How Bears GM Ryan Poles is taking a brilliant approach to the 2022 NFL Draft
Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles is taking an absolutely brilliant approach to the 2022 NFL Draft. Poles, who was hired earlier this year to replace Ryan Pace as Chicago's general manager, will be running the show for the Bears this weekend in Las Vegas. To ensure that Chicago makes the best use of its […]
Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles is taking an absolutely brilliant approach to the 2022 NFL Draft.
Poles, who was hired earlier this year to replace Ryan Pace as Chicago's general manager, will be running the show for the Bears this weekend in Las Vegas.
To ensure that Chicago makes the best use of its picks, Poles is deploying a draft strategy that more front offices should use.
Instead of one big draft conversation among scouts, Poles took a different approach to picking the brains of the guys who have been on the road scouting college players.
The new Bears general manager decided to anonymously poll his scouts on their thoughts. Poles' reasoning behind this was to eliminate "groupthink".
According to The Athletic's Adam Jahns, Poles and his scouts met for 12 days before Easter, watching film and ranking/grading prospects.
Instead of polling everyone together on their thoughts, Poles had scouts "vote" using their cell phones.
“We watched players stacked up in their position and we’d poll everybody off their cellphone,” said Poles to The Athletic. “And that information would come down to a database and we’d display it on the screen. So we’d see how everyone had it ranked.”
“If I polled everyone and you had to raise your hand, sometimes you look around,” added Poles. “It just removes that and everyone puts their thoughts and ideas down and it takes that out of it. You see it. I put it on the screen and you could hear the oohs and ahhs. It was a really cool exercise.”
Groupthink is real when it comes to the draft. We see it constantly with draft analysts, who tend to rank players similarly, only to find out during the draft that NFL franchises ranked players much differently.
Poles' approach helps eliminate that same type of groupthink among his scouts, which should lead to a better draft haul for the Bears.
This might seem like a small deal. But I think it's evidence of Poles being a cerebral general manager who is more than willing to listen to fresh ideas, instead of doing the same thing over and over regardless of the results.
Featured image via David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
