In pivotal offseason for Bears GM Ryan Poles, contract extensions loom large

INDIANAPOLIS — From the moment Ryan Poles took the job as Bears general manager a year ago, all eyes were on this offseason.

He had little choice but to begin his tenure by taking a wrecking ball to the roster and salary-cap mess Ryan Pace left him, but that’s done now. Yes, the Bears are the worst team in the NFL, but Poles has nearly $100 million in cap space — the league high, by far — and a stockpile of draft capital starting with the No. 1 pick.

This is the opportunity everyone, including Poles, has been waiting for. So when he pressed the need for patience in his season-ending news conference, saying the Bears aren’t “just gonna go crazy” in free agency, it was a bit of a letdown.

It’s not Poles’ fault that so much shoddy workmanship preceded his arrival, but the Bears have been asking for patience for about four decades. And while Poles building deliberately and incrementally might seem prudent, the timetable isn’t indefinite.

“There’s no doubt about that,” Poles told the Sun-Times at the NFL Scouting Combine. “The patience part of it [is] doing free agency the right way. Staying in the parameters of where you’re at financially can pay off big time. We’ve seen across the league historically that when you go too hard in free agency and the next year you’re making cuts and [reworking] contracts, that’s usually not a good thing for sustaining success.

“I don’t want to climb up hard and fall back down. No one has patience for that, either.”

That’s true, too, but there’s no denying this will be a pivotal offseason for Poles. It’ll be judged by what he gets in return for the No. 1 pick (whether he keeps it or parlays it into more picks), what he does in the free agency and trade markets and decisions he makes on four Bears in position to seek contract extensions.

That last one is important, as the Bears saw last year with linebacker Roquan Smith. When Poles and Smith couldn’t agree on a deal, Smith sat out for three weeks in training camp and eventually got himself traded to the Ravens.

Neither side wanted that. Smith idealized a long career with the Bears, and Poles wasn’t in position to let a 25-year-old star leave Halas Hall.

Now he’s set to enter talks with cornerback Jaylon Johnson, wide receiver Darnell Mooney, tight end Cole Kmet and wide receiver Chase Claypool.

When asked what he learned from the Smith situation that will help in similar discussions this year, Poles said it only reinforced his principles. He acknowledged there was “awkward communication” between the two but had no regrets over holding firm.

“Our philosophy is to keep homegrown talent, but there’s gonna be certain circumstances where it’s not gonna work out and you don’t see eye-to-eye, and that was one of them,” he said. “I learned a lot just through that process, but I really wouldn’t change anything. I thought we handled it the right way and it worked out for everyone.”

He added that he “couldn’t be more happy” for Smith about getting the contract he wanted all along when the Ravens gave him a five-year, $100 million deal in January.

Of Poles’ four players up for extensions this year, talks with Mooney and Kmet seem like they’ll be painless. Poles also hinted this week that he’s not ready to extend Claypool, saying, “We need to see more.”

It could get challenging with Johnson. He views himself as an elite corner who has been egregiously underrated, so his number is probably going to be significantly higher than what the Bears have in mind. The top corners get $20 million per year.

Poles might need to go a little “crazy” to keep someone like that. Securing what little proven talent he already has is just as important as landing free agents.