It is rather surprising how much negativity surrounded the announcement that the Chicago Bears were seeking help from Bill Polian in their search to find a new GM and head coach. This is a Hall of Fame executive. He constructed three different teams that went to at least one conference championship. He reached a combined seven Super Bowl and won a Lombardi trophy in 2006. His resume when it comes to team-building is top shelf.
Part of the issue seems to rest on two factors. Polian is 79-years old. He is quite aged and some fear the game has passed him by. This leads to the other factor which is some of his more recent player assessments. Most notably his belief that Lamar Jackson would be better off as a receiver than a quarterback in the NFL. Not a great look considering the Baltimore Ravens star won league MVP in 2019.
That said, even the best make mistakes.
This shouldn’t overshadow the immense amount of football knowledge and experience Polian brings with him. He has done stuff like this before. Several times. Often successfully. One person that wasn’t afraid to praise the decision to hire him was Marv Levy. The Hall of Fame head coach has known Polian for almost 40 years. They worked together for nearly a decade in Buffalo, reaching four straight Super Bowls. Though biased, he told Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times that the Bears are in great hands.
“The Bears could not — could not — have picked a better person for that search than Bill,” Levy said. “I’ve known a lot of people in all my years in the game. I grew up in Chicago as a kid way back in the ’30s, as a Bears fan. Bill Polian to me is the keenest mind in the game. I was so grateful to be able to work with Bill in every respect. He has respect for everybody in the organization. He answers to the owners. The insights he has are just unbelievable.”
One of the things that makes Polian such a success is his attention to detail. When he evaluates a person for a job, there are many layers involved. He covers several aspects he deems essential for what makes a good head coach or executive. Levy explained.
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“He evaluates a person’s work ethic, character, and the other person’s getting the best out of the people not just from himself, but from the person whom he works with.”
It is hard to argue the results. In his career, Polian has hired two head coaches that ended up in the Hall of Fame. Another that went to a Super Bowl in Jim Caldwell. The guy knows what traits to look for.
Bill Polian deserves the benefit of the doubt
There is no guarantee he will get this right. Nothing is a guarantee in the NFL. After what happened with Ernie Accorsi in 2015, it is hard to trust this sort of approach will work. The difference this time around is Polian has remained active around football. The same wasn’t true of Accorsi seven years ago. There are reasons to think this time can be different. Starting with the vast array of candidates the team is meeting.
If Bill Polian were just collecting a paycheck and trying to make this process go quickly, there is no way he’d set up interviews with 16 possible GMs and 10 possible head coaches. This sounds far more like a fact-finding process. An effort to gather data and from that data make informed decisions. It might seem slow and cumbersome, but this is how Polian operates.
If you do the work, you’re more likely to make good choices.
Put it this way. The Bears’ odds of landing a good GM/head coach combo are far higher with Polian involved than if he wasn’t. He can help George McCaskey make sound football-related judgments. Something the owner desperately lacks.
