Ryan Poles never imagined things would get so bad at Halas Hall that he’d be compelled to give a state-of-the-organization speech after just two games.
With the Bears playing the Chiefs on Sunday and Poles returning to the place where he launched his career, he’d hoped to be striding into Arrowhead Stadium as the general manager of an upstart capable of upsetting the defending champs.
His Bears are the talk of the league right now, but not in a good way. Poles had to try to steer them back to sanity.
It’s a credit to him that he always steps in front of the camera to take ownership when something significant happens, something predecessor Ryan Pace seldom did, but what he owns is a disaster. And while he pushed optimism Thursday, the mess spilling out of his building was undeniable.
The team is winless.
The defensive coordinator is gone.
The quarterback and coaching staff aren’t on the same page.
“Slow start, 0-2, not where you want to be,” he led off. “The beautiful thing about our philosophy is we’re solution-oriented. We work together to find these solutions and solve our problems to get everything back on track.
“To make it really, really clear, I know the outside noise, but no one in our building is panicking. No one is flinching at any situations — not our owner, not our president, not our head coach, not myself, none of our players.”
Week 3 is awfully early for so many reassurances, and that appeared to be Poles’ purpose in making an unscheduled media appearance: to reassure everyone the Bears are headed the right direction regardless of everything that has transpired on and off the field recently.
He has “a ton of faith” in coach Matt Eberflus, who is staring at a mountainous climb to .500 after starting his career 3-16.
He still feels “good about this roster on paper,” and the Bears just need time to get rolling. He insisted they’re better than the first two games showed and are “doing things the right way, [but] unfortunately sometimes the right way is the hardest way.”
Poles didn’t talk much about defensive coordinator Alan Williams’ mysterious exit other than maintaining the Bears have been “handling it the right way.” He hinted the staff will be restructured next week, which could mean bringing in an interim defensive coordinator so Eberflus doesn’t have to keep calling plays.
Answers on Williams have been elusive, even for players, apparently. Cornerback Tyrique Stevenson said Eberflus hadn’t addressed the team about the situation as of Thursday afternoon.
“No, not yet,” he said. “I don’t know when that’s gonna happen.”
Poles mostly discussed Fields. The timing of the news conference seemed like it must’ve been intended to manage the fallout of Williams leaving, but Fields overshadowed everything at Halas Hall.
He went into this season with a lot to prove and hasn’t looked good, and one of his main theories Wednesday was that he’s been overcoached.
“No one took it personally,” Poles said. “We want him to be successful, and it takes everyone for him to be successful, including himself. He hit on all of that. It was no shock to anyone.”
The thing about all those assurances is they don’t have a concrete foundation. As much as Poles wants all of that to be true, he doesn’t know for sure that it is.
Poles stepped into an organization that was dysfunctional long before his arrival, which is part of the terrain regardless of him having nothing to do with that, and as a second-year GM he has minimal discernible track record.
He’s establishing his track record now, in real time, so assurances don’t mean anything yet. If he’s right about everything he envisions for the Fields, Eberflus and the Bears at large, especially at a time when few on the outside see what he sees, that’s how he’ll build credibility.
