More MMQB: Daniel Jones Deal With Giants Might Be Within Reach | Takeaways: How the Ravens’ Decision on Lamar Jackson Will Impact the Whole QB Market | Six From Saturday: Florida Coach Billy Napier Dishes on QB Prospect Anthony Richardson
The process of getting to know one another, for Bears coach Matt Eberflus and GM Ryan Poles, was deliberate and detailed; since the new bosses in Chicago had never worked together, and came from different football lineages, it was always going to take time for their relationship to form.
Still, there were little wins along the way. One came on Monday Night Football in Week 7.
The Bears were up 10–0 early in the second quarter on a rainy, cold October evening in Foxborough, Mass., on their way to upsetting the Patriots. Mac Jones was flushed out of the pocket, to his right, and tried to fit a hole shot in to Jonnu Smith, between the corner and safety. The problem, for Jones, was Chicago’s rookie safety Jaquan Brisker, whose athleticism was enough to slam Jones’s throwing window shut.
The second-round pick skied over Smith to grab the first interception of his career, which prompted Eberflus to glance over at the box where Poles sat in at Gillette Stadium. He was too far away to see his GM, of course. But the symbolism of the moment trumped whatever Eberflus may have been able to see.
“I was like, Man, I bet he’s smiling up there now,” the coach says. “But that’s what it is, right? The background that I have is in college. I was in college all those years, and I was around Gary Pinkel, was around Don James, and learned to be able to evaluate those guys—big, long, fast, you look at the traits, and then you have to be able to fit the vision into what you see. It’s cool because he has the same vision.
“It’s just … pretty cool to be able to have that same type of the way we look at a player.”
David Banks/USA TODAY Sports
Eberflus was telling the story at a high-top table on the second floor of the Indianapolis JW Marriott—some four months after Brisker made that play—with Poles sitting right next to him. Monday being the second-to-last day of the combine, Eberflus had just checked some luggage at the front desk, planning to go see some family in town later in the day, but he might as well have been packed for the next seven weeks.
Both know what sort of work lies ahead. And how much the result of it will mean.
In a way, the hope is that how they came to a consensus on using the pick they got for Khalil Mack (48th) on Brisker last year is a precursor for whatever they will do with the first pick in the coming weeks. In another way, making that second-round pick wasn’t, and can’t be, like this at all—no one’s job was on the line when Poles pulled the Penn State safety’s name off the board late that Friday night last April.
Poles and Eberflus know exactly how important it is that they get it right. And the plan the Bears have put in place—which we’ll detail right here in this week’s MMQB column—certainly reflects all of that.
The NFL offseason is now at full steam, and we’re gonna cover all of it in the MMQB this week. In the column, you’ll find …
• A breakdown of where things stand between Daniel Jones and the Giants.
• A look at the quarterbacking landscape for the Falcons and Ravens.
• How the heat got turned up on Bryce Young just a little this weekend.
• Who Anthony Richardson is as a player, and a person.
And a ton more from the scouting combine. But we’re starting at the top of the draft, with a still-new brain trust tasked with a regime-defining decision.
This story has to start with where the Bears are with Justin Fields, the quarterback Chicago traded up for two years ago, but also one whom Poles and Eberflus inherited.
The 23-year-old was electrifying and inconsistent; he was spectacular at times, uneven at others, in his second NFL season. He rushed for 1,143 yards and eight touchdowns, and the result was the Bears—the franchise of Walter Payton and Gale Sayers—having the most prolific ground attack in the team’s 103-season history. On the flip side, he threw for just 2,242 yards, had a 17–11 TD-INT ratio, completed 60.4% of his passes with an 85.2 passer rating and got hurt.
So, sure, there are questions about his growth and how sustainable the way he played last year is. Under normal circumstances, a team with a quarterback like Fields would simply stay the course, see where things go in Year 3 and then make a determination.
But having the first pick in a year when there are quarterbacks worth considering taking that high isn’t a normal circumstance—which has, at the very least, kept Poles from declaring that Fields is his quarterback for 2023 no matter what. This sets up what’s been a delicate dance for coach and GM, in which they have to balance their effort to get the very most out of the pick while remaining conscious of the implications it has on Fields.
“It’s really important,” Poles says. “And we anticipated it, with how everything’s going, that would be the case. So I spent a lot of time just communicating with him, letting him know there’s going to be noise out there, and if anything changes, we’ll keep you in the loop so you’re not hearing it from the outside before you’re hearing it from me. And I think he respects that a lot. I’ve been pretty clear that we’re excited about where his career's going.
“There is, including for myself, a lot of development from Year 1 to Year 2 to Year 3 that has to happen. He knows that; he’s going to attack it. It’s just when you’re in this situation, you have to weigh all options, you have to do the work. And even being a young person in this league, I know things change rapidly so it’s hard to be definitive about certain things and say 100% sure, this is going to happen, because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. You learn that quickly in this league. It changes.”
That said, it seemed clear talking to Poles and Eberflus where the wind was blowing here.
No, Fields wasn’t perfect in Year 2. He has a ways to go as a passer, and it’d be hard to run him as much as the Bears did in 2022 again. And yet, he accomplished what he did in his second year going through a coaching change, learning a new offense and playing with a hollowed-out roster (with the Bears carrying more than $60 million in dead-cap money last year) around him.
The bottom line is, if you redrafted the 2021 class, Fields, the fourth quarterback selected that spring, would almost certainly be the second one picked, behind only Trevor Lawrence. And as the Bears see it, were Fields in this year’s class, he’d be in the mix to go No. 1.
“He’d definitely be in the conversation,” Eberflus says, with Poles nodding next to him.
The ceiling remains sky high for Fields and, for now at least, the Bears are focused on getting him there, with the good news being that the quarterback they now know will get there or die trying. “What I didn’t know about him [until last year] is his work ethic is at an elite level,” Poles says. And that showed all year, with stories like when Fields gathered equipment managers and strength coaches to be receivers on the players’ days off popping up to prove it.
So Eberflus, OC Luke Getsy and staff have been explicit with Fields on what the next steps in his maturation have to be, and they trust he’ll do what he has to to take them.
“It’s just about the anticipation and the timing and the rhythm of the passing game; that’s really it,” Eberflus says. “Once he learns his progressions, goes through his progressions, and if things aren’t there, then he can take off. He’s gotta be able to feel more comfortable in the pocket and that’ll go, again, with adding talented pieces along the front to give him some more time. We’re excited where he is and we’re excited about the future.”
And so even without a declaration that Fields is the quarterback, the Bears are operating like he will be, which opens myriad options with that valuable piece of capital that Poles and Eberflus are sitting on.
Matt Marton/USA TODAY Sports
Poles has been in this spot once before, a decade ago as the Chiefs’ college scouting coordinator. Held over by Andy Reid and John Dorsey, the young personnel man saw Kansas City go through the process of being a new group trying to get the most out of the No. 1 pick—with the team eventually landing on Central Michigan left tackle Eric Fisher, after weeks of weighing the merits of taking Fisher vs. Oklahoma tackle Lane Johnson.
“But it wasn’t as chaotic as this is, with the combination of quarterbacks and teams that need them,” Poles says. “I just don’t remember there being, like, a ton of trade situations that we had to work through.”
This year, there already are.
Eberflus said the Bears have already had trade talks with three teams that are considering moving up for the first pick. But that hardly means Chicago’s ready to pull the trigger. First, the other teams would need to be ready themselves—and for many, getting there on a quarterback would mean getting all the player’s medical information, and getting to him for a private workout, at the very least. Second, history tells us it’s still early.
Over the last 20 draft cycles, top-three picks have been traded eight times. Three happened on draft day. The other five: March 9, March 17, March 26, April 14 and April 20. And the reason for waiting again goes back to the readiness of the suitors: To get the most for the pick, you need to have as many teams in as possible—which means if the Bears are going to move the pick now, the trade would have to come at a premium.
“For sure, that’s been a part of a lot of conversations—What would it take to do something now?” Poles says. “It’s really early right now, so it would take a lot to close the door. And then the other thing is just adding to the premium is if a player, a veteran player, was in the mix. To me, then [trading the pick early] allows us to be a little bit more precise in free agency. So that would be the other factor, too.”
So given all that, what are the chances that the pick will actually get moved?
“Strong,” Poles says. “Over 50%.”
Of course, that leaves open the chance that the Bears would keep the pick, and they’re preparing for that, too. Poles says there are seven players in this year’s draft that he has graded high enough to be under consideration for the first pick. Eberflus started studying them once the season ended and has watched all of them.
“He just started crushing the list; I had to keep giving him more and more and more,” Poles says. “We have this system where you stack it, so I usually check every morning and every night, and his list would start just populating because he was just knocking the tape out.”
And keeping track of who’s watching what on each of the potential top picks is an important piece of this, too, with Poles keeping a log on which games coaches and scouts have watched on each player, so the Bears can be as complete and thorough as possible.
“They talk a lot about that in baseball scouting, that’s a big deal,” Poles says. “Obviously it’s a lot more games, but if you get a guy in a slump, a four-week slump, and the other guy sees him when he’s hot, your grades might be completely different because of when your exposure was. And then guys develop. There are a couple guys that are 20 years old in this draft. I saw a 2003 birth date, so what he was like in September vs. in December?”
Then, there’s that luggage Eberflus had—which will be packed plenty over the coming weeks. He and Poles, along with the coordinators and line coaches, will travel together to pro days to meet with prospects and conduct private workouts with the top ones.
The plan is for Poles and Eberflus to do a quick in-and-out at Georgia next week. Then, the week after, they’ll do a Penn State–Ohio State–Alabama swing, with in-house draft meetings and prospect visits to Chicago coming in April.
“We’re going to do it together and do it the right way,” Poles says.
Poles estimates, at this point, 75% of his evaluation on the top players is complete, with Eberflus and the coaching staff working to catch up. In a few weeks, everyone will know stars like Will Anderson Jr., and the quarterbacks, too, inside and out—which would obviously impact what the Bears could do at No. 1, but also how far back they’re willing to go.
“There are drop-offs and that plays a part because then the capital that you’re getting back needs to make up for that step down,” Poles says. “You’re gonna have to make up for that on the back end, so that definitely plays a part. And then that’s why the combine’s so critical and it makes all this early trade talk a little complicated, because we still gotta go back and have medical conversations.
“So I can say seven today, or whatever’s in that next tier—maybe it’s 15 in the next tier. But maybe four have a medical concern that makes it a little bit higher of a risk. Or if they had an interaction with a coach in informals, and they don’t feel comfortable, that reduces somebody, maybe learning it’ll take a little bit longer than what we anticipated. It’s always changing. Whenever we get that board set, that usually dictates how far back you’ll go.”
Which would give the Bears yet another reason not to rush anything.
Poles and Eberflus may not have said it directly in our half hour together, but they know what’s on the line here. Pass on a quarterback and Fields doesn’t make it, and there’ll be a ton of pressure to find one in 2023. Conversely, if Fields hits, and the Bears land a haul for the first pick, it could set them up for a decade—and, as it stands now, Chicago does see Fields as a guy who could lead the team for the next 10 years, if things go right.
“You can see that, continuing to develop, getting better, learning the offense, adding playmakers around him. We never put a ceiling on a player, we always see what could happen, what could be the best for him,” Eberflus says. “So the growth is going to be up to us as coaches and the development side, personnel side, adding pieces around him, and we’ll see where it goes.”
And because of that belief, the Bears have been able to take a comprehensive view of having the first pick, and what it can do for them.
At one point in our conversation, I asked Poles about balancing having picks to get true difference-makers (like Chris Jones and Travis Kelce in Kansas City) vs. having volume to create a balanced roster. He then stopped me with a reminder—Jones was the 37th pick in the 2016 draft, and Kelce was the 63rd pick in the ’13 draft.
“What you learn over time is really the more draft capital you have, the more chances, the more swings at the plate, you get to hit some of those players,” Poles says. “Especially when you set the organization up like we have to develop players, because they may not have everything yet and their game may not be complete. With teaching and the stuff we have in performance, we can get them to hit their ceiling. And then you can end up with some of the guys like that. So having more swings, you want that, it’s really a numbers game.”
And, really, that crystallizes how the Bears are looking at the first pick.
It’s an important piece of capital, and how they use that capital, whether it becomes one player or 10, is crucial to where Poles and Eberflus are going in Chicago.
“I just know this year is really about opportunity,” Eberflus says. “We had a really good draft class last year, we got a chance to play those guys a lot, and I know that we’re going to add a lot of good players this year. Free agency, with the cash that we have, the money that we have, and a ton of draft picks, when you get talented evaluators and talented coaches together, I think the product’s going to be good. … That’s my hope.”
Of course, they’re putting a lot more than hope into this one, with the goal of things coming together as they did with Brisker a year ago. And if the Bears can make that happen, they’ll have more moments like the one Brisker gave them on that rainy night in New England.
