I agree, it’s a weird thing to focus on when picking a player.

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If the rule you followed lead you to this, of what use was the rule?

Poles says stuff, I’m glad he does. Sometimes it’ll sound weird, but I appreciate his confidence to say what he thinks and not hide from mics all year. It doesn’t make him any better a GM, but I like it.

Keep hearing, "this guy loves football", think Poles hated the roster he inherited because it had a lot of talented vets who tended to go into business for themselves, didn't spend a lot of time learning the playbook, and were looking more to pad their stats than play a team game.

This also makes me think he will be very selective when singing vets and when signing guys to second contracts. They may have already decided to move on from a few vets, did see Eddie Jackson on a couple of the "surprise roster cut" lists, and they may have made a Roquan Smith type decision on Jaylen Johnson.

Poles said he wants to keep Jaylen Johnson "around for a while" at his press conference on Saturday.

Of course, he said something similar about Roquan.

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Bears will probably sign Johnson to a large extension, as early as this off-season.

Or given Poles' simplistic evaluation methodology (tall, athletic, fast = good), he may try to acquire Anthony Richardson from the Colts and replace Johnson that way. After all, Richardson is a supremely gifted athlete, therefore any coach can coach him into playing CB, or SS, or FS, or WR, etc.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Look a Bill Polian over here. Tell me again, why can't the balck kid play quarterback?

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

There were four black QBs picked bro? I would have loved to have any one of them if I was Indy except Richardson.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

I did notice the white quarterback with traditional and modern skills fell.

Edit: Richardson looks like he has the potential to be a far superior version of Fields. It's going to take at least 2 years though.

_________________
Be well

GO BEARS!!!

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Some Poles Acquisitions:

Lucas Patrick - Sucks
Byron Pringle - Sucks, Launched
Chase Claypool - Sucks So Far
Nate Davis - Doesn't Want To Play?
Justin Jones - Mediocre At Best
Equanimeous St. Brown - Sucks
Michael Schofield - Sucks, Launched
Nicholas Morrow - Sucks, Launched

It looks like Poles is needs a new pro talent scout. This is abysmal.

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The Kenny Williams method!

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Edmunds is the only guy he has signed to a long term big paper deal, hard to tell if he just simply feels the team is not good enough yet to lock of tons of cap space on aging vets, or if he has a filter on the type of guy he views as worthy of locking up long term.

The reason the roster sucks is fairly obvious and lies at the feet of the former GM, who did not value draft picks and was...well lets just say you could have had members of this board make the picks and they likely would have done better than Ryan Pace. You have a grand total of four players on the team from your 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 draft classes, it's almost impossible to fail that spectacularly, but George saw no reason to make the change and it rather predicably got you the worst roster in the league and the worst record in the league.

The 2018 and 2019 draft class members should be your solid vets that make up the core of your team, but they have zero players from those draft classes on the team, in fact, only four players from those two classes are still in the league, to say the cupboard was bare is an understatement.

Poles has created tons of cap space and acquired a great deal of draft capital, you have to give him credit for that, has his approach to the rebuild been slower than one would like, of course, but George has given Poles the keys to the castle and apparently, they have agreed to a long-term approach to rebuild the roster with very little if any sense of urgency.

I agree with your points, but I also think it is remarkable that Poles has found ZERO "hidden gems" in any of his numerous short-term free agent signings. Morrow, Pringle and Patrick were definitely presented as having that potential, yet they were massive flops. And Poles' high-profile trade for Claypool has looked like a disaster to this point.

Most disturbing is that he has staked his reputation on the offensive line, but the results he has achieved thus far are lackluster at best and absolutely bizarre at worst, especially when it seems like Jenkins' retention on the roster last year occurred against the GM's will. What would the line have looked like without that guy?

We should also remember that creating cap space is easy, but using it wisely is entirely another matter. While Poles has excelled at the former, he has yet to prove himself at the latter.

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This is what Ryan Poles puts out there, as your starting DE. What a joke

believe me, I'd love to be angry over this but gibson was given every shot last year and showed nothing. Now he'll get his shot in a 3-4. I expect he'll be one of those guys who bounces around the league as a pass rusher getting 5 sacks a year

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The worst thing they could have done is scrap their 3-4 and move to this garbage 4-3. If they stayed in the 3-4 they easily could have found fat guys to clog up the cut and then you find athletes to replace Mack and Quinn. Much easier than trying to find 3T and DE's in a 4-3. And Eberflous/Williams defense in Indy was never really impressive

He must think the two young OT's will be solid, they liked what they saw out of Carter in camp, and he signed Davis, both guys fit the moblie lineman profile they want in the zone run scheme, but you still have a placeholder at center, he must think he can draft the next long term starting center next year. The faith in the rookie RT is concerning, if he can't play you go with Borom and we've seen that before.

Edmunds is the only top level FA he's signed, has brought in a bunch of marginal players on one year deals, warm bodies to fill spots until he could put his draft picks in place. Tanking only works if you can hit on all those draft picks you get when you sell off your vets. We should be able to tell if these young guys can play by midseason.

There some soft spin here when you claim without evidence that Poles strategy is to bring ppl in one one year deals while waiting for his picks to marinate. In free agency we saw something different: he struck out a few times. That means he needs to be a smarter GM.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

On Claypool while I still think he's suffered from what Allen Robinson or whomever said about Chicago (where WRs go to die,), I think it's worth zooming out a little on that trade: does Poles make that move if Velas Jones didn't look like a bust that year? So arguably the cost for Claypool is larger than the second rounder - it's also the pick he used to select Jones. A better pick there means you don't have to compound the mistake by burning a second rounder to acquire Claypool

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Poles inherited a horse shit player roster when he took over and very few draft picks. He then gutted the team from over-priced and underachieving veterans and was able to totally upgrade the 2022 crap talent with much better over-all talent. To me he did his job well and it is now up to the coaching staff to use that talent to get to a .500 or better season record. They should have a good draft next season along with a good cap position. Play-offs in two years is in the cards. Fields and the offense will be a very improved group depending on Getz's ability to put Fields in the right spots and play calls. If he does, this will be a fun team to watch, win or lose.

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An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

We should finally find out about Fields this season, he has at least NFL average talent at the skill positions, so we should see him put up decent numbers. Odd that we are just now going to get a true evaluation of him in year three, but that's the way this franchise rolls.

The defense will keep the win total down, but if you see Fields is the guy you will feel good about the direction of this franchise.

I saw a very long time pro scout (don't remember name) mention this is what happens these days. The main reason he gives for many QBs taking 3 years to show or more often bust out is drafting attitude and nothing more. Now due to all sorts of NCAA things we generally see a QB do pretty well for a year maybe two tops. More likely then you draft a QB high based on what you think he can do or be instead of what they are or have done.

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Elections have consequences.

if you can't project a top 10 ol pick to start from day 1, you shouldn't be in the gm business

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Don’t let him leave the stadium tonight still employed.

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Playing devils advocate, what if he knows exactly what his roster is and is tanking this year to get high picks?

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He’s a bum. Fire him. Fire him now.

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Poles is such a disingenuous piece of shit. He wants his team “believing they’ll win, not hoping.”

Fucker gutted the roster and played a minor league team last year. He’s failed to fix the lines because he can’t handle the market for linemen and couldn’t figure out how to get better with: 1) unprecedented cap space and 2) the first pick in the draft.

He’s another asshole from KC designed to fuck up this team.

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Well said