Fresh off landing the No. 1 pick by the Bears being the worst team in the NFL last season, general manager Ryan Poles faced a rush of questions in January about whether he’d use it to draft a quarterback and trade Justin Fields.
He delivered a line that has stuck to him. As he considered top-tier prospects, Poles said he would need to be “absolutely blown away” by one of them to make a move. He wasn’t, though perhaps he and others misjudged Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, who went No. 2 and is soaring with the Texans.
Poles has the rare fortune to possibly get the top pick again, this time via the Panthers. And as he studies what is thought to be a far stronger quarterback class for 2024, he should apply his standard to Fields instead: Fields must absolutely blow him away to stay.
No general manager can survive getting the No. 1 pick back-to-back years and failing to emerge with a franchise quarterback. That answer could be Fields, but Poles will be weighing his first three seasons against what he imagines for Southern Cal’s Caleb Williams or North Carolina’s Drake Maye.
That decision hinges on where the picks land, of course. The Bears currently are slotted to select first and fourth. Fields could push the Bears’ pick out of range by leading them to wins over the final six games, starting Monday against the Vikings, but the 1-9 Panthers don’t seem to be stopping their freefall anytime soon.
If Poles hasn’t already decided, and he very well might have, Fields has no margin over the rest of the season. The Bears can’t just like how he plays. They have to love it.
A quarterback who shows flashes of potential but can’t do it regularly isn’t special, and to contend for a championship, that’s required. The Chiefs and Eagles have perennial MVP candidates, and the teams on their heels mostly have quarterbacks who could be in that race any given season. That’s what it takes to legitimately chase a Super Bowl.
As Fields aims to state his case, keep in mind how high the bar is to earn franchise quarterback status. He’s eligible for a contract extension in the upcoming offseason, and the last three of those at his position ranged from $255 million to $275 million over five years. Once a team commits that money, it’s forced to save in other areas.
But even more so, the length of the deal is an incredible commitment.
The Dolphins could never figure out what they thought of Ryan Tannehill and won zero playoff games in his six seasons. The Bengals never won a playoff game in nine seasons of uncertainty with Andy Dalton. That’s a long stretch of playing for nothing.
Both those teams vaulted into contention when they picked a replacement high in the draft.
When Poles vacated the No. 1 pick this year by trading down to No. 9 in a deal with the Panthers, he said he would save his notes on Bryce Young, Stroud, Anthony Richardson and others because he wanted to track the accuracy of his assessments. All of Chicago is tracking that, too, like it did when Ryan Pace bypassed Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson to draft Mitch Trubisky in 2017.
If Poles commits to Fields by trading out of the No. 1 pick or using it at another position, that’s going to be a long list of comparisons. Every time one of them throws for 400 yards or plays in a Super Bowl will be tough for Poles to weather, just as it was for Pace.
He has taken an incremental approach to rebuilding the Bears, and there’s prudence in that, but he won’t get forever. Poles needs to be so “absolutely blown away” by Fields over the last six games that he’s willing to stake his job on keeping him.
