Holding the No. 1 overall pick for the second straight year – this time after a 7-10 season – Ryan Poles had a decision to make. He could’ve continued to build the Chicago Bears around Justin Fields as he did last season, or take consensus No. 1 pick Caleb Williams and reset the quarterback contract clock.
He chose the latter, selecting Williams atop the 2024 NFL Draft board and sending Fields to the Pittsburgh Steelers. During his decision-making process, Poles said there were two parts to his process.
But what stood out the most was Williams’ playmaking ability, which became evident in the early part of his college career.
“We all know it’s a quarterback-driven league,” Poles told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on The Adam Schefter Podcast. “You need a guy that puts you in position to win games. In scouting, we talk about, ‘win because of’ and win with’ type quarterbacks. Those are the ones that you need to win championships.
“So evaluating him throughout the year – and really, you go back to that Texas game when he kind of came on the map – you knew that he had a special talent.”
That game against Texas came while Williams was at Oklahoma. He took over in place of Spencer Rattler and dazzled, completing 16 of 25 passes for 212 yards and two touchdowns as the Sooners took down the Longhorns 55-48 in the Red River Shootout.
After that season, though, Williams transferred to USC to re-join Lincoln Riley and went on to win the Heisman Trophy as he threw for 4,537 yards, ran for 382 yards and totaled 50 touchdowns – 40 in the air and 10 on the ground. Those figures led him to become the projected No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft, but Poles said there was another part of Williams’ game that made him stand out.
In fact, it’s something he knows well from his time in Kansas City with the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes.
“I had a really good conversation with some basketball guys and some GMs, and we talked about creativity,” Poles said. “And that’s, like, the new outlier in sports. Guys that are creative, and they feel the game, they’re not afraid to take chances and they’re really good when when the game’s on the line. And you need that. Obviously, I came from a place that has someone that’s really creative. So all of those things stood out to me.
“And the tape – when you watch the tape and put it all together, what he can do, you knew that we were going to be in a good position to get a quarterback that can really change the narrative around here, along with his teammates.”
Ryan Poles: ‘We did our homework’ on Caleb Williams as a person
Throughout the pre-draft process, when asked about what he’d do with the No. 1 pick, Ryan Poles maintained the importance of a high character. It was easy to see how Caleb Williams would fit with the roster on the field, but to complete the evaluation, Poles wanted to know him as a person.
The first opportunity came at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. Then, Williams took his top-30 visit to Chicago. That was his only such trip, and Poles kept his stance the whole way through.
But when it came to doing “homework” on Williams, he showed just how few stones they left unturned.
“The second part, really – and everything that I said, I’m very transparent when I speak, even all the way back to the Combine – it’s about the person,” Poles said. “So we’ve just got to take the time to dig into the person see if this is the right fit for us. We have a high standard of coachability, grit, competes, passion for the game, resilience. All of those things had to be checked off for a player to come into our building. And surely, as we did our homework – talking to his teammates, staff members, staffs that have gone to different places, teammates that had transferred, to opposing defensive coordinators – and all of those things were coming back so positive.
“And then when you look another man in his eyes and kind of go through the background, understand what they stand for, things come together. Pairing those two things up – the tape and the skill – with the person, the character, the makeup, all of that came together for us nicely. That’s when I was like, alright, we feel really good about this.”
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