Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren said Monday that general manager Ryan Poles would keep his job, be the “point person” for the team’s upcoming head coach search and, in case of a disagreement, have “final say” about whom they hire.
So why was Warren the one who gave the 8-minute, 20-second opening statement Monday to explain the firing of Matt Eberflus? The rest of the Halas Hall press conference, which featured questions for both Warren and Poles, lasted only 13 minutes.
If Warren’s intent was to empower Poles — he said his job was safe and that, as the head of the Bears’ football operations, he’d be tasked with finding the coach — his very presence said otherwise.
Warren sat up straight in a suit with his trademark orange tie. Poles sat to his right in a quarter-zip sweatshirt.
Warren spoke too much, Poles too little. Poles looked cowed, like someone who, well, was sitting next to his boss. Warren has been exactly that since he took over last year, being named the successor to Ted Phillips in January and starting full-time in April after leaving his job as Big Ten commissioner. Warren said then that he wouldn’t need to use an outside consultant to steer him on football issues, the way the Bears did when they fired former Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy. Poles said Monday the team hadn’t decided whether they’d use a committee to look for Eberflus’ replacement.
Yes, Warren said, Poles will be the point person and have final say on the hire — but he didn’t believe the latter would be needed.
“From a final say standpoint, I mean, ultimately, he’s the general manager,” Warren said. “But I think in working together it’ll be very clear who’s the right person for the Chicago Bears.”
But what if it’s not?
“We’ll work that out,” Warren said.
That couldn’t have sounded reassuring for Poles. Warren said that Poles was the one who decided to fire Eberflus on Friday after discussing it with him and chairman George McCaskey. McCaskey, whom the Sun-Times requested speak, did not; rather, he sat to the right of the dais, between brothers Brian and Patrick.
Warren said he, Poles and George McCaskey were still meeting on Friday when the Bears decided to let Eberflus do his regularly scheduled Zoom conference at 9 a.m. A decision to fire him might have been made earlier had the game not been played on a holiday, he said. Plus, he supported thinking about the decision overnight.
Firing Eberflus two hours after the press conference, though, has been viewed as ham-handed and cruel by many across the league. Warren, who is well-versed in optics, had to know how bad it looked.
If the Bears are “the most coveted job in the National Football League this year,” as Warren claimed, it won’t be because of the way they handled Friday.
“In retrospect, could we have done it better?” he said. “Absolutely, and I’ll be the first one to raise my hand.”
Warren isn’t on his first day on the job. His main task — finding a place to build a new stadium and entities to help pay for it — has stalled. He made one reference to it Monday, saying the Bears “have the opportunity to build a world-class stadium.”
Poles has been here a year longer than Warren, and he just fired the coach to whom he tied he reputation. Monday was not a fresh start for either man, no matter how Warren tried to sell it.
“I look at today as a first day for us to be able to go together,” Warren said. “Let’s put the past in the past, let’s start today to go forward and work together — because I don’t want to burn any energy on what has happened in the past.”
No one in Chicago, though, will allow that.