Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - How much trust do you have in Bears general manager Ryan Poles?

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris discussed how much trust they have in Bears general manager Ryan Poles.

and good morning on this Friday. This is Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 1043, the score. And yeah, there are times where we just randomly in the middle of silence will say, Max. Max Crosby. I don't know, Ray. I don't know that we're speaking it into existence enough. We're going to try.

We're going to ramp it up. Max. I haven't heard Marshall do it lately. Max. Not HBO, Max. Max. Listen to that pace. Have you done your run yet?

You know how you were thinking about taking an outside run? Have you done it? I will be doing that later on today. I don't know if you know, but we're getting up to 60 today. We're going outside. But when you're running, you're a distance guy. So like somewhere during your multi-mile run, how many miles are you running today? I would say five miles max.

See, somewhere during that five-mile run, do you find yourself likely to say just the word by yourself in silence? Max. Yeah, that would probably happen. Yeah. I'm thinking about running today without music. Oh, no. You're just going to raw dog the workout? Yeah, raw dog the workout.

We have gotten some really unstable phrases between the last time we left you with Anthony Heron and Lawrence Holmes saying the phrase, curtain jerker. Technically, I get it. It's a real term that the wrestlers and the wrestling fan bases use. And then also now, raw talking the workout. But yeah, I feel, okay, 6-30.

I don't know that Max is the new bears, but I think it's getting up there. I think it's getting up there. Like, if you just find yourself silent, and the first word that comes to you is Max, okay, Max Crosby? I don't think you have a problem. I think you have a solution.

Hopefully one day they'll be synonymous. I don't know, guys. I don't know. I think we need a capologist, a cap wizard, a cap guru. and some sort of other magical being in order to fix this. We can find one of those. Perhaps.

I'll work on that. Well, and in the meantime, we found the Bears front office, which I think we can all say this time this year compared to this time last year, is in a much more trustworthy place. I wouldn't call it night and day, but I would call it night and sunrise. How about that?

Yeah, they did their part to earn back some capital with Bears fans winning a playoff game of course, the first in 15 years, making the right decision in hiring Ben Johnson, although I do think that was a team thing. I very much credit George McCasky and Kevin Warren in that. And then also being able to put together a resume and a body of work last year that puts them in a better spot.

It puts them in a better spot, but unfortunately that means you get a lower draft pick. Unfortunately, that means you don't have as much money to spend under the cap. And at this time last year, I want you guys to remember, we were hemming and hawing on the midday show, myself included, about the interview that Ryan Poles did with Sirius XM Radio where he talked about steps being skipped in training camp. And I think that they addressed it in a good way

when they decided to say stuff like, strip it down to the foundation, strip it down to the studs, build this backup, do all the basic stuff so we can build on this in the right way. Try to forget everything you learned in the first year for Caleb Williams so that way he can build this up in Ben Johnson's eyes, build up his best practices while he's still young, and put together what he did this past season.

It was also a warning, though, that when you hear the GM say this, the head of the front office, the head of the football operations of the team, I was asking, well, why didn't you stop it? Like the buck stops with you. You're the guy who's supposed to be able to put a stop to that or change.

the course if you see it's veering off. You shouldn't have to wait an entire season to adjust, right? I'll give credit that for the first time in organization history, they were able to fire a coach mid-season. They didn't wait till the end. Right. And that to me was part of the evolution of Ryan Poles. And I am very much hopeful that he continues to evolve. Yes. And a winning season helps, but I don't want him to get this false sense of security that, okay, we've won. It's just now starting now for Ryan Poles. And we welcome you to join our conversation, 312, 64, 64, 67, 67, 1045 is when we will take your calls, but your texts are always welcome as well.

And the question just becomes, how much more do you trust Ryan Poles now than you did last year? How much do you trust him to give the Bears a draft that is comparable to the last year's draft rather than the prior ones that he had had. And even take into consideration our discussion about Jervon Dexter in transition with Zach Zainman and David Haw. So all of that said, I didn't expect to hear another serious XM type of interview with Ryan Poles this time around at the Combine.

But I credit Ryan Poles for being transparent enough to actually have a conversation with us when I think a lot of general managers wouldn't do so. And by with us, I don't mean necessarily Marshall and Lela. I mean, with the media and with people who he appears with. And that happened. Ryan Poles was on with Todd McShay on his podcast and talked about the role that I don't think it's us. I think it's more the screen he sees. Social media and how it affected his job.

I think it's learning through that chaos. I separated myself. I really did get off of kind of looking at everything. I was listening to a podcast. I think your name is Brunei Brown, and she said, the algorithm in social media is to validate what you already believe or to show you what you fear the most. And as it hit me, and no one's like described that way.

I was like, I got to get, if I'm going to leave this organization, I have to get off of that because if I'm acting out of fear or acting out of closed-mindedness, then we're not going to be in a good spot. Right. And that's giving me a lot of freedom. to kind of weather the storm, but to see things the way they are. There's a couple situations, even with Caleb, where for some reason, when things just feel like they're ebbing away from you, it's like it almost validates, especially the noise part of it, like you're close.

Like, you talked about like a young, talented kid. Like, they get a lot of crap from the outside world to me. So something they see the talent, they see what this could be. So let's just keep pushing forward and get through this and get to the, the other side. And that's what this year felt like a little bit of a breakthrough. And I know you can't take success from last year and bringing it into this year. We start over and there's a lot of work to be done. But it felt like a breakthrough in terms of like, all right, we can settle that part. Now we can start mastering aircraft a little bit. Okay. Number one, Brené Brown always,

especially for everybody listening to this show, because I think you'd, you'd appreciate what she has to say. He's right. And she's right about that. That's not my concern, though. My concern is how much did this dictate how you did your job the past several years here? The biggest question is, when did you listen to this podcast and when did you stop paying attention to social media? Like, was it yesterday? No, I mean, you're getting a sense that it definitely was, it sounds like, from what he's describing, it was after he drafted Caleb Williams.

But maybe it was before he hired Ben Johnson. I'm trying to see how aligned his change in thought process and the way he stopped consuming social media affected the way maybe he did his job or just his insight into how to do his job. To be clear, I am not a believer in Ryan Poles football man as much as I am a believer in Ryan Poles. I can evaluate something admit I was wrong and learn from it. So the evolution of Ryan Poles, I believe in. Do I believe Ryan Poles is going to deliver a second straight draft along the lines of what he did last year? Not necessarily. I believe he'll do whatever Ben Johnson and

Dennis Allen guide him to do. And listening to these comments, Layla, and to get kind of an insight into how he looks at things was eye-opening to me because I'm like, why were you ever on social media like that in the first place as a general manager of a professional football team? Well, and then you and I started talking at our pre-show meeting, Marshall, about the tree that Ryan Poles came from. So when Ryan Poles is talking and we hear him say this and the first thing I think is, you know, that doesn't convey confidence to me. That does not convey confidence because if you're steadfast as a leader of a football team where there are only 32 jobs, then, and you're, and you've talked to us about your process and you talk to us about how smart you think your team

process is and how you guys evaluate talent and how you believe in in certain rubrics like the relative athletic score and how confident you are when you say best player available at 25 best player available last year after the draft last year you say you stick to your board even though it can be tough at times and you want to deviate but you stick to your board and we've all said at times we don't trust your board but even then you you talked about it in a way that says, I'm confident in my process. And this retrospectively does not convey that you were confident. It does not convey that you knew your process

or that you had picked up your best practices and were confident in those from your team. And when I say your team, I mean Kansas City, where you were adjacent to the people who drafted Patrick Mahomes. But who was the head coach of Kansas City, Marshall? That would be Andy Reid. Long time experienced head coach.

Some would argue he's a Hall of Famer. I would say he's definitely a Hall of Famer. I would agree. He's a guy who has the thickest of thick skin. He really doesn't care. He's going to do what he does because it has worked time and time again for him. I know he's coming off a disappointing season because they didn't make the playoffs after making the Super Bowl for the, I don't know how many times and how many years.

But his process works and there are receipts that prove that. Here's why Ryan Poles does not get that same vote of confidence for me. I've seen it now for one year and I've seen it in accordance to Ben Johnson who I do by the way fully trust and I am a full believer in and as long as Ben Johnson has a hand in what Ryan Poles is doing

that's good enough for me right now I just wonder now that we're going from offense to defense in terms of where the need lies with your team if you can replicate the same type of turnaround that you did a year ago I have doubts about that defensively but I think the offense is good enough to carry this team

for a moment and the benefit of being a general manager walking into a new situation, or what you guys want to call is cap hell, but it was, you know, you're in a cap situation now that is completely a Ryan Poles production. He's the one who extended Montes what? He's the one who signed Dio O'Dainbo. He's the one who gave D.J. Moore another contract. I don't criticize all of those decisions to that extent, but the big money deals, which is what I'm trying to illustrate, including extending Jalen Johnson, who wasn't his player,

These are Ryan Poles front office decisions. You know, when you consider all of that together and knowing how important this draft is, you don't have the same kind of capital and the room for error that you did previously to make these big swings and make big mistakes. You don't have the room for error to trade a second round pick that was higher than the pick where he was drafted in Chase Claypool

and be able to make that big of a mistake. You don't have the capital. to spend a lot of money on a guy who you hope can change into something you want who already had one torn Achilles and Dio O'Dangbo and expect him to turn out. And whatever rubric you are measuring

or whatever process do you think you have or you think that you have uncovered all these diamonds that are sometimes just themselves, it makes me wonder about all of it when I hear something like this. Because who's telling you who to draft? And I think, Ray, you brought it up. we don't give it we don't give the tyler done piece a lot of a lot of discussion when it comes to various factors in the piece

but one of the parts of the story that was pretty critical was the discussion about ryan pulls and reportedly according to the tyler done piece take with it what you will the part where the sources said the media will kill me if i don't draft caleb williams can't live life like that because they say what when you start listening and going by what people in the stands say you end up with the people in the stands

aka out of a job so you can't do that and when that story came out I was like if this Ryan Pohl's stuff is accurate then the bears might be cooked but then Ben Johnson became the head coach

and things changed because of that but Ryan Pohl's is still operating the levers he's still the guy in charge at the end of the day of the scouting process and deciding what direction they're going with their offseason in terms of, you talked about salary cap hell, what are we doing with free agency, what are we doing with our own players, what are we doing and accounting for when the draft actually happens? That's a very difficult puzzle to piece together.

Do I think he has a better group around him now? Yes. But at the same time, Ben Johnson was in Detroit's building for a lot of who they were probably scouting for the NFL draft just based on the timing. You don't have the Brad Holmes knowledge for this next draft class. So how is that going to affect things? And it's funny that you bring up Marshall, the decisions regarding free agency, for example. Let's listen to Ryan Poles talking to Cassie Carlson from Fox 32 at the Combine about discussing Darnell Wright.

We talked about the offensive line, Darnall Wright, was a huge piece of that as well, knowing that he's up for an extension. Is that a priority for you this off season? Yes, it's definitely a priority. There's a lot going on right now. We'll eventually start having those conversations. It's been cool because anytime you have a new coaching staff come in, you're hoping that they saw the same vision as you did. And in terms of Ben, Dan Rochard, Kyle, the van, they share that vision.

Not only, you know, we're excited about where he's at, but we're really excited what Darnell can be. If he continues to put in the work that he has been, we think he can be, you know, a really talented tackle in this league and help us win championships. Now, one of the things that I do like is Darnel Wright was the guy you drafted on tape was the guy you put in the position to play the position he had on tape. Everybody saw what they got there.

Makes it easier, doesn't it? You didn't mix it up. You didn't try to change anybody. You didn't fall in love with relative athletic score. Or maybe you did, but all of it reflected the same individual. So I got no beef with that pick. But how many picks do you really have beef with when they're that high? in the draft. That's why this year...

Well, I mean, we're debating Rome with Dunezay at 9 and Darnell Wright was 10. No, that's fair. That's fair. And I think Rome has the ability to come back and look like a number nine overall pick. If he works on, you know, the thing Ben Johnson said, work on catching the football. That's his primary job is to catch the football. It's catch the football and get open. And usually when you get open, you get more opportunities to catch the football. But I just want to see this draft play out the same way as last year's draft before.

before I start giving Ryan Poles an overabundance of credit. Well, and that's why this is split. Like, as confidently as a lot of people feel about Ryan Poles, there are people who don't feel as confident. So just know that, you know, if we disagree with you, we're not the only ones that you disagree with, and you're not the only one who it disagrees with us. So that's why I was asking the question,

312, 64, 64, 67, 67, how much do you trust Ryan Poles going into what is a very important draft if your desire is to advance even farther in the NFL playoffs, and it should be how much learning on the job do you get to do? And for all of our ballyhooing about Andy Reid, Marshall, you and I both know that in Philly he did some learning on the job as well. Had to, because you have to adjust to your environment. Ryan Poles has adjusted, but I'm curious to see what that collaboration looks like, this draft, this offseason as he tries to fix the defense in the same way that the offense

was rehabbed and repaired and ended up being pretty good. There we go. So we have more on this Ryan, this Ryan Poles and Todd McShade discussion because of one of the tools that I think is going to be really important for everybody to know about when it comes to this next NFL draft. So this I think will help us understand how the Bears run their process as well. That's coming up next. Ray Diaz and Tyler Buter Bar are our producers. Brandon Fryer helps us out too as we broadcast live from the Scores Hyundai Studios, brought to you by your local Hyundai dealers. This is Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 104-4-3-4-3-4-6-647.

We were also on YouTube and Twitch at we had an address change. The Score, Chicago. So you can find us at Twitch.tv slash The Score Chicago. Our Twitch mob is up and chatting with you on the street. Friday morning. And like we said, we'll take your calls as well. How much do you trust Ryan Poles? After a good season, how much more do you trust him in the draft coming up? 312644-67 is our number. More talk next.