Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - What do you want Ryan Poles to be asked at his NFL Combine press conference?

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Leila Rahimi, Marshall Harris and Mark Grote previewed the NFL Combine.

Mahoney Harrison Grody. Could you imagine Lovie Smith doing the whole good, better, best thing? And saying bleep the Packers. Come on, guys, good better best. Never let it rest. I'll see you on Tuesday. Middays 10 to 2 on 1043, the score. This is Rahimi Harrison Grody on 1043, the score.

Thanks again to Jack O'Callaghan for joining us in our last segment to talk about Olympic men's hockey team gold medal. And yes, congratulations to the women. their first goal since 2018. That was in South Korea. So two goals for the Olympic men's and women's hockey teams. Megan Keller and Jack Hughes. Come on down.

They're the two that scored the game winning goals. I like it. I like the problem is we're like, come on down to what? We have no game show for them. I was hoping you wouldn't question me on that. Oh, darn. Sorry.

I let it ride, I let it ride. I don't know where come on down. Okay, so. That's sad. That's a quote from my. Austin Power. Oh, okay. I thought you meant you personally do not have an internal monologue. I know there are people who do not. And I'm like, I can't, I can't, I don't know how it

function without my internal monologue. As a, as a happily single woman, sometimes these are the only words I speak all day are the ones to my coworkers and on the show. And that's it. You just shut it down the rest of the day. You hit the mute button, the Layla mute button. I'm just working on stuff in silence. I don't know. Like I'll go home and work out and stuff and then, you know, live my life. Do you talk to yourself? You wouldn't know. I sometimes read what I've written out loud to see if it makes sense. I think when I found out people didn't have an intermodelag, I was like, what do you mean? Isn't that what thinking is?

But I guess it's not for some people. And I had more questions. Is that good or bad? Like, it'd be very peaceful. Like, if you don't have stuff running through your brain all the time? No, no. That just means you say it all out loud. Oh, wow.

Which can be good or bad. That's probably bad. I'm going to be honest. I share that with you every day. from 10 to 2. That's enough, right? Okay, that's fair. I also have internal monologue about the NFL Combine, because I said this

earlier and we asked the question, what are your biggest questions for the Bears when it comes to what their plans are? And I'm going to offer this. Not that I mean to be residing in Lawrence Holmes's Worry Town, but when you don't have as much

draft capital and frankly salary cap capital as the Bears have had in the past few years. You remember how it's like the road to the NFL offseason goes through the Bears. They got the first overall pick. They got all this cat money. They can do whatever they want. And then it was exciting. The world was your oyster. They don't have that this year. According to over the cap.com, they're about $5 million over the cap. They also have the 25th pick in the draft. So that's when business becomes crucial. So this is a new challenge for this front office.

What are you going to decide is the most important thing? Because now 25 gets even more crucial as to how you try to fix your team that still in a lot of ways is not where you want it to be. No offense to Mark Grody and Dan Weeder and all the people, but I believe taking the North is much easier than keeping the North because the way the NFL is designed, it's supposed to be, you know, every week, one-score games, schedule changes every year, and now they're going to have a first-place schedule, and building a roster good enough with the blank canvas you just described was very, not easy, but it's easier, in my opinion, to do that than to not only establish greatness, but to maintain it.

And so, much like you, Leila, my internal monologue goes wild thinking about, okay, well, if you got this much money in your defensive line, how are you going to now improve your defensive line? If all these people are not on the books as safeties, what are you going to do about your safety position? Left tackle. We talked about that earlier. and five on it.

I just have a lot of questions that I don't know that we'll get the answers to this week, but we will at least get some insights into how the bears are viewing specific problems after they have taken their requisite time off and reset, as it were. I do love that they're, as you indicated, Layla, they ain't run in this combine, the bears, which is actually nice because it means that they, yeah, slow clap necessary here, that they are coming from a position of strength. They are drafting number 25 overall right now because they won 11 games.

Can I get an Alleluia? And they won a playoff game against the Green Bay Packers. Alleluia. This year. So we're going into a combine for the first time in ever that we're not talking about, how are you going to make the offense better? Are you going to get a quarterback?

Are you going to trade Justin Fields? Are you going to draft Caleb Williams? Are you going to get a tight end? Who are you going to get? You're going to get a watcher? wide receiver. Whoa, for the first time, we are, we're going to get a running back. Better not be a wide receiver. For the first time, we're like, we're like, defense, what? We're not going to the combine. I may not even have a show this year. My pop-up show on the clock

is in jeopardy, which I used to do on Friday nights because the bears are not running the combine and I'm not going to the combine. So I might be losing a show because of this and I'm happy about I'm pretty sure you gained a show, though. I did. This is working with you guys. It's called Rahimi Harris and Grotie. I would take that. Absolutely. I don't need it. I don't want it anymore because I don't want the draft to be as important as it was all those other years. You know what I mean?

It's, of course, it's still really important. But here's the issue. Now that 25th overall pick had better hit because everybody else is more expensive. Yeah. You know, as we mentioned, the Bears, they spent money in very good places when it came to extending Joe Tunney, extending Jonah Jackson, being able to sign Drew Dalman, for example. They spent good money there. But unfortunately, they also spent a lot of very confident money on the D-line, as we mentioned. And that

makes this difficult. You know, I think it was at the beginning of the season. I want to say it was week two against the Lions. And spending has changed drastically since then. People got extended. Some stars got extended. It's not the same. But the Bears were 10th overall in defensive spending at the time in the NFL. Now, did they get a top 10 defense out of this? They did not. Okay.

So therefore, that can't happen on a team where you're already $5 million projected over the cap, and you've got to do some creative accounting, and you really need these drafts to hit, because you can't afford to sign big name free agents like you did previously. Those are excellent points. I mean, do you guys know when the last time the Bears picked this late in the first round? 2017? No. No. No. No. If you go back to 2017, which is an admirable guest, they had the, what, second pick with a... What? No, this can't be right. I'm saying in 2017 Mitch Trubisky. Oh, yeah. My bad. My bad. My bad. No, it is because they drafted up. Yeah, they moved up. It was Trubisky. Also, this is the time in my head where I think of Ray Diaz, that promo,

we had with previous big voice guy where he was like, or will he trade up? Will they do anything at all? Oh, man. And it was like the bells, you know, the NFL films bells. Will he trade up? I always think that... I was think Trubisky's first year was 2018.

That's why I said 17. So here's the thing. It was 19 then, right? It was 2011, the last time the Bears picked this low. They took, with the 29th pick. Let's see if... Bring it to me. They took a tackle with the 29th pick.

Johnson? No, he was a second rounder. Do you remember a kid from Wisconsin named Gabe Carimi? Carimi? Oh, I guess I do. Gabe Carremy was a left tackle who did not work out for the BS out of Wisconsin. I was very excited about him. I was very excited about Mark Colombo. I was very excited about Chris Williams. All bust his left tackles. I don't know that Columbo was a bus, though, was he? He had some serviceable years for a few different teams. Oh, no, with the Cowboys especially. Absolutely. But not what he was a bus for the bears. Grotie, my point is Gabe Karimi was the pick.

He played, you know, one year or two years, excuse me, with the Bears, started a total of 16 games over those two years. It didn't work out. No, their history of drafting offensive linemen was bad. The Bears want to stay where they are at the top of the north. This 25, it's got to work out better than that. Well, and are you going to be position redundant to do you have to draft another defensive lineman?

Do we know what we're getting in Shamar Turner? I can't. It can be a left tackle. I'm going with that. Or will he trade up? Do you remember when we put it on an echo effect and it just haunted our souls? Will he trade up? Well, well, well.

Congratulations. And the bells kept ringing. They just wouldn't stop. Do you trust Ryan Poles? And if you do trust him, how much do you trust him? I think those are the questions we're getting answered this offseason. Well, and the jury is still out on the two guys that we have mentioned on their defense. And Di O Dangboe-Bot and Shamar Turner.

like the bears put resources and money into. That's the projection. Do they think they're going to really get something out of Dio Dangbo and Shemar Turner? If they do, then that could change the calculus at number 25. I do not. Will they trade up? And then there were the bells and then it just kept ringing. The bells kept going.

And then the will he trade up? And I was traumatized. Yeah. And I thought about this too. In my internal monologue, I was also going over internal film. and I was like, ah, Shamar Turner. Like, I really like that pick, but then I'm like, all of the film I've seen of him, he's making tackles in space.

I'm like, that's not really a pass rush thing. Grotie, you know what I'm talking about. The film on Shabar Turner was like, excellent tackles in space. Like, wrap it up, shut him down. But I'm like, well, that's not really like getting after the quarterback per se. Right, which I think he did in his last year at college. They started to move him around the line, and that's what the Bears thought that he could do with him to minimal success this year.

So don't know. The bells are ringing. The NFL draft bells are ringing. Let's discuss more on this. And really just more football talk with an excellent guest coming up next. Emery Hunt, owner of football game plan. He is CBS Sports HQ analyst. He was in attendance for the HBCU Legacy Bowl this weekend.

Emery joins us next on Rahimi Harrison Grotie on The Score.