Bears GM Ryan Poles in his own words: His journey, family and the value of resilience |

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Ryan Poles was playing center for the first time in his life in an NFL training camp, but there was no quarterback behind him.

An undrafted free agent from Boston College in 2008, Poles participated in Bears camp at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., “just trying to make a team and show versatility.” On a play with the tag “Hurricane,” Poles knew what his blocking assignment was, but when he looked between his legs to snap the ball, he saw only superstar returner Devin Hester.

Poles briefly waited for Kyle Orton or Rex Grossman to step in, but neither did.

“Then at that moment, it was like, ‘A Hurricane!'” Poles said. “It was a wildcat (play) with Devin Hester, and I snapped it. I’ll never forget that moment.”

Another memorable moment came in the middle of the night after a tornado warning. With the team gathered in the basement of the dormitory, Poles looked around. Brian Urlacher. Lance Briggs. Olin Kreutz. Charles Tillman. Patrick Mannelly.

“All those really talented players and Hall of Fame players falling asleep on the top of washers and dryers,” Poles said.

His NFL dream ended at final cuts, but what resonated with Poles then — and what stuck with him long afterward — is how the Bears practiced under then-coach Lovie Smith.

“The relentlessness, the finish — there would be balls that would be tipped and go to the other field and all 11 would be sprinting to it, picking it up and running to the end zone,” Poles said. “There was a purpose. There’s a standard for how they practiced.”

It’s how Poles, the Bears’ first-year general manager, wants his team to look today. It’s what attracted him to coach Matt Eberflus, an extension of the Tony Dungy/Smith coaching tree through Eberflus’ time with former Dungy/Smith assistant Rod Marinelli in Dallas.

“It’s not even really an offense-defense thing,” Poles said. “It’s really a demand to do things the right way. And I think from there, you can build that foundation and grow from that. That’s important.”

During a wide-ranging interview with The Athletic, one thing about Poles became clear: he’s learning something from his life experiences. From his first Bears training camp to raising a family to rising through the organizational ranks in Kansas City, his story is one of moments and resilience.

“You think about your journey from that point coming here and wanting to be an NFL player, and there’s these moments that happen where you fall short of what your goals are,” Poles said. “But it sends you down a path that can be really, really cool, and that sent me back here just in a totally different space but in the same game.”

Everyone remembers the Poles’ wedding entrance video. What Ryan and his wife, Katie, planned required a videographer, an extra wedding dress and suit, but also a lake, a boat and an innertube. And that tube turned out to be flat, causing some anxious moments in the water.

“I almost thought I lost my wife,” Poles said jokingly. “Because she jumped in with the dress on, and then she couldn’t kick because it was wrapped around her legs and then she’s struggling. So it was quite the day.”

Ryan and Katie met during his sophomore year of high school when the Poles family moved from Livonia in upstate New York to nearby Canandaigua. Ryan’s younger sister, Kelli, played up on Canandaigua Academy’s basketball team and became friends with Katie.

“Then we started dating and my sister was mean to her,” Poles said, laughing.

Ryan and Katie’s story changed the day before the 2013 NFL Draft. Ryan remembered sleeping on the couch after the delivery of the couple’s son, Mason, and waking up to Katie staring at him.

“She said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this,'” Poles recalled. “And the first instinct, from my perspective, it was just like anger or confusion of like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Like, ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, this makes no sense.'”

But Poles looked at his wife — his high school sweetheart — and knew something was wrong. He remembered a brief conversation he had years earlier about postpartum depression.

“I could just tell something was different about her, about her eyes and the way she was speaking,” he said. “It was like a different person.”

It took time for Ryan to truly learn what Katie was feeling. He felt guilty. His competitive profession took him away from his wife and son. He went from the hospital to the Chiefs’ draft room. But he learned to listen better — and he learned to try to stop fixing things.

“I couldn’t talk her into feeling a certain way,” Poles said. “I just had to listen and let her get everything off of her chest to feel better, which is a really hard thing. Because you want to fix it, you want her to feel better and feel how she should feel and celebrate these unbelievable moments in life, and it was more of a dark place.”

Katie got the help she needed, meeting with counselors then and still doing so now. Those feelings still surface. Different things will trigger them.

“I don’t know if I listened to her as well as I did before those things,” Poles said. “But then the coolest thing is just to see how strong she’s become. She’s managed it; she has a process for it.”

When the Poles family welcomed their daughter, Jordyn, who is now 4, Katie experienced depression again, but it wasn’t as intense. Ryan and Katie want their story to create awareness and improve education on postpartum depression.

“The one thing that’s come up is the stigma of … talking to people and seeking help and thinking that you’ve got to internalize this because some of the feelings that you have are terrible,” Poles said. “You have to talk, you have to get it off your chest, the more you hold on to it, the deeper it gets. And it can get even worse.”

Poles applies that message to his job, too. His decision to hire Mike Wiley Jr. as the director of player development and mental skills, where he joined team clinician Carla Suber on staff, stems from that belief.

“I just want our guys and our staff to be aware that it’s OK to go and seek help,” Poles said. “I want those resources here in the building on a daily basis.”

Poles increased his own talks with a sports psychologist from once a month to every two weeks.

“I’m fine, but there’s a lot of pressure with this job,” Poles said. “I need someone to talk to, just to talk, and sometimes it’s all good, sometimes it’s you know, (I’m) tired, drained. Sometimes it’s checking in.”

Sometimes it’s making sure he’s doing something other than obsessing about football. It could be reading a book or going on walks or even watching a movie. Poles saw “Top Gun: Maverick” by himself after the draft. (His review? “Two thumbs up, for sure.”)

In a profession in which the grind is praised, getting away is an important part of Poles’ approach, whether that’s throwing 100 pitches to Mason, who plays travel baseball, or playing a game of H-O-R-S-E or P-I-G with the family.

“My wife usually beats everybody — and my son can’t handle it,” Poles said.

He tells everyone that their families are welcome at Halas Hall. Mason tries to beat all the Pop-A-Shot scores, and everyone knows when Jordyn is in the office — “She’s got a ton of energy,” Poles said — especially after she pulled a fire alarm in the elevator.

“They’re a part of this,” Poles said. “I want them to feel comfortable with that, and I want other staff members that have the kids around to feel comfortable with that because we spend so much time here. It takes a lot of time away from your family.”

Poles wouldn’t be where he is without Katie, whom he described as “my rock” and “biggest supporter, biggest fan.” He’s forever thankful. Poles still remembers when he called her about his first NFL job opportunity in Kansas City after she had moved to Boston with him.

“She was like, ‘I’m packed up, I’m ready to go,’” he said. “She’s always ready to ride.”

Katie and Ryan Poles Poles want their story to create awareness and improve education on postpartum depression. (Chicago Bears)

One of Poles’ first jobs in football came on the St. John Fisher College sideline. His father, Robert Jr. — or “Junior” — coached the defensive linemen at the Division III school in Pittsford, N.Y. There weren’t wireless headsets then, so Ryan had to keep the wires neat and organized.

During practices, he served as the ball boy or got the pads lined up for drills. But it was in the film room with his father where the inner scout in him was fostered.

“I always would get yelled at, ‘Stop watching the football!’ and watch a specific player, a specific group of players, which at a young age, it’s very difficult to do because you’re only watching the players or what affects the ball,” Poles said. “(It) helped with my development.”

Junior, a defensive lineman at Boston College who played in the 1983 Senior Bowl and briefly for the Colts and Seahawks, was the oldest of three football-playing brothers. Ronnie, a running back, followed his older brother to Boston College before transferring to Kent State. Roland played fullback at Tennessee and was drafted in the 10th round by the Chargers in 1991.

“So growing up, you always had these images of your uncles and your dad playing and pictures and jerseys,” Poles said. “And it was just kind of your blood.”

Everything around Poles seemed competitive, from softball to horseshoes — his grandfather was the best at horseshoes — along with a lot of conversations about the game with his father.

“It’s always football talk,” Poles said. “It still is.”

As a two-way lineman in high school, those talks turned into tips as he and Junior watched film together. He learned to see more, from identifying stunts to seeing how rolling coverages in the secondary can tip where the defensive linemen are going.

“It’s little details on the game that you learned from one side that you can apply when you’re looking at it from another,” he said.

At Canandaigua Academy, Poles had a “truth teller” in coach Mike Foster. Poles joined the program as a celebrated player, the son of an NFL player, dealing with the weight of expectations.

“(Foster) made me develop; he made me tougher,” Poles said. “And he told me the truth, which a lot of people don’t do anymore. So that allowed me to take criticism at a young age.”

There were certain messages that Poles heard from his father that traveled with him, from high school to college to now.

“We heard all the time, ‘You got to go through something to be something,'” Poles said. “What that did for me is just have the mindset of in order to get those calluses on your hands and become stronger and tougher, accept that things are going to be difficult, that you’re going to fall on your face. But understand by getting up and getting better and improving, you become stronger. The resilience muscle gets worked out.”

Ryan Poles’ father, Robert Jr., left, fostered the inner scout in him when the elder Poles was a college coach. (Chicago Bears photo)

On Oct. 13, 2007, Boston College was the fourth-ranked team in the country. After beating Notre Dame 27-14, the Eagles rose to No. 2, but Poles’ senior season was over after he ruptured his Achilles tendon against the Fighting Irish.

“When that happened, it shakes you,” Poles said.

The Eagles still partied — with and for Poles. After his injury, teammates took him to Mary Ann’s, a popular bar at Boston College. “They felt for me because that offseason we had put a lot of time in,” he said. “We did it together.”

With quarterback Matt Ryan, the Eagles were a national title contender, and Ryan became one of Poles’ best friends. (You can see him in Poles’ famous wedding video.) After the injury, the pair skipped spring break and went to Florida to train together. Poles had to get back on the NFL map.

“When I got (to Bears training camp), I was nowhere near what I should have been,” Poles said. “I still don’t know if my 100 percent would have been good enough for this league. But I certainly wasn’t where I wanted to be to really put up a good fight for it.”

The 2006 and 2007 seasons at Boston College were formative years for Poles. Tom O’Brien was the Eagles’ coach in 2006, leading them to a 9-3 record and leaving for North Carolina State before their 25-24 win against Navy in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, when he was replaced by Jeff Jagodzinski.

Boston College had a core group that developed under O’Brien, whose practices were difficult. But things shifted with Jagodzinski.

“It was more of an NFL mindset, so it wasn’t as blue-collar, but our core group kind of had that background,” Poles said. “We adapted to change really well. We were the leaders where I felt like even with a new staff, they didn’t have to do a whole bunch. We had a bunch of seniors that had been around, been through some tough times. And we just took the thing over and we attacked it.”

It began with the quarterback.

“Just to see Matt operate, a true leader, a communicator, but also he had some of that dog in him where when things were hard, he would fight back,” Poles said. “And to have that kind of guy to go into games with was critical.”

The experience shaped Poles’ evaluation process for the most important position in sports. He is unsurprised that Ryan is still playing today for the Colts after 14 seasons with the Falcons.

“There’s a level of grit,” Poles said. “It has a pretty-boy kind of vibe to the position, but you’ve got to have some real grit to you to do that because it’s hard. You’re going to have criticism, you’re going to have bad games. So you have to have a short memory and really be unfazed by the ups and downs of the season. And he had that.”

Ryan Poles’ days at Boston College were formative, and he points to his friend and former teammate Matt Ryan as the type of leader a quarterback should be. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

On Jan. 26, 2022, the Bears made Poles the first African American general manager in franchise history.

“I’m proud of it,” Poles said. “But I also feel responsible for making the categorization of someone’s skin go away to the point like it doesn’t matter; (it’s) the best way I can describe it. And I hope someday it doesn’t matter.”

What matters next is what the Bears become under Poles.

“I just want to be successful,” Poles said. “I just want the organization to be successful and be at a championship level. I want to be a championship GM. That’s how I want to be unique. …

“But it does mean something. I would hope it means progress. But I want to sustain that growth by doing a really good job so that we don’t have to talk about it one of these days.”

He has unique experiences to draw from. In 2013, Poles had just about enough of general manager John Dorsey in Kansas City, who was nothing like predecessor Scott Pioli. “I fought him a little bit because I thought Scott had the blueprint for me, and I knew exactly what I was going to do,” Poles said. “And then that gets disrupted.”

An angry Poles stormed into the office of Chris Ballard, who had joined the Chiefs from the Bears as their director of player personnel.

“I don’t know if I should be here with John,” Poles said he told Ballard.

But Ballard encouraged him to stay and learn.

“Let him lean into you,” Poles recalled Ballard saying. “And let him use you where he needs you to be used.”

“Sure enough, (working with Dorsey) helped me be better in a different skill set,” he said.

Pioli, Dorsey, Ballard, current Chiefs GM Brett Veach and coach Andy Reid are all part of Poles’ story because they all played a part in his development. Poles spent 13 years in Kansas City, and as he explained, each of his influences had different mindsets, ways of doing things, personalities and hobbies.

“It was almost like it started as a small puzzle, and those guys gave me like the individual pieces to make the picture,” Poles said.

Pioli challenged him immediately after Poles, who began his scouting career as a player personnel assistant, presented his first player with his head down and read his report without changing his voice inflection. Pioli told him to come to his office.

“Next time you do report, I want you to put your chin up, look people in their eye, project your voice, and do it with conviction,” Poles remembered Pioli saying. “Because it’s what you believe in.”

Under Dorsey, Poles learned how to run meetings. “The collaborative approach and openness has allowed me to be a really good evaluator,” Poles said.

Through it, a relationship formed with Ballard, who left Kansas City to be the Colts GM in 2017.

“Chris is just like a truth teller,” Poles said. “He’s the guy that was talking about having candid conversations. … You got to be able to push back on people, and you can’t take it personal. And that’s the one thing that he has. He tells it the way it is, and if he’s wrong, he’ll apologize the next day.”

Veach replaced Dorsey in 2017, the same year Poles became the Chiefs’ director of college scouting.

“His mind never stops,” Poles said. “He’s always anticipating. He’s always thinking A, B, C, D. And again, in this job, if I didn’t learn that part, I mean, you’re in trouble. I’ve already had to pivot multiple times off of different things. I don’t know if I would have had that without him.

“And then you get your whole staff to start thinking that way, so when you do have to pivot, you know what you’re going to do next. You know Plan B and if Plan B doesn’t work, you’re going to C. (It’s) just being prepared.”

And Reid?

“That captain of the ship,” Poles said. “If the sea’s smooth, we’re cruising. If it’s rocky, the dude’s expression never changes, and everyone feeds off of that. Everyone feeds off of that because when things go bad, and you look up at your leader, and he’s going nuts, like everyone’s going to go crazy.

“And you look at (Reid): stoic — the guy doesn’t change. He believes in what he believes in, and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, we’re going to be all right.'”

Bears coach Matt Eberflus, left, has impressed Ryan Poles with the preseason results of his program. (Jamie Sabau / USA Today)

When Poles’ first training camp as GM ended, he thought back to his first as a player. He remembered that the Bears were an aging team in 2008, but they remained one that practiced hard. That team under coach Lovie Smith had a culture and an identity. It’s what connected him to Eberflus.

“From the time that Matt and I got here to now, just to see that style of football back, you can’t deny that the way these guys are playing these preseason games is at a different level,” Poles said.

“Does that mean that that’s a direct correlation to success? Right now, I don’t know.

“But I do know that the standard of how we’re going to play football here has already changed and adjusted.”

Eberflus’ HITS philosophy — hustle, intensity, takeaways, (playing) smart — has been a hit. Poles feels that.

“It’s how we’re doing it,” Poles said. “It’s not fluffy or phony, it’s real. And I think everyone can feel that. And that to me, that’s the foundation we had to set first and then we go from here, and we continue to add talent.”

That’s on Poles, but he comes off as prepared for what’s next. It’s the story of his life.

(Top photo: Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)

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Bears GM Ryan Poles in his own words: His journey, family and the value of resilience

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