When the Bears interviewed head-coaching candidates in January — there were 17 of them — general manager Ryan Poles wasn’t worried about how he would mesh with whomever they picked.
‘‘We were more concerned about getting the right person that could put the team, you know, in a place to be successful than compatibility with just me,’’ he told the Sun-Times last week. ‘‘I think that, you know, that would be kind of selfish.
‘‘I feel like I can work with anybody, as long as I have the same kind of values they value: respect, a developmental mindset with our players and clear communication and ownership. All of those things that are important.’’
After Ben Johnson was hired — and even after Poles received a contract extension to tie the two together through 2029 — there were questions about how the two would work together after having no previous relationship. So far, Poles said, they’re seeing things similarly.
Former head coach Matt Nagy and former general manager Ryan Pace used the word ‘‘collaboration’’ to the point of cringe-worthiness. But there’s an important detail lost in that characterization: Poles and Johnson don’t have to share an opinion on every player; they just have to be looking at the team from the same lens.
‘‘It sounds easy because I think we just communicate clearly and both want what’s best for the team and have a good feel for that relationship,’’ Poles said. ‘‘We both appreciate the other one’s perspective on how we see things.’’
On Tuesday, they’ll huddle to make their most important decisions since the draft in April, cutting the Bears’ roster to 53 players by the 3 p.m. deadline. It will be another step forward in their working relationship.
Poles describes Johnson as thoughtful and measured when they meet.
‘‘There’s a lot of listening,’’ Poles said.
And processing.
‘‘The more information you get to Ben, the better off you’re going to be,’’ Poles said.
Chairman George McCaskey calls Poles a ‘‘great listener,’’ too, and president/CEO Kevin Warren said he has been ‘‘pleased to see the working relationship’’ between the two.
That won’t mean much unless it results in victories. The Bears hired Poles and former head coach Matt Eberflus in 2022 to turn around a franchise that hadn’t won a playoff game since 2010. After three moribund seasons — the Bears won only 15 games — McCaskey and Warren kept Poles and put him in charge of finding their next head coach.
In a vacuum, Poles’ record as a GM didn’t merit a contract extension. McCaskey has said Poles knows he needs to win more. Symbolically, however, it was important for the Bears to tie the head coach and GM together.
Poles suggested to Johnson they watch the Netflix documentary ‘‘Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds’’ before training camp. It follows the training of pilots working together for the first time in a dangerous job.
‘‘There are a lot of parallels there,’’ Johnson said.
Even though they worked together in the spring, Johnson admitted the coaches, players and front office didn’t know each other all that well when camp started.
Poles, however, had a sense of what their relationship would be like before the Bears even hired Johnson. When the Bears interviewed a candidate, members of their hiring committee were given an assignment to talk with five people who had worked with him. That gave the Bears 20 or 25 recommendations per coach. Poles had his own referrals from mutual friends at Boston College, where he played in 2003-07 and where Johnson served as a graduate assistant in 2009-10.
Interviews can deceive, Poles said. Recommendations don’t.
‘‘Interviews are good to a point, and they can move the needle a little bit,’’ he said. ‘‘But if you go through 10, 15 years of work experience and get the same response through the entire timeline, you can be pretty sure you’re going to get that person.’’
Johnson has said — accurately — that he has coached more losing teams than winning ones. Poles was intrigued by references who had worked with candidates in bad times.
‘‘You get the full spectrum,’’ he said. ‘‘I think through that you start to figure out the compatibility.’’
And the book on Johnson?
‘‘Highly intelligent, really good communicator, passionate, unbelievable work ethic,’’ Poles said. ‘‘Tactically, really smart. But with all of that intensity, you still have the ability to connect with people. All of those things were kind of what came back pretty consistent, all the way back to, you know, being a GA at Boston College.’’
Poles and members of the Bears’ front office have worked with assistant coaches to get a sense of what an ideal player would look like in their system. Before free agency and the draft, the Bears even had offensive coordinator Declan Doyle watch tape of defensive players and defensive coordinator Dennis Allen look at offensive players to get a sense of ‘‘what stresses you out the most.’’
That was one more information point for Poles and Johnson to discuss.
‘‘Ben is very proactive at collecting that information from people that have experienced it and then making it his own,’’ Poles said.
