GM Ryan Poles is stepping into “good problems to have” territory. Blue-chip players command lucrative contracts; the Bears now have several who fall into that category. There are still a lot of ifs that come with keeping a nucleus together, but this current Bears team is on the ascent, and the foundation is there for and company to win consistently, there will be some big financial calls to make.
Advertisement “Just like I talked about with the hard times and having to make those decisions, I think those decisions will continue to come with success,” Poles told . “You get to a point where a quarterback starts taking up a lot of cap space, or you have a better team that does, you can’t keep everybody. And that’s the tough thing about it.
” For now, the Bears still have a healthy cap situation and haven’t been pressed to let top-end players hit free agency. Poles has delivered three big-time contract extensions: , , and most recently, . As long as Williams is on his rookie contract, there’s going to be flexibility to extend the team’s best players.
Threading the needle 🪡 — Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) Part of inheriting a roster without a great young core is having only three major extensions on the résumé. With and traded, only one player from ex-GM Ryan Pace’s time could get a new deal from Poles: guard . Precedent is important.
It’s something Poles referenced last summer after the Kmet deal got done. “We have a process,” he said. “We .
