Getty Chairman George McCaskey of the Chicago Bears is part of the team's five-member search committee to find the next GM and head coach.
The Chicago Bears are in the midst of what has been a thorough search for a new head coach and general manager.
The Bears have been linked to 15 general manager candidates and have put in a request to interview Ryan Poles, the current Kansas City Chiefs executive director of player personnel, a second time.
While casting a wide net can be a good thing, a league insider is reporting that Chicago’s broad approach rubbed one GM candidate the wrong way.
That’s what Matt Miller, former NFL Draft analyst and current ESPN insider, said on Chicago’s 670 The Score, while Michael Lombardi, a former NFL scout and GM, also shared some eye-opening information about the Bears’ current search for a general manager.
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GM Candidate: It’s Hard to Know How Serious They’re Taking You’
In a Jan. 21 appearance on 670 The Score’s Bernstein & Rahimi Show, Miller said he spoke to one of the current contenders for Chicago’s GM opening, and the candidate revealed one of the primary issues with interviewing so many people.
“I was talking to one of the people who (is scheduled to) interview with the Bears for the general manager job yesterday,” Miller said. “They told me, ‘You know, it’s tough, because there are, like, 15 people interviewing for this job, and it’s hard to know how serious they’re taking you when they’re interviewing that many people. And it’s also hard because you don’t know how long this process is going to take.’”
While the Bears shouldn’t base their search on ways to make life easier for their GM candidates, it’s also fair to wonder whether many other folks up for the job also feel this way.
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Another NFL Insider Reveals Damning Information About Search
Michael Lombardi, who has vast experience in league management, appeared on 670 The Score’s Mully & Haugh Show on Jan. 19, and what he had to say should be far more concerning to Bears fans than Miller’s comments were. According to Lombardi, the Bears’ selection/hiring committee isn’t asking candidates the right types of questions.
“Structure, to me, is so important, Lombardi said. “I think the guy who becomes the general manager of a team has to have the broader picture of how to build a team. This isn’t a director of college scouting job. Not really to ask questions about what the scouts will do in the spring, summer or fall. When you’re asking those questions in the interview, that’s not necessarily what you should focus on.”
The team’s search committee consists of five people: Bears Chairman George McCaskey team President Ted Phillips, former Colts exec Bill Polian, Bears director of player engagement Lamar “Soup” Campbell and Bears Senior VP for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Tanesha Wade. Lombardi says he has spoken to people who are connected to the Bears GM search, and he’s not hearing encouraging things.
“The questions should be: How do you visualize the Chicago Bears looking in three years? What kind of players are we gonna draft? What will the grading scale look like? What kind of team do we want to build? What is the most important position in a salary cap structure? Those are the kind of questions … from talking to people that have had interviews in there, that’s not necessarily the way it’s going.”
With the franchise’s most recent win in the postseason coming over a decade ago in 2011, Bears fans have to hope that the search committee stumbles onto the right candidate, or the playoff drought will continue. Unfortunately, Lombardi didn’t have many words of encouragement in that regard.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there, and that’s kind of what it sounds like,” he said about the search.
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