Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus explain how they designed a pro day, combine meeting, visit in Chicago and more to make a franchise-altering decision.
GM Ryan Poles was working the sideline as he normally would at a college game in the fall—looking, with a scout’s eye, for any little window he could find into the prospects he’d be evaluating in the winter and spring.
This week, we’re going to take you, soup to nuts, through that plan, and how it got Poles and Eberflus to the point where they were ready to trade Fields and tie their job security to a guy who’s been tagged a generational talent at the position since he was a teenager. And what you’ll see is that just as that sort of big-picture view of the quarterback was important, so too were all the little details along the way.
So the team was judicious in kicking the process off. Step one was Poles mapping out an itinerary that would allow for him to see each of the top quarterbacks live in the fall. USC fell behind 24–6 at the half. Williams finished with three picks, failed to hit 200 yards passing and took six sacks. And as it was happening, Poles focused closely on the young quarterback, getting the chance to see his lowest moment as a college football player with his own eyes, through a set of binoculars.
Three months later, the Bears wrapped up an encouraging 7–10 campaign that ended with a 5–3 flourish, and Carolina helped Chicago in floundering to 2–15 and locking up the No. 1 pick for Poles and Eberflus. By then, Poles had a baseline of information to work off. As that was going on, Eberflus was running a parallel track. With incumbent OC Luke Getsy let go, and a coordinator search coming, the coach would be tasked with diving into the tape as aggressively as the front office had, with timing important to everyone, Fields included, as the path for the coming weeks was charted. The good news was, as Poles put it, “The tape part, that, to me, was the easier part of evaluating Caleb.
When Kingsbury interviewed for the Bears' OC position, he helped clarify some narratives about Wililams, who Kingsbury worked closely with at USC.“Don’t even go there,” Kingsbury told the Bears’ guys. “You’ve got a businessman who’s just looking to put his son in the best situation, on the business side of things. When it comes to football, yes, he’ll want to set him up to make sure he’s in a good situation. Once that happens … it’s all good.
“I just watched it that way and I found myself looking at it and it was pretty evident pretty quick that the arm talent is what stood out,” Eberflus says. “The accuracy, and, really, to me, the really good quarterbacks, you always look for the ball speeds. So he can really change the ball speed when he’s throwing a screen, when he’s throwing a fade, when he’s throwing an in-cut.
Two days later, on Friday of combine week, Poles welcomed members of Williams’s team to his suite at the Hyatt. Among the five guys to represent him was a lawyer and a body work guy, and a trainer, and in talking through things with them a clearer picture emerged for the Bears on how the kid approached the sport.
Before going back to Los Angeles, the Bears had to firm up the decision to move on from Fields, one that wasn’t easy for Poles or Eberflus because of the person their now former quarterback is, steady and tough as nails, as they’d worked through two years of rebuilding. They thanked Fields for everything. Fields thanked them, and said he appreciated their alignment and open communication through a difficult few weeks. And then, Poles and Eberflus started calling team leaders, to let them know the trade was coming before the news of it broke.
Knowing the Bears were getting between four and five hours with Williams the next day at USC, on the Tuesday before the Wednesday pro day, Eberflus asked his colleagues to give him an hour with the quarterback one-on-one, to start Williams’s day. “He’s not one of these kids that acts like they have it figured out and then you stump them later,” Poles says. “If he was uncomfortable, he’d want to go back and learn it again. He had really detailed structure to how he takes notes—that stood out. Pro day itself, that part, throwing the ball is easy for him, so just seeing him work under center, footwork, all of that comes easy to him. The on-the-field stuff was the least of my concerns.
“You can’t fool the locker room,” Poles continues. “We got this roster and our leadership group, the core of it, in a really good place. They’re a bunch of really good human beings, so I thought it was important for them to be a part of this journey and this decision. I wanted them to make sure that they saw for themselves what this kid stood for and his passion for the game. I just felt like that was really important.
They also, finally, got the medical box checked with Williams. They’d been O.K. delaying it in March, even though it meant trading Fields without getting a physical on Williams first, because Williams really only had the pulled hamstring his sophomore year in college as a documented issue. But there was some relief, and finality, that came with the physical returning clean.
Chicago Bears USC Trojans Matt Eberflus Justin Fields NFL Draft
United Kingdom Latest News, United Kingdom Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Inside the Pick: Scouting New Panthers DL Jaden CrumedyA closer look at the 200th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Read more »
Inside the Pick: Scouting New Panthers CB Chau Smith-WadeA closer look at the 157th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Read more »
Inside the Pick: Scouting New Panthers LB Michael BarrettA closer look at the 240th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Read more »
Inside the Pick: Scouting New Panthers RB Jonathon BrooksA closer look at the 46th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Read more »
Inside the Pick: Scouting New Panthers LB Trevin WallaceA closer look at the 72nd overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Read more »
Inside the Pick: Scouting New Panthers TE Ja'Tavion SandersA closer look at the 101st overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Read more »