A suddenly deficient roster is leading to more questions about Ryan Poles' security in Chicago, even if franchise players continue advocating for him
With each passing week, things become more and more glaring for the Chicago Bears as the team starts looking toward the future once again.The Bears' roster is in shambles and the locker room is starting to fall apart right in front of our eyes following a second consecutive blowout loss.It's a concerning turn of events […]
With each passing week, things become more and more glaring for the Chicago Bears as the team starts looking toward the future once again.
The Bears' roster is in shambles and the locker room is starting to fall apart right in front of our eyes following a second consecutive blowout loss.
It's a concerning turn of events for a team that fired their head coach three weeks ago hoping things would get better on the other side. News flash, they haven't and quite honestly it's gotten worse.
At this point, the 2024 season has long been gone for the Bears with the team now crawling to the finish line with three games left to be played. Once again, all eyes are now on general manager Ryan Poles to find improvement during the offseason, but should he even get another chance to fix this team?
Poles has now spent three seasons trying to rebuild this roster in Chicago and while he's done some good things, such as bringing in franchise players like DJ Moore and Caleb Williams, there's also a lot of things that haven't gone right in Poles' tenure.
Since Poles took over the general manager role, the Bears have now had two of the longest losing streaks in franchise history, including the current losing streak that was extended to eight on Monday night.
That comes days after Dan Wiederer of The Chicago Tribune dropped a pretty condemning article breaking down Poles' tenure and all the wrong decisions he made, most notably retaining former head coach Matt Eberflus for the 2024 season.
Despite all his misses, Poles is still expected to remain with the team and will help lead the head coaching search alongside team president Kevin Warren, which raises even more questions for the direction the team is heading.
"Everybody is going to go after the people at the top," Moore said on Tuesday while on 670 The Score. "[Poles'] doing the best that he can right now. I know he's working hard. He's talked to us about him wanting to get the right person in here to turn this thing around. I believe in him."
Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, whom Poles said will be in his mind when selecting the team's next head coach, offered similar support for his general manager when talking to the media last week.
“The amount that he cares about us, the Chicago Bears and wanting to win is why my faith is in him and believing in him and making sure that we get it right,” Williams said Thursday. “That’s my short answer to it.”
Poles has certainly brought in a lot of talent onto a roster that desperately needed it, but some believe he could have done more to the roster, mainly looking at how he constructed the offensive line going into the 2024 season.
Poles previously noted that this year's unit was the deepest he's even created despite allowing their rookie quarterback to be sacked 58 times in 14 games and those hits are starting to take a toll on the face of the franchise.
"Let's put it in this context," Williams said. "Say you get in three car accidents in a month, you're going to feel it. That's what a hit is in football. Getting hit, especially when you can't deliver a hit to somebody… you take those over an amount of time and it builds up."
The unit has been just as poor in the run game with the offense averaging 4.1 yards per carry. That part of the game was especially bad on Monday after the unit failed to convert two fourth-and-short attempts on the ground because there was simply no push from the offensive line.
As much confidence as the players have in their general manager, this improved roster has taken more steps backwards than forwards. That should carry some weight and light a fire under Poles to get things fixed before the team moves on from him too.
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Certainly had a few things to say.
