Chapter 1: What insights does Ryan Poles provide about the Bears' draft process?
We got a vision.
Ryan does a great job of stacking that board, him and his crew, and was able to sit in with some of the scouts earlier. And I think they do a great job bringing the information to the table, and we'll proceed business as usual.
That's Ben Johnson at the Combine, which is still ongoing in Indianapolis. This is 104.3 The Score. We are Rahimi, Harrison, Grody, and happy to be joining you on this beautiful Friday.
It is beautiful.
It's beautiful.
Things are beautiful. It's beautiful outside. I'm going for a run later. No music. Raw dog.
Also, we have a contribution from that from fellow runner at the score, one Adam Studzinski. And he said, no music runs are when you really get to know yourself. Love me a good no headphones run. To which I said, for you two who love running, I need the music or else I'm not going anywhere fast.
A little inner reflection never hurt anybody.
I think I can do both. Depends on the music you want.
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Chapter 2: How does Ryan Poles evaluate players during the draft?
But that's also the point is, you know, how much does the draft matter to you? Are you the guy who says that after the second round it's a crapshoot? Because that's a good example of why good process, sound practices can withstand. But that first-round swing and miss in 2021 to Trey Lance is pretty bad. So, you know, I will cite other teams.
It's just a matter of how much risk did you buy yourself? and being sound in all these other positions. And the defense has some massive holes. So Ryan Pohl says that he wants to stick to the best player available. Let's go back a couple of days and listen to him at 25, that 25 pick in the draft. Talk about that again.
Philosophically, I feel the same. It's going to be the best player available. I know that may not be the most popular thing because people see kind of like on my board have yellow tags where We need to fill in. But at the same time, I do believe, especially in early rounds like one, you really got to stick the best player available. We saw that last year.
I know there's a lot of questions like, yeah, Cole, why would you take Colston? I think we found out that it helped us along the way. So we'll continue to lean in that philosophy.
So that's that's where I'm saying yet again, he wants to take the best player available. And he's talked about that many times, like sticking to his board and maintaining the discipline of sticking to that draft board. But then he's also got the other side where social media is somehow dictating part of his job, which he admitted to.
So there's a tool in the middle here that may get them from point A to B. This was to Todd McShay. He talked about what are the tools that they have on the Bears data-wise to help predict the draft.
Something new is, you know, we created a draft simulator that has some analytics built in based on team needs. You're a part of that. You don't even know. We dump in thousands of mock drafts into this. It is scary on how accurate it gets as you get into April. I can rep the draft 150 times in April before we get to it. And it's just like preparing for a game. It's slow motion.
Nothing surprises you because you've worked some of those crazy, you know, someone picked someone right before you or a trade happened. And your ability to adapt and adjust along the way gets really, really high.
I thought this was fascinating because he's looking Todd Mache right in the face and be like, by the way, your mock draft, that helps me do my job. Because we take basically a compilation of all these mock drafts, which as you know, they start out very vague or as vague as they can be, knowing teams have certain needs and how...
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Chapter 3: What challenges does Ryan Poles face as a general manager?
Got paid handsomely.
It was a good call by whoever this coordinator was, and that would be me.
He did have some good calls at coordinator, okay? I'm not going to take away all of it. That's funny, and I liked it. But point being, Ryan Poles was reflective of what Matt Iberflues wanted, too. That's what a good executive does. Like, you have to have a conversation with your coach. Can you coach this guy? But it's when we say, oh, despite playing at a different position—
despite showing different tape, despite showing X, Y, and Z, I still like these traits about this player, even though his tape may not show it. We'll coach him up because we've got the best guys. You did not have the best guys. Some of these people are who they are. So how many of those swings and misses can you take? And just like us talking about the 49ers and John Lynch,
When you have a good group around you, you can take a little more risk and you withstand it and it's not going to cost you as much. That's the point here.
I want to point something out here because 309 with a text that's been shared by others in its sentiment. Polls is in a lose-lose situation with this station. If it's a great draft, it's Ben's. Fair draft, it's on polls. You're picking a side without picking a side. Let me explain why that's not true.
I would say they're not listening. And if you want to half listen, then you can do that.
But I also want to clarify, because this isn't the first time I've heard this argument. With Ryan Poles, he's done enough things that you can call into question or just straight out bad decisions that he is operating at a deficit going into last season. The Bears had a better season. He had a better draft.
We know Ben Johnson had his fingerprints, if not control, of that draft and what the priorities were. If he can replicate that on defense, yes, my stance will change on Ryan Poles. I'll give him more credit. And I did give him credit for some of the picks that he made in this past draft. I gave him credit for the offseason moves that brought about a completely reconstructed offensive line.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of trust in Ryan Poles' leadership?
And I feel like this is a conversation that we're going to have until the actual draft in April. So you have some time to listen and think about it and reevaluate it and Just like a menu at a restaurant. You may not like one thing on the menu, but you like the other. So how much? That's Rahimi Harrison-Grody on the score. And if we have time for a dangerous nugget, I found one.
I'll leave it at that.