles Garrett number," Lombardi said of Sweat.
The point he was making was that the Bears could have waited to sign Sweat without trading away a second-round pick and gave up too much in draft compensation for him, besides.
But there was no guarantee the next March they could have had him for that much money as contracts constantly go up. And Poles said at the time he felt like they couldn't get a better pass rusher in the next draft as good as Sweat with a second-round pick. He was right. No second-round edge rusher drafted in 2024 had more than 3 1/2 sacks.
"This contract, people are sending me, 'oh you're and idiot, you don't know what you're talking about,' You're the idiot," Lombardi said of some unnamed Bears fan. "You could have gotten this contract in the free market."
Fast forward one and a half years from that point and here's the market for defensive ends: Danielle Hunter just got a one-year $35.6 million deal. Garrett received a four-year, $140 million contract and he wasn't even a free agent. That's what real Garrett money looks like, not past Garrett money.
At another position, the same Texans who signed Hunter to a wild amount of money for one year also signed Pro Bowl cornerback Derek Stingley to a five-year, $113.026 million deal, which is an average of $22.605 million.
Last year Poles gave a contract extension of $76 million for four years to Jaylon Johnson, who has been in the last two Pro Bowls. Cornerback Jaycee Horn just got a four-year, $100 million deal and has been to one Pro Bowl.
Money is going up at exorbitant rates at many valued positions in the league, cornerback, edge rusher and wide receiver being a few of them.
DJ Moore's four-year, $110 million deal last year looked really big.
It's a pittance compared to the four-year, $161 million deal Ja'Marr Chase got, four years and $140 million Justin Jefferson received, four years and $136 million CeeDee Lamb was paid, four years and $132 million for D.K. Metcalf and so on and so on.
Money only goes up and part of a general manager's job in the modern NFL is to keep ahead of the sticks. They need to gauge what's going to be likely in the future and come up with fair deals at the time to keep their own future costs under control.
What looked like a lot then to Lombardi and others is now wat the secondary receivers or solid players get. The elite command much, much more.
Garrett doesn't get anything close to what Sweat is paid, and Poles pulled off that deal, the one for Moore and the one for Johnson, locking them up for four years and averting the kind of deals that can keep a team from giving a quarterback a second contract in the future.
It's easy to criticize many of Poles' draft picks or free agent signings, or basically his judgment of some talent. However, no one can accuse him of not being able to read the marketplace or knowing the value of the NFL dollar.
Being able to gauge the winds is something GMs need to be able to do and Poles has pulled this off with deals paid and also the trades he made ahead of free agency for Jonah Jackson and Joe Thuney.
Lombardi, meanwhile, is a former NFL executive and analyst, now chasing around after college kids with Belichick at North Carolina as the "GM" of a college team, whatever that is.
Poles, meanwhile, continues to learn from his mistakes. No one would have said anything about his contract foresight when he lost the 2022 standoff with Roquan Smith and traded him for a second-round pick. Things have changed.
