Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show
How much trust do you have in Bears general manager Ryan Poles? (Hour 1)
27 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How much trust do fans have in Bears GM Ryan Poles?
This hour is brought to you by the Chicago Golf Show.
Rahimi Harrison-Grody, 10 to 2 on 104.3 The Score.
Now, because we're lunatics and we have one thing on the mind at all times, and that is not money, that is not time, it's not some resources essential to us all, it's Max Crosby. We're like, oh, is Ben Johnson talking about Max Crosby when he said this to Cassie Carlson?
Some of the former offensive linemen that are now coaches having those conversations. Hey, who gave you the most problems? It wasn't necessarily the biggest names. It was sometimes the guys that just went for longer and for harder than their opponent. And I think there's something to be said for that. You know, guys that you know you're going to get 100% from them every single snap.
He just said what he wanted in a defensive lineman candidate.
And then he describes someone who just never stopped going. Basically an Energizer bunny whose battery never runs down or runs out. I would say someone with a high motor. People that know me know I'm about the work and football.
Someone who plays 97% of the snaps or so.
I give my whole life to this sport every single day.
Somebody who may not love football but is obsessed with football.
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Chapter 2: What insights did Ryan Poles share about the NFL Draft process?
Nah.
What are you talking about? Everything is related back to Max Crosby. I am now officially a Maxinista. I don't know that I wasn't. One of us. One of us. One of us.
One of us.
One of us.
The reply is just the word Max.
Max!
Layla Rahimi. Marshall Harris. Mark Grody. Middays 10 a.m. to 2 on Chicago Sports Radio 104.3 The Score.
Hello and good morning on this Friday. This is Rahimi Harris and Grody on 104.3 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.
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Chapter 3: How has Ryan Poles evolved as a general manager?
Listen to that bass. 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'll probably happen. 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, 6-3-0. I don't know that Max is the new Bears, but I think it's getting up there.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Poles' comments on social media?
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 McCaskey and Kevin Warren in that. And then also being able to put together a resume and a body of work last year that puts him in a better spot.
It puts him 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 back up, 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,
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Chapter 5: How do listeners feel about Ryan Poles' decision-making?
It's just now starting now for Ryan Poles.
And we welcome you to join our conversation, 312-644-6767. 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 Zaidman 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 the 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 Layla. 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 of the screen he sees social media and how it affected his job.
I think it's learning through that chaos. I separate myself. I really did get off of kind of looking at everything. I was listening to a podcast. I think your name is Brene 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 described it that way, I was like, 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. And that's given 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 almost validates like, especially the noise part of it, you're close. You talked about a young, talented kid. They get a lot of crap from the outside world. To me, they see the talent. They see what this could be.
Let's just keep pushing forward and get through this and get to the other side. This year felt like a little bit of a breakthrough.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does Poles face with the Bears' roster?
I know you can't take success from... last year and bring it into this year, we start over and, 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, Brene Brown, always, especially for everybody listening to this show. Cause 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 in 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,
And you've talked to us about your process. And you've talked to us about how smart you think your team process is and how you guys evaluate talent and how you believe 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.
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Chapter 7: How does the coaching staff influence draft strategies?
And we've all said at times, we don't trust your board. But even then, 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 at Kansas City, Marshall?
That would be Andy Reid. Longtime, 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 from 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 you're in a cap situation now that is completely a Ryan Poles production. He's the one who extended Montez Sweat. He's the one who signed Dio Odengbo. He's the one who gave DJ 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 Pohl's front office decisions.
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Chapter 8: What are the expectations for Poles in the upcoming draft?
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 in Dio Odengbo, 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 the Tyler Dunn piece 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 Poles and reportedly, according to the Tyler Dunn 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 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 Poles 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. Darnell Wright was a huge piece of that as well, knowing that he's up for an extension. Is that a priority for you this offseason?
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