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Report: Bears GM Ryan Poles not happy with the team's power structure

brendan sugrue, bears wire
·3 min read

If there is one thing we know about the Chicago Bears, it's that they love to put together their front office in backwards fashion. Too many times, we've seen the team bring in general managers when a head coach is already in place, who then fire that coach shortly after. Or they allow lame-duck head coaches to draft first-round quarterbacks and then get fired a year later, which is counterproductive to the development of the players.

This of course happened just days ago with the firing of Matt Eberflus during Caleb Williams' rookie season, which has created chaos as the team tries to finish out the final four games of the year. They always have trouble getting everyone on the same page and timeline, and now there is a potential issue with the structure between the general manager and team president.

On Monday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the Bears were shellacked by the San Francisco 49ers 38-13, ESPN 1000's Marc "Silvy" Silverman of the Waddle & Silvy Show, shared some interesting information about the dynamic between general manager Ryan Poles and president Kevin Warren. Silvy shared on the air from "someone with first-hand knowledge" that Poles was frustrated with the change in the reporting structure when Warren was hired back in 2023.

"One of the main reasons that Ryan Poles took the Bears job was because he liked the direct reporting nature to the team owner. It was very appetizing to him as a general manager to report directly to ownership. There was no buffer. If he had an issue, he could go right to George [McCaskey], right to ownership.

When Kevin Warren was hired, he was frustrated with that from the start. That he never loved it. It was not a personal thing with Kevin, but it was something that he didn't like that he went from reporting to the owner to now having to report to a team president, who reports to the owner. And he was very vocal about that to people he trusted inside the building, that maybe he never would have taken the job to begin with."

Poles was a highly sought-after candidate during the 2022 offseason. He had interviews with multiple teams, but the Bears ownership made an impression on him when he was hired. George McCaskey greeted him at the airport and picked him up to finalize the deal. That is who Poles was reporting to during his first year on the job while former president Ted Phillips worked on other projects. That changed when Warren succeeded Phillips nearly a year later, and it seems to have an impact on Poles. So much so that some believe he wouldn't have taken the job had he known that the reporting structure would change. His look during last week's press conference said it all when the general manager took a backseat to Warren following the firing of Eberflus.

Silvy goes on to say he theorizes that a mutual parting could take place between Poles and the Bears at the end of the season, though that seems extreme less than a year after they spent the No. 1 overall pick on Williams. Also keep in mind general manager jobs in the NFL don't grow on trees and Poles hasn't exactly proven himself up to this point either. Still, it seems as a rift is there as it pertains with Poles' frustration over the reporting structure. It's yet another example of the Bears doing one thing, then quickly changing things up that prevents continuity from developing.

This article originally appeared on Bears Wire: Report: Bears GM Ryan Poles not happy with the team's power structure