As Ryan Poles heads into his first draft as Bears general manager on Thursday, he’s thinking big — not big as in making a splash this week, but big picture. There’s no urgency to fill holes on a team that’s almost certainly a year or more away from competing.
He is urging discipline when it comes to prioritizing his long-term plan for the Bears, and that was evident as he restrained himself in free agency as well as his apparent disinterest in trading for a wide receiver like the 49ers’ Deebo Samuel. If Poles gets this draft right, he can find his own version of Samuel at a fraction of the cost and his grand ideas in play for 2023 and beyond.
