The Chicago Bears had just made the playoffs for the first time in seven years. They were one overtime drive away from reaching the NFC Championship. They have a dynamic young quarterback, a brilliant offensive mind at head coach, and a cluster of young talent at their core. Nobody would’ve blinked if general manager Ryan Poles came out swinging in the offseason, hoping to upgrade the roster to a level that it could make a run. That is what teams do, right? Once they’re sure they have the QB, they move fast to load up before his cheap rookie contract runs out of time.
Poles did not do that. By and large, the Bears’ 2026 offseason was rather subdued. Their only big free agent addition was safety Coby Bryant. Everybody else was brought in on mid-tier or lower deals. As for the draft, they didn’t do anything significant. They stayed put at 26th overall in the 1st round, taking safety Dillon Thieneman. Their biggest move of the spring was trading D.J. Moore for cap space and a 2nd round pick. People couldn’t understand why the Bears weren’t more aggressive.
Poles finally admitted the truth to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Future salaries were part of what kept Poles from going on a high-priced shopping spree. He was tempted to ride the momentum of the Bears’ first playoff win in 15 years but reminded himself he wants to contend for more than just a season or two.
“When you get into player acquisition phases, whether it’s free agency or the draft, we’re all like kids in a candy store,” he said. “But we surround ourselves with structure. . . . We want to do some unique things here and have success for a long time. That absolutely has to be a part of the process.”
Ryan Poles knows what is coming down the pike.
In some way, the Bears GM is a victim of his own success. For all the grief he gets about his free agent moves, his 1st round picks have been consistently good. Darnell Wright already received a massive extension, making him the highest-paid right tackle in football. That is just the beginning, though. Caleb Williams is likely the next priority. He is eligible to discuss a new deal at the end of the 2026 season. If he repeats or improves on what he accomplished in 2025, you can bet Chicago will be eager to get that done.
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Then you have Colston Loveland, who already looks like a star. If he plays at the level he did towards the end of his rookie season, he’ll be the highest-paid tight end in football a couple of years from now. Ryan Poles understands all of this. The hardest thing to do as a general manager in the NFL is budgeting. As much as he wants to be aggressive and go hunting for upgrades, he understands there is a time and place for that. He can’t do it every year. Sometimes, you must bite the bullet and conserve resources.
Poles is sticking to his original promise.
People forget his words from that press conference four years ago. “We’re going to build through the draft.” If there is one lesson Poles learned from evaluating the Bears when he took the job, it was that overreliance on free agents and big trades had hurt more than helped them. It gave them brief one or two-year windows to compete, but quickly swamped their roster with old and expensive players. You can’t hope to win championships that way. You have to draft, develop, and retain your own talent.
Poles has stuck to that stance from the beginning. Now look at the Bears. They’re young, hungry, and flush with talent in several key areas. All the while, they have most of their future draft picks and ways to create more cap space in the near future. If that meant sacrificing the 2026 offseason to the realm of boring, so be it. The GM believes it will benefit everybody in the long run.
