Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Ryan Poles talked Bears’ free agency, role in Maxx Crosby trade sweepstakes

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Mark Grote shared their takeaways from Bears general manager Ryan Poles’ press conference Thursday.

This is Rahimi Harrison Grotty on 104.3, The Score, Tyler Beaterbaugh, a fantastic open to our show per usual. Five beutes for that. I think so. Yeah. I think that is a fair vote. We begin by picking up where Ryan Poles and the Bears left off. And that is with us trying to figure out any time you make a trade, for example, the DJ Moore trade, or you let players walk like Kevin Byard or Jaquan Brisker. You're making statements for your team.

So in doing so, what did the bears think the biggest problems were from last season? Not just what they tell you, but what the actions indicate and the acquisition of the players. And I feel like yesterday, Mark, Ryan Poles gave us more direction on what he wanted to see out of this team, both in free agency and then with his words matching that yesterday. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he talked about the fact that he wants to have more speed on the team. that could speed explosiveness. And I know, as I was listening to that, I was thinking, yeah, there's 31 other teams in the league who are saying the same thing.

Everybody wants speed. Everybody wants explosiveness. But the Bears did lack some of that last year. And it feels like Dennis Allen is maybe a smidge more obsessed with speed than other defensive coordinators around the league. And we did see several times. Like there are examples, like actual examples. like actual examples of plays last year where the lack of speed on the defense specifically hurt the bears.

C.J. Gardner Johnson would be an example of that on a simple slant play where all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, he's pretty good, C.J. Gardner Johnson, but he's not good in terms of the guys with the 4-3 speed. Well, and unfortunately injured Jalen Johnson when he came back. You know, you and I have talked about that, just the way he was having to run to catch up. And the problem is when the defense looks slow, everything else gets exposed. You know, the tackles are made in the secondary. You have to suffer with the explosive plays.

The slot becomes a real issue because if your guys are simply younger, they run around your players in circles. And so far, the biggest free agent signing on the books for the Bears has been safety Kobe Bryant. And then second, I would say behind that is the linebacker Devin Bush. Both fast. Bingo. So that said. Let's listen to what Ryan Poles started with.

This is how he tells the media what he thinks is the most important in his opening press conference yesterday. First, just want to say really proud of our process this offseason. It starts with our pro staff, which is led by DJ Horde. Did a great job. It's a lot of work through the fall, getting us prepared for this time of year. Also want to give a special thanks to Matt Feinstein, who runs our cap in negotiations. It's been awesome to see him grow and develop.

We're fortunate to have them, and I know I couldn't do this without him. And then last, we want to take our coaches. Anytime that you get into postseason play, your window for your evaluations get smaller and smaller. We loaded those guys up pretty good, especially the defensive staff, and they answer the bell, which obviously gives us a lot of clarity in terms of what we need as a football team. And it's our goal to find that and help them. I think there's a common theme with the guys that we brought in. One, we wanted to get faster and more explosive, and I think we did that.

I know we did that. One guys that are passionate about football that play our style and our brand of football, and I know we did that. And then especially the leadership to continue to enhance our roster so that we can continue to push forward, be a championship caliber team. I know we got better through this phase. Obviously, there's a lot of things that are unexpected that happen in this job. Drew being one of them, that retirement was a little bit of a pop-up on us.

I want to respect him and his decision. So the reasons why and all that, I'll let him answer those things at his time. But I'm proud of our organization for adapting and adjusting, which allowed us to bring in Bradbury here to help us solidify our offense and and continue to play. Also, tough decisions is when you got to make those business decisions and make moves like trading DJ. DJ is one of my favorite players. Will always be one of my favorite players.

I knew that that was going to be tough for our organization. I've mentioned this before. My son is a passionate fan of the Chicago Bears. He was not very happy with me at all. I think it was cool. DJ sent him a video telling him not to be. be mad at dad is part of the business. So like I said, I appreciate everything.

Those guys that aren't here did for our organization to help us ascend and get better and get us on the doorstep of, again, being a championship caliber team. Sounds like Poles' son needs to call the score. We've got an outlet right here if you want to vet. I mean, it's never personal what we do here on the score. Sometimes we rip the general manager too. I like Ryan Poles a lot, but we have a job to do. Oh yeah, I mean, you won't get any dissension for me, but, you know, that is funny, Mark, that you bring that up because Jed Hoyer's talked about that quite a bit.

Yes, I just thought of him too. Like having to break the news to his kids about trading Chris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Javi Baez. Yes. And the sad part is it's like, well, Jed, in this moment, we're all your children. You have to, you have to break us the news as well. Business is business. You know what I'm saying? espresso, if you know where I'm getting that here.

We've been, okay, so to pull back the curtain here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 1043 the score, we've been trying to come up with an espresso challenge a la team Italy who drinks a shot of espresso in their dugout after every home run. And I can't come up with one yet, but I know I need the caffeine. Crystal meth. I think we should get back to that. I just said crystal meth is bad. Oh, and method is good, right?

Crystal method. Layla. The old school EDM, whatever you want to call it back then, we called it techno group is good. You, haven't you figured out, it takes me a while for things to sink in. So I need like a few more reminders of method. I, by the way, for the record, I prefer method man to all of that. Well, a lot.

Yes. But Crystal meth. Yeah, he is absolutely brilliant. Yeah. There's no other two ways about it. Like Method Man and the Wu team clan are brilliant. They include more original lyrics than in original words. Like, they include more word combinations in their songs that I think anybody and it's been

measured. and like second was in the name. Yeah. So there's that. But all of that said. What about Buster Rhybes? I mean, that's a lot of words too. Uh-huh.

No, he's up there too on the list. This is an older list. So that I'm referring to. I saw that several years ago. All of that said, I think what I, the two things that I really took away from in Ryan Pohl's saying that wasn't just him talking about wanting to get faster.

I did also immediately think of the younger and more athletic line from what the bear, what the bulls wanted their offense to be. When Fred Hoyberg talked about that, they wanted to get younger and more athletic. They did talk about the running aspect of this. And additionally, how many times have we heard Dennis Allen breathlessly say he can run when he's talking about a player?

So knowing that, I feel like their actions needed to back up their words when it came to who they wanted in free agents. And I feel like they did that. Also, I've said this before and I'll say it again this week. week. My biggest concern was you have zero safeties on your roster at the beginning of the week, and you needed to add to your linebacking crew. They did both those things. I think to a man, the bigger concern is, is that enough to improve your defense, which was horrible? And in the low 20s and passer rating defense, and then in 22nd against the pass and 27th against the run?

Yes, 27th against the run really stands out. Did you do enough? And that's what we're trying to figure out. Yeah, it's not enough yet, I don't think. Unless we can positively sit here and say that because of one year and guys coming back from injury, I feel like we've saying that over and over and over, I-O-Dangbo is coming back. Jamar-Tur-Dar-Dangbo. I-O-D-Dang-Bo is coming back.

Will the Canadian Neville Gallimore make a difference? And I don't think he was brought in to make a difference necessarily. But yeah, you are. While we do justifiably obsess a little bit about the safety and the secondary, life would be a lot easier if the bears were better up front and they didn't have to depend on the secondary to bail out the defense game after game after game last year with the interceptions. With all of the tackles, you brought it up in the pre-show meeting,

that Kevin Byard shouldn't have been in the 90s in town. Like he shouldn't have had to have had that many tackles last year. Same with Jaquan Brisker, who we'll get into a little bit later on. And Mystery Brisker on why he's going to Pittsburgh for $5.5 million. And the Bears didn't seem to be able to afford that. But we'll get into that a little bit later on. Also, Mystery Brisker is an excellent name for any sort of highlight or that's like just a catchy name for anything relating to Jaquan Briscoe.

Yeah. The mystery of Brisker. Brisker, one of my, I put in my power rankings in the Ryan Pohl's era, top five. Top five. Not player necessarily. Well, maybe player, too. Oh, you're saying quality of player, not mystery. People I like to talk to in the Bears locker room.

Right. Yeah. So the biggest thing for me, though, was here's the direct quote. One, we wanted to get faster, more explosive, and I think we did that. I know we did that. We heard him say that. We wanted guys that are passionate about football that play our style and our brand of football. I know we did that.

I think that's something people. say you do not need guys who are quote passionate about football you need guys who want to do their jobs they had that though they had they had that brisk like you're talking about two guys that are not going to be back brisker and byard were as passionate as anybody so this bears team on offense and defense did not lack passion yeah no they did not and frankly we've talked about this the majority of the turnovers were created by people who are no longer here and then they replaced them with a guy like Kobe Bryant who had four interceptions, a guy like Devin Bush who had three.

But then additionally, did they, we ask it again, did they do enough? And then also, are those guys going to fly around the ball? But the problem is they shouldn't get to the linebackers and Kobe Bryant. You know, we talked about this too, Mark. Kobe Bryant had fewer tackles than Jaquan Bricker by a lot.

But that's because, unfortunately, the running backs did get to the secondary. 27th in the league. and the people listening to this show right here probably watch the games as closely as we did. You know that opposing teams running backs for the second straight year exposed the Bears defensive line. The slot receivers did get to the deeper parts of the two deep, for example, or the deeper parts are just safety being deep or safety being high, whichever terminology you want to say. The point is, explosive plays happen, and that's why a guy like Kevin Byard was the last line of defense.

Yeah. And for everybody who says, well, the defensive line needs to get better, we all know this. But I think when you hear what Ryan Poles addresses to a man, you're thinking those were not the priorities as much this year. He thought he added depth. He got two guys to add depth. But when it came to trying to replace playmakers, there were no playmakers added to the defensive line. And then I think he was trying to do that with linebacker and secondary. Now, when it comes to another part of this, the playmaker that every.

Everybody wanted everybody. Everybody. Let's listen to the discussion about Max Crosby. Right. How much did you guys actually engage in Max Crosby talks? And will you guys continue to monitor that situation, you know, considering that it's still sort of looming out there? Yeah, I've said before we're always going to monitor every situation.

Sometimes it fits and works with what you got going on in terms of resources. Sometimes it doesn't. You know, we're involved. I mean, we checked into it. We looked to see if it made sense, had some dialogue. I'll just leave it at that. There it is.

We were involved. We checked. Don't just leave it at that. What else? What else? That says to me that it's not going to happen. Like, you can't rule it out. Maybe Vegas gets crazy and lowers their price.

That sounded like a very passive sound from Ryan Paul saying, yeah, we're always going to monitor those situations. And then he talked in past tense. he said we checked on it. He didn't say we're still looking into it. We're still open to anything. Who knows what's going to happen? He didn't add any of those caveats when I think he had the opportunity to.

I had a little text debate with our guy, Chris Emma, who was at the presser yesterday. He, to him, he thought the door was open. And I said what I just said. I don't think so. I think it felt very passive from polls in that case. Oh, I think everybody in the league had to move on. This is not, this was not a cap space. you could just magically create. You were going to have to do a lot to make Max Crosby's salary

fit on your team, unless you were the Raiders who don't have a lot of high salaries on their payroll, who famously had the most money and the most cap space to spend. So that said, I think the problem is with all that you had to do to move around money and restructure contracts, or you have to trade guys like DJ Moore to clear up cap space because of that, I think that, I think that teams had to move on. They had no choice in the matter. But we all want to know what the price was. Did the bears offer two firsts in a player? Did the bears offer two firsts at all? Because teams are on the record saying we did not want to give up two first round picks. That specifically was an issue for teams. Yeah. And I think it would have been a huge risk for Ryan Poles. And I think as we sit here

right now, if there's any unknown about a player of Max Crosby's ilk of what he can do, you can't give up two first round picks. And maybe that was part of the thing. There had to have been teams, not just Baltimore. And of course, Baltimore probably could have done this sooner, who were worried about the meniscus. I mean, he said multiple surgeries, not like big surgeries throughout his career and a guy going on 29, I think.

I don't know if he's turned 29 yet. He's either just turned 29 or 28 going on 29. There is like, you're giving up that. That is when you get together with your front office and your scouts or whoever's in the room for that meeting, you've got to have almost a consensus on that. You can't have any doubts from anybody on a situation like that or it's egg in your face. And I don't think the bears can afford to have egg in their face considering they're on a positive run right now. Well, from a fan standpoint, though, it does make me laugh, Mark, because the fans are willing to give up two first roundpoints.

because it actually worked the last time. Yeah, with Kalil Mack. They got exactly what they wanted out of Killeelma. Yeah, I think they did. I think you're right. And people will debate that, you know, having given up the two picks for that. But yeah, man, I think I think.

Well, we also knew that Ryan Pace had issues drafting in the first round. So it's like, oh, does this solve two problems? Yes. Let's do it. No doubt about it. And think what, like a contract like that, if you get two good years out of a guy, that's all you can ask for. You got really one dominant season.

out of Khalil Mack winning because of him. So ultimately with time being a factor and our friend to have thought about it, yes, I agree with you. The Kalil Mack deal was worth it and probably Jay Cutler too, to be honest. You got eight years out of a quarterback in Chicago who wasn't bad. Yeah, that's how we acknowledge this stuff. We don't always talk about the trades that worked where the price actually met the production. But that's exactly it with Jay Cutler as well.

Yeah, and I don't know that the price ever meets the production for these Whopper trades or even the Whopper money in any sport. Stafford and golf it did. Yeah, yeah, Stafford and golf for sure. Yeah, there are examples of it, but I would say more times than not. You don't, while it could be, it could feel good, like ultimately the bears

may not have gotten their money's worth out of Khalil Mack, but it was still worth it. So if you want more of this, or maybe you want a new defensive lineman to covet, Daryl Ryder, the Brown's Beat Rider for 923, the fan in Cleveland will join us at 125. So just so you guys are aware. That's Myrorty.

I'm Layla Rahimi. We broadcast live from the Scores Hyundai Studios, brought to you by your local Hyundai dealers. Ray Diaz, Tyler Bueber are our producers. Brandon Friar helps us out as well. And we're on Twitch, twitch.tv.TV slash the score Chicago. Our address changed. We're at the score Chicago. By the way, tell your smart speaker to play 1043, the Chicago.

1043, the score. sorry. 104 3 The Score is how you talk to us on your smart speaker, and we're still available on 670 The Score. We didn't go away there either. What's up downstate? Yeah, we're also at 670 The Score in places like Rockford. And Champaign?

What's up, Marshall? Yeah. Marshall is, that's right. Marshall's broadcasting the state championships this weekend, so that's where Marshall is. And we are also on YouTube. That is The Score, Chicago on YouTube. Connor O'Donnell, Jacob Stutz, Max Curtis, Cody Westerland,

are our video producers. Coming up next year on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, let's get into a little bit more about the biggest decision facing the bears regarding that decision to sign at Kobe Bryant. Who is he? And he talked a lot about being wanted by the team. So we'll get into that next.