The Bears are totally going to get it right this time, they promise
Three different press conferences with one unified delusion


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The Bears split their stooges into three groups of one for yesterday’s end of the season press conferences. Ryan Poles got the comfy chair in the media room so he could explain his grand vision for not fixing the offensive line again, while Kevin Warren stood in the hall and claimed that there’s great momentum towards a new stadium deal sometime between this year and when the sun finally explodes, and George McCaskey seemed more worried about where Hub Arkush was than who the next coach will be.
Once again, I watched these damn things so you didn’t have to. Let’s take them in order with Ryan Poles up first.
So first I want to thank our players for their time and their energy this year.
There was some?
I want to take a moment to thank Thomas Brown. Was put in a really tough situation, was given a lot of responsibility as the season went along. And I thought he handled it with poise, with command. thought he did a great job leading, just watching him inside the team meeting room, seeing him address the team. He did a great job bringing accountability to the forefront, being a truth teller was really important at that time. I want to thank our fans for their support and their patience. I understand their frustrations just with where the team is right now. And they have my word. I'm doing everything I can and we are as an entire group to get this thing back on track and head in the direction it needs to be and they can take pride in their team.
More like, “I’d like to thank Thomas Brown for the thankless positions I put him in this season and I hope he finds happiness going back to Sean McVay’s Rams’ staff now that his dreams of ever being an NFL head coach have been set aflame and tossed in the dumpster by me.”
Also, I liked that he said he’s doing everything he can to “get this thing back on track.” When was the last time it was on a track? The ‘80s?
Want to give a special shout out to Jaylon Johnson for making the Pro Bowl for the second year. That's no surprise from anyone in our building. His preparation, his detail, his process is always on point and that's allowed him to be successful and consistent.
Here’s where Poles and I are different. I could not have said that without being a smartass and complimenting Jaylon on overcoming his sex addition to make a Pro Bowl. “Congratulations to Jaylon, who finally stopped fucking long enough to work on his backpedal. He’s an inspiration to us all. And a shout out to Vags McCaskey who just celebrated her 102nd birthday over the weekend and says she really misses ‘hanging out’ with Jaylon.”
Looking back at the season, not happy with the results.
What? You’re going to let a little thing like the longest losing streak in franchise history spoil the joy of beating the Packers?
I think as a front office, we got to continue to add talent to this roster.
Or, maybe start.
We have to make sure that the players we bring into this building also fit the culture that we want so we can continue to make strides forward.
Wouldn’t it be great if he meant actual culture instead of “team attitude” and he just signed an entire Mariachi band in the offseason? Actually, that might have been what he did last year.
So I'm disappointed just like our fans are, but I'm not discouraged.
Well, we’re both.
I'm grateful for George and Kevin and their trust in me to continue to get this thing back on track and get it corrected. I do wanna address some of the things that I've heard about the relationship between Kevin and I that couldn't be further from the truth. We spend almost every single day together talking about solutions and direction of where we want to be and where we're going to go. I mean, it is so far from the truth. It was a little disappointing to hear that, to be honest.
Looking at Caleb, I thought he did some really good things. But I also know that there is so much more left in him and his game and his skill set. I love the flashes that he showed. I love the two minute drills and his ability to put the team in a position to win games multiple times this season.
“See, I got one pick right!”
We're going to continue to build off of that. We have cap space, we have draft capital and like I said we have continuity to continue to roll forward in terms of our coach search. We've taken the last month or so to prepare our process we've taken time to look back at the past processes to make sure that we were making changes and adjusting so that this is a absolute success.
If you’re going to take a look back at the things you’ve fucked up, it’s going to take more than a month.
We've been in information gathering mode, looking at data research, making countless calls to make sure that we have everything we need to make a sound decision What we're looking for—we're looking for clear vision, a developmental mindset, really good game management and obviously, a plan to develop quarterback is going to be a key part of that as well. We're going to cast a wide net.
You’re gonna need a wide net if you’re trying to to snare Mike Vrabel. He’s huge!
I like that Poles ticked off the names of the people on the search committee and made a special point to say that assistant GM Ian Cunningham will not be on it because Ian will be busy interviewing for GM jobs all over the league, because after last year what’s really in demand is somebody who isn’t quite as good at the job as Ryan Poles. I would guess Ian will spend the offseason alone in an office staring at his phone.

Poles was asked how they can avoid making the kind of mistakes they made when they hired Matt Eberflus, Luke Getsy and Shane Waldron, but they left out Alan Williams (after the FBI raided Halas Hall, Peanut Tillman made The Flus cry and they confiscated Williams’ laptop—even though some of that ever actually happened) and David Walker.
All in all, in three years, 13 of The Flus’ assistants got fired, and that doesn’t include The Flus himself or the guys who are currently on the staff who are all about to get launched when a new coach comes in. So the hiring process might need a little bit of an overhaul.
He was asked about players saying on Monday that they think they need a coach who is more of a disciplinarian. Man, how quickly they forget the incredible HITS principle.
I honestly could give two shits what the players say they need in a new coach. They whined and bitched about Flus until he (correctly) got canned and then when given a coach that they claimed they wanted they played worse. Maybe what this team needs is for the high paid players to not take those sad paid weekly radio (or Chuggo) gigs where they just whine and bitch about everything? Maybe shut up and get back to work?
I think that was a window into The Flus’ hands-off disciplinary style. Can you imagine Ditka, or even Lovie, hearing about DJ Moore or Jaylon griping about something on a radio show and not spending Wednesday with their boot up DJ or Jaylon’s ass?
One important thing is, you know, we look at the wins and losses, but you got to go to the root cause on how we got there.
I can save you some time. About 80 percent of your entire problems are that you don’t have an offensive line that can protect the quarterback or run block. Fix that and watch how magically all kinds of other shit actually starts to work.
He was asked about the “power structure” at Halas Hall. It’s always funny to think of George as part of a “power” anything. Maybe he’s a power bottom? I don’t really want to think about it.
Yeah, no, so I'll end up selecting the coach. I'm taking the lead on that. And George and Kevin have put me in charge of that. And that'll be the relationship between the coach and I.
You read it right there. The next coach will be Ryan Poles’ choice. He’ll have no interference from George (who has a really busy few weeks reffing girl’s junior high basketball) or Kevin (who is still trying to figure out why he can’t just build a parking garage right over the Field Museum.)
How much you want to bet the interview with Ben Johnson this week goes like this?
Kevin Warren: Ben, as you know you’ll be reporting to Ryan, and I think the two of you will work great together.
Ben Johnson: I’d really rather bring my own GM with me and report right to the owner.
Kevin Warren: Ryan who?
As is traditional in any Chicago sports GM or manager press conference, the press asks the guy how many years he has left on his contract and the guy refuses to answer.
“As the organization set up this coaching search and it's trying to make it as attractive as this job as possible were you given a contract extension?”
I've said from the day I've been hired I'm not gonna get in my contract that I just think it's a very personal thing in terms of how much I'm making and how long you understand why?
No! Nobody understands why. We know every detail of player contracts, why is yours so secret?
So the candidates that we talked to, that would be something that I can address with them.
Fine, we’ll just ask the candidates and they can tell us how much time you have left on your deal.
There's some foundational things that you have to address from the beginning to kind of hold the standard throughout the entire year. I believe when you go through struggle, some of those things get difficult, right? Guys are struggling with just being down and losing games. And I think that's some of the things that we saw. Any team needs like a certain standard and certain measurements of how we're gonna do things.
“Standard and certain measurements?” Isn’t that what the lines and hash marks on the field are for?
Will the Bears narrow the search to an offensive focused head coach to develop Caleb?
I think there's like, for young quarterback, obviously, there's ideal fit. But at the end of the day, you got to look at all the characteristics of what you're looking for in a head coach. And then you got to see what's the best bundle of those to bring in the building. Obviously, we're talking about leadership accountability, some of those important things that carry over regardless of what the situation is. So like those have to be there, to ignore those just to go to the other side, I think is a bad deal too. So really, it's the candidate that has the best collection of all of those things. And yes, the development of a young quarterback is going to be a huge factor in that.
Just hire a good coach. Don’t worry about the other shit. It’s amazing how talented players seem to play well for good coaches regardless of what their background is.
I think my favorite part of the press conference was Dan Weirderer complaining that the list of potential coaching interviews is too long. That guy will bitch about anything. If the list was short he’d lose his mind about that. He seemed confused that since the job’s been open for six weeks that the Bears haven’t been able to shrink their list. How exactly do you do that without interviewing people?

Next up was everybody’s favorite fabulist huckster, Kevin Warren! Every time I hear him talk I expect him to break into the Monorail song.
The biggest shock was that Warren said he wanted “to keep my opening remarks short” and then he did.
He was asked why some of the senior vice presidents on the business side would be involved in the later rounds of interviews, and while that does seem cumbersome, he actually had a sensible answer for it.
I think what it shows is that we just want to have a collaborative organization to provide our individuals, our employees here. lot of them like Karen Murphy, one our chief operating officer, but has been here over 20 years. They have insight into the organization.
And all these interviews are, they go both ways. It's not only us interviewing the candidates, but it's the candidates interviewing us. And I want to make sure, I know Ryan wants to make sure that we provide all the opportunities for candidates to ask questions. So I like the collaborative nature of it to be able to have them involved in the process at the appropriate time and early on, it will be a smaller group as Ryan addressed.
Interviews do go two ways and if you don’t think the Bears aren’t going to get asked a lot of questions about how and why they do things beyond football, you’re nuts. Think about what dopes we think they are. Imagine what outside football people think of them. They need to prove they have legitimate processes for things. I’m not sure they can do it, but they need to try.
Jon Greenberg asked Kevin what would happen if a candidate (Ben Johnson) wanted to bring in their own GM. Albert Breer has said recently that it’s not the case. Johnson’s not going to demand someone be the GM, but he does want to make sure the current GM is somebody he can work with—or at least outlast. Kevin’s answer couldn’t have been all that reassuring for Poles.
I made it clear in early December. And as Ryan talked about today, he's our point person on the search. He's our general manager. He's head of football operations.
OK, that’s not a great answer, but it doesn’t raise any red flags. Just stop talking now, Kevin.
Oh wait…you can’t.
You know, from a hypothetical standpoint, it probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to answer that at that point in time.
Oh, no.
Well, it can’t get worse.
I'm confident that if we do our job from a process standpoint, which we will, and sit down and be open and honest that people will look at this as a great opportunity. And from a hypothetical standpoint, I'm confident with the group that we have right now and Brian leading our charge.
Who?
Good old “Brian” Poles. Nothing says vote of confidence like the boss getting your name wrong.
He was then asked if he still has confidence in “Brian” and he said:
I think the assessment we've made it clear I trust him and and he's a hard worker. He's young. He's talented. He's curious. I think his greatest attribute he's willing as he did just in the press conference to raise his hand and say here's some things where he fell short. He's as hard on himself more than anyone could be hard on him and and he strives every single day to do the right thing and I think one of the things in life I encourage Ryan and others is to be self reflective, which has been good.
OK, that’s not a terrible recovery. It kind of reads like when somebody you barely know asks you to write an endorsement of them for their LinkedIn profile, but it’s not bad. It’s not full of useless stuff.
And I think that's one of the things that I've noticed throughout the season. I noticed from the first day that we met and even up to this morning, you know, when we got together six o'clock this morning here early is that he's reflecting on what he can do to continually be the leader that I know he is and he will continually grow to be a great leader. And and he's passionate about it. He cares. All those things really go into it. He's not here just all for all the accoutrements of being a general manager in the league. He wants to win. He loves this franchise. He's passionate about the Chicago Bears and he's going to do everything he can.
Oof. Spoke too soon. Why do we still equate the time you get to the office with how hard you’re working? Does Poles need to be in his office to do more than like 20% of his actual work? But hey, at least we know he’s not here for “all the accoutrements of being a general manager in the league.” Ahh, that’s why he doesn’t have epaulets on his polo shirts and doesn’t wear a Pope hat on the sidelines. I always wondered.
Warren said he was proud of the guys for playing hard in Green Bay even though it was cold and they were bad (a dome can fix one of those things, Kevin). And then he was finally asked about the only thing he really wants to ever talk about. The non-existent new stadium project!
The status is downtown still remains the focus, the museum campus. I feel that we've made a massive amount of momentum. Again, I've been here 20 months, and we've made great progress. But along with those lines, we own 326 acres of beautiful land in Arlington Heights. It's a fantastic piece of property. We were able to get the memorandum of understanding done there. So optionality, you know, does exist, but I'll remain steadfast that the goal is to make sure that we have shovels in the ground in 2025. And I'm confident that will happen.
And I remain confident that at some point you’re just going to have to suck it up and build it in Arlington Heights and you will have spent at least two years wasting everybody’s time.
My favorite question to Kevin was this gem.
“Does the coaching search take away the time you could be spending on the stadium?”
Dude. There is no stadium. Kevin’s got LOTS of time to do other shit. Poles wishes the stadium construction had begun to get Warren out of his office at 6 a.m.
And then Warren got asked about Poles’ contract and his answer told us without telling us. The question was phrased that Poles is in the final year of his deal and the coach will be in his first and how does that line up?
I mean there are a lot of assumptions in your question. We say long term, I mean you know a year is lifetime and I know that's important and I know 2025 is important not only from a football standpoint.
“A year is a lifetime.” Well, I guess Ryan Poles has a lifetime contract…and his career is in hospice.
Courtney Cronin asked Warren how the Bears can expect to make the right hire when they were convinced that their process showed them that Matt Eberflus was a great candidate and Shane Waldron was a great candidate.
Courtney, that's a fantastic question.
Hah. That means, “Courtney, I’m not going to answer that question. I’m just going to talk about nothing until you stop nodding.”
And that’s just what he did. It was kind of impressive. Check it out.
I think there's nothing to guard against. I would twist a little bit, and I would say there's standards that we have to set and that it becomes very simple. The way I look at my life, it becomes very simple. Either you're above the line or below the line. And I think the standard has to be, there are certain standards we're gonna have to set from discipline, accountability, hard work, vision, foresight, leadership, game management, from a coaching standpoint. And I think we have to commit to those standards. And we have to hold each other accountable that if people start to deviate and justify a reason to go below the standard, we have to say the standard is the standard. It's not about the person.
It's about the standard. And I think once we set that standard in the process, which we have done, it will become clear who are the candidates that meet that standard. And then you look for the goodness of fit. But I think that's the thing that I will make sure that I'll focus on on making sure that we set the standard and that we abide by the standard.
[Courtney stops nodding.]
And the final question was about if he learned about coaching searches from his time with the Vikings.
And I think what the experience is, that you need to make sure, if I would say one attribute, is to go into the search without your mind made up. I think that's the thing that I learned the most. You need to go into these searches wide open and to be able to look at it just from a global standpoint. And what I just said to Courtney is having a standard. You what are we looking for? There takes a certain kind of person. And I say this lovingly with all respect.
This is a phenomenal franchise. It's a historical franchise in an incredible city. But our fan base is because they're so passionate. You have to be sturdy. You have to be disciplined. You have to be strong here in Chicago. You have to basically emulate what Chicago stands for. So this job is a unique job for everyone in this leadership position. And so I think the thing that I learned in Minnesota is to make sure that you go into this process with clean hands, clean eyes, no decisions, and make sure you set the standard. And then once it becomes clear that that person meets that standard or those persons, start to zero in and then make a determination. And then once you make a determination, you gotta go forward. You can't look back.
Huh? What was any of that? Clean hands? I do appreciate that he found a very polite way of saying that Bears fans are complete dopes, because we are.

Anyway, after those final two tour de farce answers, it was time for our old buddy George.
Thank you to the fans. We know this has been an incredibly frustrating season. With the expectations of September. And the disappointments of December. And they stuck with us. And we're grateful for that. They deserve a winner. And we're going to do everything we can to give it to him.
The expectations of September and the disappointments of December? You didn’t win a fucking game in November, either.
Then, George wondered where his old buddy was and asked the notoriously riotous Bears media to have some decorum for once.
If Hub were here, I would invite him as the Helen Thomas of the corps to ask the first question. I don't know who's second in tenure, but I would suggest that instead of shouting over each other, you respect each other and take turns.
Was Hub missing?
Oh, no! Was he face down on the sidewalk in front of Halas Hall again?
The first question was from Mark Grote, about fans chanting “sell the team” after the last home game loss to Seattke.
Yeah, it's it's understandable. As Kevin mentioned, our fans are passionate. They're incredibly frustrated. They wanted to make their voices heard. I was more bothered by the week before. When Lions fans tried to take over Soldier Field and force the home team to go to a silent snap count. Fortunately, that didn't happen. It's understandable that Bears fans would sell their tickets because of the way the season has gone. And the challenge for us is to put a team on the field that Bears fans are so excited about. They're not interested in selling their tickets.
George buddy, I’m not even interested in buying tickets in the first place, so don’t worry about me.
He also got asked about finally firing a head coach in season.
We heard a lot about that. You know the Bears have never done it just because we had never done it doesn't mean that. There wasn't a situation you know each each situation is different. You know in the 100 year history of the Bears one person held the job for 40 years. So there's that. I think you take each situation individually. wasn't that we were adamantly opposed to do it or anything like that. You do what you think is right in the moment.
Yeah, because nobody ever deserved an in-season firing before. Not Abe Gibron or Wanny or Marc Trestman or Foxy or Matt Nagy.
George did give an answer that I actually liked. The question was his reaction to Tyrique Stevenson’s antics on the Hail Mary in Washington.
I had never seen anything like that.
It has to be kind of invigorating as a Bears fan of 70+ years to see that once and a while they can do something so stupid that you’ve never seen it happen before.
He was asked why this coaching search will be different considering all of the ones on his watch have been disasters.
Well, the idea is to get it right. As I said, Bears fans deserve a winner and we're going to do everything we can. I think with Ryan's leadership process that he's outlined and with guidance from Kevin, Ryan's gonna make the best decision going forward. Well, Ryan has the benefit of his experience and he has the benefit of the guidance from Kevin who's been through this process before.
“We have a whole new bunch of dummies reporting to me this time. This time, it will be different.”
We’re putting a lot of faith in Warren’s experience being a tangential part of one coaching search in Minnesota 11 years ago when they hired Mike Zimmer.
He also was asked about the hypothetical that Warren botched regarding a candidate wanting to change the reporting structure in order to accept the coaching job.
In the interviews that I've participated in, that's never been a factor. Nobody has ever come in and said, I'm not going to come here unless the coach or the general manager and I are on the same timeline. So I don't think that's going to be effective. Our structure is vertical. Head coach reports to the general manager, general manager reports to the president, president reports to the chairman.
So, that would be a deal breaker?
Well, haven't ever experienced anyone saying that. They want the job.
Gee, I’m shocked that guys with such incredible leverage like Marc Trestman (coaching in Canada), John Fox (wanted one last big paycheck to buy a houseboat with), Matt Nagy (failed miserably in his one chance at play calling in KC) or Matt Eberflus (dullest person on the planet) didn’t demand a structure change.
And finally, he was asked whether the Bears would be involving Bill Polian in the search. This was an easy answer, “Fuck no.” Instead…
If Ryan wants him to, that's fine with me.
Maybe since George doesn’t swear, that’s how he says, “fuck no”?
These annual end-of-season, biannual launch-o-coaching-search pressers are so invigorating. I think I’ll go put my head in the oven to warm up.
