Ryan Poles
Getty
General manager Ryan Poles of the Chicago Bears.
There’s no such thing as nice, tidy quarterback debates when it comes to the Chicago Bears. Not in bars, not on talk radio — and apparently not even inside Halas Hall.
Tyler Dunne’s new three-part Go Long series paints a damning portrait of the Ryan Poles-era Bears, and much of it looks particularly damning for the Bears GM in particular.
According to Dunne, when Chicago held the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, the internal evaluation of the quarterback position tilted so hard toward Caleb Williams that calling it a process at all feels generous.
Dunne says he spoke with 32 people—coaches, scouts, execs, players, staffers—and what they describe isn’t an honest breakdown of what could be a historic QB class. It’s a downright incompetent dismissal of the résumés of Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye.
Ryan Poles ‘Laughed’ at, ‘Made Fun of’ Patriots QB Drake Maye
Tyler Scott Cut Ryan Poles Jahdae Walker Bears News
GettyBears general manager Ryan Poles made fun of and laughed at Patriots QB Drake Maye and refused to consider Jayden Daniels, according to Tyler Dunne.
Dunne’s Part II reconstructs what the Bears draft room looked like in the months leading up to the 2024 draft. What he reports reads less like scouting and more like railroading.
One source told Dunne that the Bears focused on, played back and ridiculed only the worst from Maye’s tape. An area scout—Ryan Cavanaugh— also said he didn’t think Maye was a very good player. According to Dunne, Poles openly agreed with Cavanaugh.
Yet another scout’s verdict was even more blunt: “They made fun of him. … They laughed. The GM laughed Drake Maye off the screen, and cut the tape off.”
If that’s how you conduct a QB study, you’re not comparing—you’re confirming a conclusion you reached before the door even closed.
Ryan Poles, Bears Never Considered Jayden Daniels, Either
It's good that Ryan Poles stood firm and told the Williams family that he was drafting Caleb Williams amid pushback, but @Rahimi_Harris are perplexed over why the Bears didn't scout Jayden Daniels more knowing what was going on behind the scenes. pic.twitter.com/18DvldrG8E
— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) May 16, 2025
It wasn’t just Maye. According to Dunne’s sources, Daniels—who went No. 2 overall and won the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year award—was never treated as a real option. Not once, they say, did Poles open the floor to ask: who’s the better quarterback, Williams or Daniels?
“Jayden Daniels was clearly — clearly — a better quarterback,” one scout told Dunne, insisting the room never got a fair, side-by-side.
“When it was time to discuss Williams, the tenor in the room changed drastically,” Dunne reported. “His film was massaged in a manner to present the USC quarterback at his absolute best. Nobody dared to chuckle. The Bears didn’t dissect his wretched performance against Notre Dame on tape, only discussing that three-interception, 48-20 defeat through rose-colored glasses. No magnifying glass was panned over this quarterback’s flaws.”
Ryan Poles Wanted to ‘Rig’ 2024 Draft So Bears Could Select Caleb Williams, Per Tyler Dunne
One scout gave Dunne a pull-quote that could follow Poles around for the rest of his career:
“The quarterback process? I would not even call it a process,” the scout told Dunne. “The Caleb Williams draft pick was the most embarrassing lack of a process — a fair, impartial process to scouting — that I’ve ever seen in my life. There wasn’t any type of actual comparison on a fair slate to which quarterback is actually better. They had it all lined up. It was a rigged trial.”
Here’s the thing: Process is what protects you when your favorite prospect has a blind spot you’re emotionally discounting. The 2024 class was good enough to demand a sterile room — make every quarterback answer the same questions and review all the tape (good and bad).
If Dunne’s reporting is accurate, Chicago didn’t do that. They put a thumb (an entire arm and a leg, really) on the scale for the guy they wanted — and they got him. If Williams eventually succeeds and helps turn the Bears around, Poles will be vindicated in his choices. If not, well, history isn’t going to be anywhere near kind.