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Bear Digest

Bears and Ryan Poles Poised to Benefit From a Collapsing NFC North

The last of major offseason grades for NFL teams came down over the last week and the great winner in all of it looks like Bears GM Ryan Poles.
Gene Chamberlain|
Caleb Williams calls out signals prior to a snap against the Minnesota Vikings in a key Bears NFC North win last season.
Caleb Williams calls out signals prior to a snap against the Minnesota Vikings in a key Bears NFC North win last season. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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Chicago Bears

GM Ryan Poles often receives extensive criticism for his inability to focus properly on Chicago Bears pass rush issues.

Poles also gets his share of criticism for a run defense among the league's worst over the past two years after they had been best in the NFL in 2023. His successes frequently get ignored. No one was jumping up to pat him on the back when Caleb Williams morphed into the "Iceman." Instead, it was the result of Ben Johnson's influence, even though the Bears had an entirely different coach when Poles first engineered the trade to get into position for Williams, and then took him.

Now, Poles looks like a winner again but this time it's not necessarily through his own efforts. Everyone deserves to catch a break now and then, and the Bears look like they have when the offseason grades they've been given by media is taken into account.

It's not so much how well the Bears GM did in addressing needs, but actually how the NFC North opposition looks like they put a division title defense on a platter and sent it to Halas Hall first class.

The latest example is NFL.com's offseason grades by Matt Okada. The Bears did not come away with spectacular marks, receiving a B-. However, they came in with the best grade of any NFC North team. Only the Vikings came close to them with a C+.

As Okada points out, it's tough to get good marks for improving when you've spent the least amount of money in free agency like Minnesota. This comes after a drop of five wins from the previous year for the Vikings. Detroit's offseason has been one setback after another.

Packers' atrocious offseason

More fun than all of this for the Bears is what Okada said about Green Bay as he gave the Packers a D-minus.

"It’s tough to find a bright spot here, and with (Micah) Parsons targeting a mid-October return from knee surgery, I would not be surprised to see the squad slide to the bottom of the NFC North in 2026," Okada wrote.

This came on the heels of ESPN offseason grades at the end of June by Seth Walder saying the Bears not only had the best offseason in the NFC North, but only the Dolphins, Chargers and Bengals in the entire league had better offseasons than Poles and Co.

The NFC North took a beating as a whole, however. No one sees it as upgraded where just two years ago and again last year the division was being heralded as possibly the best in football.

Between CBS Sports, Bleacher Report, ESPN and NFL.com, no team in the NFC North received an offseason grade higher than the Bears. Pro Football Focus doesn't break theirs down by offseason, and did give the Vikings a better grade for free agency than the Bears. They gave the Vikings a B- and the Bears a C+, but their grade was the earliest one given out way back five days after free agency. This was when the Vikings hadn't yet foolishly traded away edge rusher Jonathan Greenard.

The significance of grades

Ultimately, media grades mean nothing but the teams who usually come away with the poorest grades get them because the mess they've made is so obvious even untrained eyes can detect it. In the NFC North, this is the case with three teams.

The Bears are not among them, even with questions everywhere about their pass rush and ability to stop the run.

If they're going to fail to repeat as division champions, someone else in the North is going to need to exceed expectations to a large extent. What all of this doesn't say is the Bears are getting better, although it's difficult to see how this wouldn't be the case when last year was only Williams' first year in the Johnson offense.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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