Ryan Poles addresses waiting until seventh round to draft a running back

Kirby Lee - USA Today Sports

Ariana Pensy - Correspondent - 10 hours ago

CHICAGO - Another draft is in the books for general manager Ryan Poles. However, this was his first opportunity to be able to work with new head coach, Ben Johnson, to evaluate players and generate a draft strategy.

Overall, Poles learned a lot about Johnson through his process.

“Really respect his work ethic, his intelligence, his ability to evaluate and then obviously to have really good conversations where we can go back and forth in terms of what we see, watch more tape and come to (a) conclusion on how we want to best address certain things for our football team,” Poles said. “He’s been a pleasure to work with. I’m grateful for that in our relationship as we continue to build that through this journey. It’s been smooth.”

The Bears ultimately finished the draft with eight players selected and gained a fourth round pick for next year’s draft.

Their first two selections - tight end Colston Loveland at No. 10 overall and wide receiver Luther Burden III at No. 39 overall - give quarterback Caleb Williams more weapons on the offense and should help to make Chicago’s offense explosive this upcoming season.

“Anytime you can get the ball in a playmaker’s hands quickly and they can make plays after that and your completion percentage goes up, that’s really good for our quarterback’s confidence,” Poles said. “But, a lot of these guys you can see on our team in terms of the weapons, they can separate and when you see guys open, that’s a lot easier than throwing guys open and as he goes along, you have to do that as well. But, all these guys are capable of really producing with the ball in their hand and also puts a lot of stress on the defense where we’re looking at good looks and that play’s right into Ben’s hands in terms of how he wants to attack each week.”

One area things could have gone better was at running back. Coming into the draft, this was one of Chicago’s most pressing needs. However, the Bears did not draft a running back until the No. 233 overall selection.

Kyle Monangai does seem to have a lot of upside. His production was consistent the past seasons at Rutgers with over 1,200 rushing yards each of the past two seasons as well as 14 total touchdowns last year.

In 2023, he was Second-Team All-Big Ten and was First-Team All-Big Ten in the 2024 season.

While Monangai does seem to be a good prospect, this was a deep running back class as Chicago could have drafted a player such as running back Cam Skattebo who finished fifth in the Heisman voting this year as he was still available at the beginning of the fourth round.

However, Poles was steadfast in letting the board come to the Bears and not trying to draft for need as much as talent.

“Every draft has pockets that you just don’t fall into and if you’re going to be disciplined (and) you’re going to let the board dictate how you do things, it just happens this way. So, because of that, you end up in some really cool situations and really acquiring talented players,” Poles said. “They might come from a different position that maybe you would have liked to. But, at the end of the day, you’re increasing the talent on your football team and I do think you can get into a lot of trouble if you start trying to manipulate things to get into certain pockets where you end up hurting your team long term.”