Hub Arkush: Bears GM Ryan Poles settling into new role quickly

INDIANAPOLIS – It’s interesting to see the growth in Ryan Poles as an NFL general manager after just his first month on the job.

It’s not like he’s just been kicking back and celebrating his success.

The guy has hired a head coach, entire coaching staff, assistant general manager along with a director of football administration and reorganized his scouting department at both the pro and college level.

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Yet Poles seems much more at ease in the media press conference setting than a month. After talking for just a minute or two as we walked to the conference room he struck me as a guy who’s been doing this for quite awhile and is very much enjoying it.

Before the questions started, he laid out big chunks of these last few weeks for us, starting with his coaches.

“The great thing is the staff has come together from the last time that I spoke to everyone. We’ve made the hires,” Poles said. “I’ve been really impressed and spent time with all the coaches.

“Everything that (head coach) Matt (Eberflus) and I spoke about before in terms of finding talented teachers that have emotional intelligence, that care about the players that bring energy and also a developmental mindset, that’s there and you can tell already.”

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Because teams without front office and coach changes had a significant head start on the Bears, Poles also talked about making up for that lost time.

“In terms of the front office, we spent a lot of time meeting,” Poles said. “We were behind for about two weeks and we’ve been able to catch up and go through the free-agent process.

“That took about eight to nine days and then we put another, we flew our college [scouts] in and we watched a ton of tape, and we went through that process and kind of got what I call the board pinned down.”

The toughest part of that process for rookie GMs is getting comfortable with the staff and work product they inherit.

The scouting/personnel season tends to run from June 1 to May 31 – as do those folks contracts – so even if Poles wanted to make changes immediately, it would be near impossible.

The most important part of evaluating draft prospects and free agents is the games they played in the fall. Other than recalling what’s in his head, Poles can’t bring those reports with him from Kansas City. He will have to rely on Ryan Pace’s staff for at least this year.

With that in mind, I asked Poles how difficult that challenge has been and will be.

“As we get further and further away from the season you can make some mistakes by what happens in shorts and the all-star games,” Poles said. “And really you forget about the meat of the evaluation, which came from the season and the information our guys were able to gather.

“First, I’ve been through change before in Kansas City, so I’ve been through that process of adjusting grade scales and values and how people communicate and the type of reports that have been submitted and how they’ve gone through all-star games. I feel that I adapt really well.

“I will say this: I was very happy with the group of scouts we have right now. The meetings were incredible, and before we broke, I told them all how proud I was. ... At the end of it, the thing that stood out to me is there’s a group of really, really good people that worked really hard this fall to gather the information.”

Poles was clear, though, that while he’s grateful for the pieces of the personnel department he had waiting for him, things don’t necessarily work that way with the roster.

As the new sheriff in town these aren’t his guys … yet.

“You see it for what it is. Some of the bias and opinions from the past don’t water down your evaluations,” Poles said. “You see it for what the tape is telling you.”

While Poles has spent these recent weeks buried in change and seems to have enjoyed it, reality is the biggest changes and his most important work are yet to come: finding the talent for his folks to mold.

So far he seems up to the task.