One-on-one with Bears GM Ryan Poles: 'You want the team to take an image of the head coach'

CHICAGO — Ryan Poles and Ben Johnson didn’t really know each other when they sat down for their first interview over Zoom in January.

Despite various connections — Poles and Johnson both worked as graduate assistants at Boston College, one season apart — and mutual acquaintances in the football world, they were essentially strangers.

The Chicago Bears general manager and head coach agreed they hit it off pretty quickly.

“When we got on the call and spent time with each other, there was just a vibe to it that was awesome,” Poles said shortly after hiring Johnson.

Seven months later, Poles and Johnson finalized their first 53-man roster this week. They are on the eve of their first season together. Poles believes he has found the coach who will lead the Bears to a new era of success, and Johnson believes in the front-office team Poles has assembled.

They are in this thing together. That was made even clearer when the Bears extended Poles’ contract and aligned its length with that of Johnson’s, keeping both under contract through 2029.

Their working partnership will go a long way toward determining how the next handful of years plays out for the franchise. So, too, will the relationship between Johnson and second-year quarterback Caleb Williams.

The Bears kick off their season Sept. 8 with a “Monday Night Football” matchup against the Minnesota Vikings at Soldier Field. That will be the world’s first true glimpse of Johnson’s offense in Chicago, as well as Williams’ play under Johnson’s tutelage.

As the season nears, Poles recently sat down with the Chicago Tribune to discuss the first training camp with Johnson as coach, the evolving relationship between Johnson and Williams and more. (The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.)

— You’re at the tail end of training camp. What has stood out about Ben throughout this process since you all got back in the building in July?

The sense of urgency that he has to push this team to their optimal level has been really, really impressive. And he’s not just about words — it’s the actions that you really feel. And his ability to create belief and trust from the locker room in a short period of time is a huge benefit to all of us because you can start to see the team start to take his identity to the field.

Highly competitive, wants to be the absolute best, wants to dominate. And he leans into that and the guys are showing that in their actions as well, and that’s what you want. You want the team to take an image of the head coach, and right now we’re starting to get to that place.

— Since Ben arrived in Chicago, are there ways in which his presence has helped you improve as a leader?

I’ve always believed that — really from training camp to the Super Bowl — the face of the organization, the CEO of football really needs to be the head coach. And because of his presence, because of his leadership and his command, it’s been really good to fade a little bit to the back and let him lead and just make sure that our roster is in the best place possible.

And that takes a lot of trust and belief as well. Our relationship, you’ve got to get that in a short period of time, and we’ve been able to get to that place, which I think is going to benefit us.

— Back in January he talked about how he wasn’t bringing the Detroit Lions playbook with him to Chicago. He wants to build something new for the players on this roster. From your vantage point, what was it like to watch Ben and his staff go through that process and put that together?

So I’m not in all of their meetings, but what I see and what we talk about is really: How do we use scheme to maximize the talent that we have?

Our setup is very different than Detroit. And it’s been cool to see going practice by practice. It’s almost like one day is Rome (Odunze’s) day, and you realize that day that maybe DJ (Moore) didn’t get a touch. And then all of a sudden DJ’s getting touches (the next day), and it has this really unique way to keep all of these offensive weapons engaged and active.

It brings me back — and I don’t compare them, it’s just the great one that I’ve been with, which was Andy (Reid) — (he) had the ability to do that as well. That creates excitement, that keeps everyone alive and a part of the identity of what you’re trying to do. It’s kind of using scheme to amplify the talent that we have, which would make it very different than what Detroit’s doing.

— Going off of that, what are maybe one or two big-picture things that an offense geared toward Caleb Williams will help him with?

One that comes to mind (is) Caleb’s athleticism. I think that’s where the scheme with Detroit and us could be different. Throw some read options in there, and all of a sudden you’ve got to deal with something you haven’t seen before with Caleb. Finding ways to get Caleb on the move to create explosives. You’ll see different things to help him out in that space.

Just like all of the players on our roster, that will be a part of what we do is making sure that wherever they’re comfortable, where they can create impact, he’ll be able to spin and use his creativity to get that going.

— You brought up Andy Reid in Kansas City. It seems like the best offensive minds are always adapting and evolving. Sean McVay’s offense is different from what it was five years ago. Reid’s Chiefs have found various ways to win over the Patrick Mahomes years. What gives you confidence that Ben is going to be the type of coach who’s thinking two steps ahead?

Just that we’ve seen it in Detroit. You add (running back Jahmyr) Gibbs to the mix and all of a sudden it has this new feel and touch to it. Same with (tight end Sam) LaPorta. So even through our conversations since he’s been here and as we’ve acquired talent, you can see the creativity of how he wants to adapt and change based on what we have.

It wasn’t too long ago before the draft that Cole (Kmet) was our main, No. 1 tight end. Then all of a sudden you go through the draft (and select Colston Loveland with the 10th pick) and you have two (tight ends) with two different skill sets, and you can see (Johnson’s) brain start to twist and turn, like: All right, this is what we can do now to put a defense in a tough position and also to allow everybody else to have success. Shoot, we saw that on the first drive of the preseason game (against the Buffalo Bills).

— Ben talked a lot about the one-on-one time the play caller and quarterback have to spend together. What, if anything, is your role in facilitating that and being a sounding board? Where do you as the GM fit into that equation?

To be honest with you, when it comes to his time with the offense and Caleb, it’s let them do their thing. This isn’t about me as a general manager. This is about a coach, a teacher, getting the team where they need to be. It’s a quarterback-driven league — there’s going to be a lot of pressure, a lot of demand on Caleb’s shoulders — so they need that time to make sure that they’re on the right track, seeing things the same way and building that relationship.

So, yeah, I let them do their thing. I’m here for support wherever they need. We have a couple guys, especially on the coaching staff, that give good reference in terms of what it looked like before versus what it looks like now, if he needs a reference point for growth and development.

— How do you see their relationship evolving? I know it’s early. There’s going to be adversity in the season. How do you foresee them working through some of the things that might come up?

I think they’re building that relationship as we speak. That’s why I was so proud — again, I completely understand it’s a preseason game — but I was really proud of the results from the Buffalo game because, with Ben really demanding things be done the way they’re supposed to, being hard on the details and creating those pressure situations so that when we got to the game, you could see everything calm down.

So to get the positive reinforcement for the hard work, to me, builds even deeper trust in that relationship of: “This guy knows what he’s doing. The purpose of him being so hard on me is so that we can have success when we take the field.”

And then we’ve had the ups and downs during practice and they’ve showed the ability to overcome that, continue to lean into the relationship, being truth tellers to each other, taking out the gray (area). We’re not going to hold things back. We’ll be able to lean back into that through the ups and downs.

Because the ups have challenges as well. When you have a lot of success, the world tells you how great you are. You’ve got to protect that as well. Just as much as you have to when everyone’s telling you you’re terrible. And you’ve got to be able to lean on each other for that, and that’s what’s being built right now.

— Switching gears slightly, you guys have spent a lot of time and effort rebuilding the offensive line. On your first day on the job in 2022, you stated that you wanted to build through the trenches. I’m curious how Ben has maybe affected your thinking in terms of the types of players or any nuances when you’re looking at who you want to bring into the building on the offensive line.

You know, when you first get with coaches in terms of acquiring talent, it’s like: What scheme are we running? What fits us? What’s the challenge to add if you’re outside zone and you’ve got some road graders that struggle with range? That has a pretty big effect on what you do. So it’s just understanding what we want to do.

And we got with the staff, we got with Ben, to go through position by position of what’s ideal, what’s the prototype for what we want to do. Knowing that some of this, there’s a little bit of transition from where we were, what we were doing, to now. So that conversation was probably the most impactful up front.

Then the other thing is just, as we were studying the center position, that’s a pressure point of an offensive line. And with a young quarterback, you want to put as much as possible on the center to let the quarterback play as fast as possible. So just going through our process when we acquired Drew (Dalman), making sure he was capable of doing those things.

— As you watched the left tackle battle evolve, what have you learned about all of those tackles — Braxton Jones, Ozzy Trapilo, Kiran Amegadjie and Theo Benedet — who have gotten a shot at it and how have you taken in what each of them is capable of doing?

It’s been good. They’re all on different planes, and that’s been the most challenging part of it. So you have Braxton, and you’re trying to evaluate a guy that’s coming back from a pretty significant injury. And then looking at last year’s tape as kind of the bar, can he get to that point and better? But he’s not quite there yet. He’s closing in on it.

But then the person he’s competing with (Trapilo) is a person that’s never played in the league versus Kiran, who didn’t have his first year, coming from a smaller school (Amegadjie missed most of the 2024 offseason after an injury at Yale). And then Theo enters the conversation, who from a length standpoint may not have everything but from a foot speed and toughness (standpoint) has a lot of things that you like.

So kind of piecing it all together and projecting is what we’re trying to do. Right now we just want one of those guys to take it and play free and not to lose the job but to take the job. (That’s) what we’re looking for as we go down the stretch here.

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