Part of engineering a blockbuster trade is understanding the landscape around you. GM Ryan Poles understood one crucial fact about holding the #1 overall pick. If he wanted to trade it for a robust series of assets for the Chicago Bears, he would need good bait for other teams to bite. Everyone knows there is no stronger bait in any draft than quarterbacks. His efforts to move the pick would count for nothing if the top QBs in the 2023 class didn’t make a strong enough impression.
Poles felt good about his prospects going into February. Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud had both finished their seasons on massive high notes. He knew Anthony Richardson would blow up workouts with his insane athletic profile. The most telling part of the process would come down to interviews. NFL teams almost always determined how aggressive they’d be for players based on personal meetings. According to Adam Jahns and Kevin Fishbain of The Athletic, it was his own interviews with those quarterbacks that he became convinced he’d be able to trade the pick.
“Their interviews were very good,” Poles said. “Mentally, they’re in a really good place to talk ball and talk through the things that they knew about the game, and you could tell like football intelligence was not going to be the issue.
“I knew coming out if those guys interviewed really well, teams at that moment are going to be more motivated to get something done sooner rather than later.”
Ryan Poles again proved his approach works.
There is a benefit to doing due diligence on every single player in the draft, even if it’s at a certain position you’re unlikely to pick from. Gathering information is never a bad thing. It can sometimes lead to learning things that could prove useful, such as which players are almost certain to have made positive impressions in interviews. That means they could make great trade bait in the right circumstances. Poles used that to his fullest advantage, prying two 2nds, a future 1st, and wide receiver D.J. Moore from Carolina.
It’s refreshing to see a Bears GM take such an approach. Previous ones had a terrible habit of shrugging off doing the grunt work when their minds were already made up. Ryan Pace infamously didn’t even bother meeting with Deshaun Watson in 2017. Jerry Angelo admitted he didn’t do enough work in 2005 on DeMarcus Ware, passing on the future Hall of Fame pass rusher for Cedric Benson. Ryan Poles isn’t going to let something like that happen. He will always go the extra mile because he’s convinced there is no such thing as too much information.
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This trade proved it.
Passing on Ware for Benson was bad but passing on Aaron Rodgers was way worse since 1 we needed a qb and 2 he went on to a hof career with our arch enemies in the Pack. What caused us more losses not having Ware or our new owner Rodgers lol
Jalen Carter could easily become Ryan Poles’ “Keven White selection” — but much worse.
Stay tuned.
Martin your point is somewhat valid, but flawed.
1. If the Bears would have taken Watson who was next on their board they would have gotten stuck. He missed 700 days for being a jackass on massage tables. He also missed a year due to a knee injury.
2. Players like Warren Sapp and Reggie white were notorious for taking plays off and being lazy in the off season and practice. White got drafted high Sapp got drafted in later rounds because of character flaws as well.
Both Hall of Famers.
Martin Melhus, the “conventional wisdom” and majority of GMs and scouts had Trubisky rated higher than Mahomes. That’s why no matter how much “due diligence” a team does, there are always players who outperform. Drafting players is hardly an exact science, which is why there are a lot of players in the HOF who were not first round draft picks. Staubach was a 10th round draft pick. Chris Carter and Charles Haley were 4th round picks. Richard Dent was an 8th round pick, etc.,etc.
In a very real sense, all that a GM can do about a player is the due diligence. Watching film, watching workouts, conducting interviews with the player, teammates, and coaches, that’s the job. Then, armed with all the information the GM can get, make the best possible decision for the team based on that information.
If Pace didn’t do due diligence on Watson, well, shame on him. I wonder if he did any on Mahomes – think about how that would have changed the NFL landscape.