Bears 12.0

[Dresden]

To my knowledge, Poles has only done this once- with Sweat. The Claypool trade was just a trade- we didn't sign him to an extension.

Mack, Sweat, Claypool are the famous ones, but to do this type of trade 3x with major assets to me is a mistake.

What I question is the notion that you are giving up assets only to pay market value. I think you are giving up assets to pay less than market value. It's like getting an option to buy a stock right before it has its IPO. You're giving up something to get that stock at a certain price that you feel is better than the price you'll pay after its IPO. Of course there's some risk- maybe that player would get less than what you paid for him on the open market, or maybe they aren't what you paid for him. But the idea of market value itself is very questionable. You don't know what Sweat would have received in free agency. You're giving up an asset to sign him for a price you think is a good deal. Instead of waiting to FA where, you are betting, you would have to pay more due to the competition.

Okay, then let me rephase it this way, if you are giving up 1st and 2nd round picks to bid on a player early, then I think it's a terrible idea. I don't think you necessarily need to wait until FA to sign big guys. Use all your draft picks to get your star talent and use FA to sign value guys on the margins.

When did they give up a 1st and 2nd round pick to bid on a player early? If you're referring to Mack (I don't remember the details there), that was not Poles. And I don't believe with Claypool they agreed to an extension with him. If they did, it didn't stop them from cutting him in any case. At the time, I recall the reasoning was they needed to give Justin some more WR's so they could properly evaluate him, and they thought Claypool was better than any WR they saw being available in that year's draft.

[dougthonus]

To my knowledge, Poles has only done this once- with Sweat. The Claypool trade was just a trade- we didn't sign him to an extension.

Mack, Sweat, Claypool are the famous ones, but to do this type of trade 3x with major assets to me is a mistake.
.

Khalil Mack was a different regime.

Poles's 1st year was 2022. In fact, Poles actually traded Mack for a 2nd and 6th round pick as his 1st move of business.

You are right, my bad, was just looking up Poles trades real quick, and saw the Mack trade, but it was the outgoing not the incoming

[dougthonus]

When did they give up a 1st and 2nd round pick to bid on a player early? If you're referring to Mack (I don't remember the details there), that was not Poles. And I don't believe with Claypool they agreed to an extension with him. If they did, it didn't stop them from cutting him in any case. At the time, I recall the reasoning was they needed to give Justin some more WR's so they could properly evaluate him, and they thought Claypool was better than any WR they saw being available in that year's draft.

Let me rephrase again to try and be even more clear then, fundamentally, I don't like picks for player trades when you are rebuilding. If we didn't extend the player that makes it worse, not better.

[Dresden]

When did they give up a 1st and 2nd round pick to bid on a player early? If you're referring to Mack (I don't remember the details there), that was not Poles. And I don't believe with Claypool they agreed to an extension with him. If they did, it didn't stop them from cutting him in any case. At the time, I recall the reasoning was they needed to give Justin some more WR's so they could properly evaluate him, and they thought Claypool was better than any WR they saw being available in that year's draft.

Let me rephrase again to try and be even more clear then, fundamentally, I don't like picks for player trades when you are rebuilding. If we didn't extend the player that makes it worse, not better.

Got it. While that might be a reason to downgrade Poles if it goes against your philosophy, overall I am encouraged by the direction of the team under Poles, and I think we have a chance to be really good in the near future. We have, hopefully, an excellent coach and what was said to be a generational prospect at QB, and a fair amount of talent across the board (the O line was ranked in the top 5, the receiving corp in the top 10). Still have work to do on the D line, but compared to the past few regimes, I think this is hands down the most potential the team has had in decades, so I have to give Poles a lot of credit for that.

[fleet]

Curious what you're basing that conclusion on.

This offseason’s personnel moves, primarily.

Other posters seem to have this view. So does this include both the good and the questionable moves ???? because there have been several off-season moves that some can certainly question. For example:
- trading a 4th rd pick and extending Thuney before he plays a snap
- signing J Jackson to $52 mil
- signing Odeyingbo to $48 mil
- drafting a TE at #10 when the lines could have used an upgrade
- drafting a college RT and hoping he can play LT
- drafting who many regard as a reach in Hyppolite

It does. There’s more than enough in here to make me nervous, but accountability for ideas gone bad all comes due later. And Ben has to shoulder his load if so. The Bears drafted a TE in FR 2025, and they did some weird stuff in the second round. EDGE (Odeyingbo), and the O-line getting a total overhaul in one offseason is a bill that came due, and yet I am still not 100% sure the repair process shouldn’t have been more organic going forward. But there’s also the view that Caleb can’t wait until later to develop behind a real O-line, which I am sure Ben Johnson is impatient for. Caleb’s acquisition last year is also under increasing scrutiny lately. The butterfly effects are insane. One can only hope things settle down more healthy in years to come and we aren’t constantly scrambling and forcing outcomes in risky ways that followed questionable decisions earlier.

[dougthonus]

When did they give up a 1st and 2nd round pick to bid on a player early? If you're referring to Mack (I don't remember the details there), that was not Poles. And I don't believe with Claypool they agreed to an extension with him. If they did, it didn't stop them from cutting him in any case. At the time, I recall the reasoning was they needed to give Justin some more WR's so they could properly evaluate him, and they thought Claypool was better than any WR they saw being available in that year's draft.

Let me rephrase again to try and be even more clear then, fundamentally, I don't like picks for player trades when you are rebuilding. If we didn't extend the player that makes it worse, not better.

Got it. While that might be a reason to downgrade Poles if it goes against your philosophy, overall I am encouraged by the direction of the team under Poles, and I think we have a chance to be really good in the near future. We have, hopefully, an excellent coach and what was said to be a generational prospect at QB, and a fair amount of talent across the board (the O line was ranked in the top 5, the receiving corp in the top 10). Still have work to do on the D line, but compared to the past few regimes, I think this is hands down the most potential the team has had in decades, so I have to give Poles a lot of credit for that.

The majority of good stuff that has happened appears mostly to be dumb luck rather than plan, so I give him very little credit.

So far he has had the #1 pick in the draft twice where what presently looks like a franchise QB was drafted #2 both times and he still may not have one.

If that holds true with time, that is back to back franchise breaking misses where a franchise making move was literally 1 pick away.

[fleet]

Ben’s Bears… well said. All that matters now.

The parent has finally entered the room. No more tails wagging the dog.

Let’s watch some winning football now instead of the not to lose garbage we watched with Flus.

I give George a lot of grief for a lot of things, but this team was so poorly managed last season that I wouldn’t be surprised if even George finally figured out that he needed outside talent to help him straighten everyone out. And good on George for it. Good on George for ultimately getting over himself. No idea why George felt like retaining Poles after the implosion, but clearly Ben actually was good with a structure of Poles staying in place as a somewhat defanged GM that Ben has a grip on. It’s actually a coach’s dream scenario for the coach to have the ability to point the team in his direction, and have someone like Poles in place to execute the vision for him. The trick is to get ownership and Warren to arrange it.

[dougthonus]

I give George a lot of grief for a lot of things, but this team was so poorly managed last season that I wouldn’t be surprised if even George finally figured out that he needed outside talent to help him straighten everyone out. And good on George for it. Good on George for ultimately getting over himself. No idea why George felt like retaining Poles after the implosion, but clearly Ben actually was good with a structure of Poles staying in place as a somewhat defanged GM that Ben has a grip on. It’s actually a coach’s dream scenario for the coach to have the ability to point the team in his direction, and have someone like Poles in place to execute the vision for him. The trick is to get ownership and Warren to arrange it.

One thing that's tricky is that if you can't do a role, and could never do a role, then gauging whether someone else can do role is really hard. It's tough to tell if the person is full of it or not. It's tough to tell how much of a situation is luck vs skill or if an outcome is maximized but couldn't realistically have been better or if it wasn't as good as it should be.

In that sense, I think a lot of owners just don't know if their GM is really good or bad. Like are they good decision makers but just haven't lucked into the QB? Is the process good, but luck has gone against them? Even when they're doing great, are they great or are they the product of a few lucky moves?

If you make the right hire of someone whom is really great and can run things top down and then knows if the people beneath them are good and knows how to gauge them, then the whole org kind of falls into place, but when you don't have that guy, it's just super hard to tell for people.

In that sense, to me, Poles looks like a guy whom wasn't so great (same with Pace), but they both had enough good things going that I could see why anyone would look at them and say "yeah, they're ok" especially if they talk a good game in the room with you.

Hopefully Ben Johnson is that guy whom can do all those things and have the cascading effect.

[Chicago-Bull-E]

FWIW, I don’t listen to CHGO but they did a 30 minute apology podcast today for having the bozo on. They also lost more subscribers yesterday than any recent data shows. Karma baby.

[fleet]

I give George a lot of grief for a lot of things, but this team was so poorly managed last season that I wouldn’t be surprised if even George finally figured out that he needed outside talent to help him straighten everyone out. And good on George for it. Good on George for ultimately getting over himself. No idea why George felt like retaining Poles after the implosion, but clearly Ben actually was good with a structure of Poles staying in place as a somewhat defanged GM that Ben has a grip on. It’s actually a coach’s dream scenario for the coach to have the ability to point the team in his direction, and have someone like Poles in place to execute the vision for him. The trick is to get ownership and Warren to arrange it.

One thing that's tricky is that if you can't do a role, and could never do a role, then gauging whether someone else can do role is really hard. It's tough to tell if the person is full of it or not. It's tough to tell how much of a situation is luck vs skill or if an outcome is maximized but couldn't realistically have been better or if it wasn't as good as it should be.

In that sense, I think a lot of owners just don't know if their GM is really good or bad. Like are they good decision makers but just haven't lucked into the QB? Is the process good, but luck has gone against them? Even when they're doing great, are they great or are they the product of a few lucky moves?

If you make the right hire of someone whom is really great and can run things top down and then knows if the people beneath them are good and knows how to gauge them, then the whole org kind of falls into place, but when you don't have that guy, it's just super hard to tell for people.

In that sense, to me, Poles looks like a guy whom wasn't so great (same with Pace), but they both had enough good things going that I could see why anyone would look at them and say "yeah, they're ok" especially if they talk a good game in the room with you.

Hopefully Ben Johnson is that guy whom can do all those things and have the cascading effect.

You don’t know what you don’t know. Yeah Doug, the key to working through it successfully is in having enough humility to know that you don’t know what you don’t know. George knows he doesn’t know football, but he appeared to me that he didn’t know that he doesn’t know everything he needs to know about hiring good football people to run his organization top to bottom. The second part is that you’re receptive to someone pointing that out to you. The third part is being able to have enough raw instinct to try and address the the knowledge deficit well by hiring the right people who know what you don’t.

This has been the first chance that Kevin Warren has been able to put his fingerprints on the football operation. George may have thought he knew enough to trust the work he did before Warren arrived. But something happened to change George’s outlook on it. Be it Kevin Warren’s voice of doubt, or the operation falling flat on its face during this high stakes inflection point of team history, and it became crystal clear standing on its own.

[fleet]

FWIW, I don’t listen to CHGO but they did a 30 minute apology podcast today for having the bozo on. They also lost more subscribers yesterday than any recent data shows. Karma baby.

“We were not forced to address this today in any way”

They’re responding to angry Bears fans that choose to disbelieve the story, and explaining the thought process of doing the podcast yesterday. Hoge did express regret not asking some follow up questions to Dunne. i.e about the idea of a CW learning disability. Incredulity about how this wasn’t reported before. Braggs was able to add the meatball side, and claimed he represents the fan’s perspective. Main point, they have a target audience to placate. There was no mea culpa on doing the original podcast.

[Dresden]

I give George a lot of grief for a lot of things, but this team was so poorly managed last season that I wouldn’t be surprised if even George finally figured out that he needed outside talent to help him straighten everyone out. And good on George for it. Good on George for ultimately getting over himself. No idea why George felt like retaining Poles after the implosion, but clearly Ben actually was good with a structure of Poles staying in place as a somewhat defanged GM that Ben has a grip on. It’s actually a coach’s dream scenario for the coach to have the ability to point the team in his direction, and have someone like Poles in place to execute the vision for him. The trick is to get ownership and Warren to arrange it.

One thing that's tricky is that if you can't do a role, and could never do a role, then gauging whether someone else can do role is really hard. It's tough to tell if the person is full of it or not. It's tough to tell how much of a situation is luck vs skill or if an outcome is maximized but couldn't realistically have been better or if it wasn't as good as it should be.

In that sense, I think a lot of owners just don't know if their GM is really good or bad. Like are they good decision makers but just haven't lucked into the QB? Is the process good, but luck has gone against them? Even when they're doing great, are they great or are they the product of a few lucky moves?

If you make the right hire of someone whom is really great and can run things top down and then knows if the people beneath them are good and knows how to gauge them, then the whole org kind of falls into place, but when you don't have that guy, it's just super hard to tell for people.

In that sense, to me, Poles looks like a guy whom wasn't so great (same with Pace), but they both had enough good things going that I could see why anyone would look at them and say "yeah, they're ok" especially if they talk a good game in the room with you.

Hopefully Ben Johnson is that guy whom can do all those things and have the cascading effect.

Owners have a lot invested in the outcome of their teams. I would imagine they are often talking with people around the league about who is good at what they do, who isn't, and they hear it from much better sources than fans do. For instance when they picked Poles, I"m sure the owners got his name from people they spoke to about who might be good for the job, who is the hot candidate right now, who is ready for a bigger role, etc.

As to their performance once they are in their jobs, they probably base an evaluation in part on what people around the league are saying about the team, and how they are being managed by the GM. And of course by their own interactions with the GM and the results they see on the field. They might even talk to consultants from time to time and get their opinion. At least that's my guess.

[dice]

To my knowledge, Poles has only done this once- with Sweat. The Claypool trade was just a trade- we didn't sign him to an extension.

Mack, Sweat, Claypool are the famous ones, but to do this type of trade 3x with major assets to me is a mistake.
.

Khalil Mack was a different regime.

Poles's 1st year was 2022. In fact, Poles actually traded Mack for a 2nd and 6th round pick as his 1st move of business.

it was a pretty good start *sigh*

[dice]

I never saw the problem with this. In free agency, you're competing with any number of teams for free agents. That alone makes it likely you will overpay for premium players. By trading for a player on an expiring contract, you are able to pay less in a trade than normal, due to his contract status, and by then re-signing that player, you're doing it before they hit the open market, and therefore increase your odds of getting a good deal.

A case in point in 2 or 3 years ago in FA when the Bears had a ton of cap space, and desperately needed off. lineman, and yet failed to get anyone of note in FA because they good ones all went for exorbitant prices, and it was probably good Poles didn't win any of those bids. It's the same with pass rushers- the good ones are almost always overpaid in free agency. He locked up Sweat at what was then a reasonable contract, and didn't have to overpay. The price to do that was a second round pick. In order to guarantee you'll get the player you want, that doesnt' seem like too high of a price. Of course, whether Sweat was worth it or not is another question.

Mathematically it is a terrible idea to give up high value assets for the right to pay market value for a player even if you cannot get that player in FA at the same value. Overall, when you repeat this transaction you lose total value. Yes, you might miss out on this guy, but over time you will have the option to get a different guy and have more total value. There are times when that is fine because you are aiming for a title immediately and thus you need to maximize value in a short term window, the Bears have not been in that position under Poles.

i finally have a doppleganger!

[Chicago-Bull-E]

FWIW, I don’t listen to CHGO but they did a 30 minute apology podcast today for having the bozo on. They also lost more subscribers yesterday than any recent data shows. Karma baby.

“We were not forced to address this today in any way”

They’re responding to angry Bears fans that choose to disbelieve the story, and explaining the thought process of doing the podcast yesterday. Hoge did express regret not asking some follow up questions to Dunne. i.e about the idea of a CW learning disability. Incredulity about how this wasn’t reported before. Braggs was able to add the meatball side, and claimed he represents the fan’s perspective. Main point, they have a target audience to placate. There was no mea culpa on doing the original podcast.

“We 1000% rushed into that show”
“I didn’t listen to my instincts”
“I regret…”
“We need to take responsibility for…”

I mean we can talk about the semantics of these talking points and phrases (not really because I don’t want to), but this was a 30 minute apology in various forms and phrases.

I don’t know anything about them, so if they say they weren’t FORCED to address it, sure. They sounded sincere in correcting what went wrong yesterday. Good for them.

[dice]

I've never liked Poles, but I think this article strikes me as a bunch of sensationalist trash wrapped around an actual truth. I only read the free parts FWIW.

The truth: The Bears decided on Caleb Williams without ever seriously considering anyone else.

The trash: Everything else. A quote of anyone with eyes could see Jayden Daniels was a better QB? Get the heck out of here. We interviewed a guy currently coaching Jayden Daniels about his view of Jayden Daniels vs Caleb Williams . "Anyone with eyes"? The world at large had Caleb Williams as vastly superior to everyone else (right or wrong).

So whatever, I think Poles sucked before this, and I'll think he sucks after this. I was actually in camp "trade down" instead of taking Caleb Williams and Daniels was the guy I wanted to trade down for, and even I still think this reads like a worthless hit piece of sensationalistic journalism trying to magnify a bad outcome as if it was 1000x worse and more nonsensical than it was in reality.

(also, to be clear, still think Poles sucked and has always sucked)

I mean, Jayden won the Heisman in 2023 and Caleb didn't receive a single vote after winning it the year before.

https://www.heisman.com/heisman-winners/jayden-daniels/

The fact that Poles had his mind made up gave the media no reason to talk about a debate but there were people that said that Daniels was the superior prospect - Dan Orlovsky and Louis Riddick.

Read on Twitter

1) heisman winning QBs do not exactly have a long history of pro success
2) riddick did NOT say JD was the superior prospect. he said that he played better in 2023...which was not an opinion even worth tweeting about given that JD won the heisman!

[fleet]

FWIW, I don’t listen to CHGO but they did a 30 minute apology podcast today for having the bozo on. They also lost more subscribers yesterday than any recent data shows. Karma baby.

“We were not forced to address this today in any way”

They’re responding to angry Bears fans that choose to disbelieve the story, and explaining the thought process of doing the podcast yesterday. Hoge did express regret not asking some follow up questions to Dunne. i.e about the idea of a CW learning disability. Incredulity about how this wasn’t reported before. Braggs was able to add the meatball side, and claimed he represents the fan’s perspective. Main point, they have a target audience to placate. There was no mea culpa on doing the original podcast.

“We 1000% rushed into that show”
“I didn’t listen to my instincts”
“I regret…”
“We need to take responsibility for…”

I mean we can talk about the semantics of these talking points and phrases (not really because I don’t want to), but this was a 30 minute apology in various forms and phrases.

I don’t know anything about them, so if they say they weren’t FORCED to address it, sure. They sounded sincere in correcting what went wrong yesterday. Good for them.

you’re taking quotes out of context. They are not apologizing for basic content.

Here’s a paraphrase: ‘We know we lose support when we post negative headlines.’

[Chicago-Bull-E]

“We were not forced to address this today in any way”

They’re responding to angry Bears fans that choose to disbelieve the story, and explaining the thought process of doing the podcast yesterday. Hoge did express regret not asking some follow up questions to Dunne. i.e about the idea of a CW learning disability. Incredulity about how this wasn’t reported before. Braggs was able to add the meatball side, and claimed he represents the fan’s perspective. Main point, they have a target audience to placate. There was no mea culpa on doing the original podcast.

“We 1000% rushed into that show”
“I didn’t listen to my instincts”
“I regret…”
“We need to take responsibility for…”

I mean we can talk about the semantics of these talking points and phrases (not really because I don’t want to), but this was a 30 minute apology in various forms and phrases.

I don’t know anything about them, so if they say they weren’t FORCED to address it, sure. They sounded sincere in correcting what went wrong yesterday. Good for them.

you’re taking quotes out of context. They are not apologizing for basic content.

Here’s a paraphrase: ‘We know we lose support when we post negative headlines.’

No I’m not. They started by saying transparency is important and they like talking about all articles…and then went into all of these items as they related to the general show and why it didn’t work.

The one thing they didnt do was talk about is the paraphrase you did. That could be an inference from their apologies (probably a good one), but it certainly wasn’t a paraphrase.

[fleet]

“We 1000% rushed into that show”
“I didn’t listen to my instincts”
“I regret…”
“We need to take responsibility for…”

I mean we can talk about the semantics of these talking points and phrases (not really because I don’t want to), but this was a 30 minute apology in various forms and phrases.

I don’t know anything about them, so if they say they weren’t FORCED to address it, sure. They sounded sincere in correcting what went wrong yesterday. Good for them.

you’re taking quotes out of context. They are not apologizing for basic content.

Here’s a paraphrase: ‘We know we lose support when we post negative headlines.’

No I’m not. They started by saying transparency is important and they like talking about all articles…and then went into all of these items as they related to the general show and why it didn’t work.

The one thing they didnt do was talk about is the paraphrase you did. That could be an inference from their apologies (probably a good one), but it certainly wasn’t a paraphrase.

To the bold, listen again. You missed the portions when Hoge directly addressed losing subs. Or podcasting content that fans don’t want to hear about

What began this with was implying or flat out saying they apologize for talking to someone that is a clown, or unreliable. Not at all. Not at all. They only regret not being able to ask appropriate follow up questions to handle the subject better. And imo, they are mostly being driven to respond by fans who were offended at the negative topic and unsubscribed

[Bulls69]

Why are the media attacking this young man? Caleb just needs to ball out. Chicago is worse than the New York media; the young man should pretty much ignore them.


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