Dear Chicago Bears: Your Fans Are Not Stupid

The Bears have had the modus operandi for too long of thinking themselves the smartest men in the room. Even in this coaching cycle, when Lions Offensive Coordinator Ben Johnson is as close to a slam-dunk hire as you can have, Ryan Poles stokes the fire of frustration by pointing out how there might be some candidates "you don't expect."

Why? Why do you have to continually make your own lives more complicated than it needs to be?

Back in 2013, do you know who else was available as a head coaching candidate? Andy Reid. But the Chiefs didn't waste any time locking him up as soon as they could. They didn't parade around a cavalcade of coaching candidates in the hopes that they may convince themselves they found some diamond in the rough. Reid was the obvious choice, and they struck while the iron was hot.

Poles reinforced the mantra of having a good sound process. Even if the results aren't tangible, so long as the road you took to get there wasn't paved with bad decisions, then you at least have a leg to stand on when it comes to defending your actions.

What is it with the Bears' front office and thinking that casting a laughably large net is a good process? Remember, the Bears prided themselves last offseason on having a thorough list of candidates to fill the vacated offensive coordinator role. Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus were undoubtedly high on their own supply when it came to the "process" of landing Shane Waldron. They couldn't pound their chests hard enough as they treated their offensive coordinator search like it was an expedition worthy of Lewis and Clark.

At this point, Bears fans have to hope the team accidentally makes the right move. It's a sobering reminder of how dysfunctional the organization has become since George Halas's passing, that even when the most obvious answer is staring them in the face, they'll search for reasons to zag instead of zig.

This franchise is so inept at times that it doesn't even know when to play coy and when to be transparent with its base. Ryan Poles refused to answer whether or not he had received a contract extension, and George McCaskey had the gall to suggest that it's not essential for a head coach and general manager to be tied together contractually.

Why beat around the bush? What gamesmanship is the upper brass thinking it's providing by not laying out the future regarding Ryan Poles, especially when the facts will eventually be made public knowledge? All it does is frustrate a fanbase that has already taken a step back from the team.

George McCaskey even realizes this. He wasn't as perturbed by fans chanting "sell the team" as he was by the Detroit Lions' faithful taking over Soldier Field. George, the reason the Lions fans took over Soldier Field is that you have slowly but surely patronized and ostracized your fanbase to the point of utter apathy and nonchalance over your tenure.

You can piss on someone's leg and tell them it's raining only so much.

Funnily enough, the very fans that the team talks down to are leagues wiser than the team gives them credit for. The Bears don't realize how predictable they are as an operation, and the fanbase has been clued into this dysfunction since the aforementioned Trestman era.

You didn't need a crystal ball to know that Matt Eberflus wasn't the guy. There was enough proof last year that he was in over his head, and the fact the fans could see it, but Ryan Poles doubled down (while also laughably dismissing the idea of Jim Harbaugh) did nothing to instill confidence in a beleaguered Bears' base.

Earlier, I mentioned the mock press conference the organization gave Arians as evidence that this franchise values perception over results. The irony is that since the hiring of Trestman, this team has made a name for itself with its awful end-of-season press conferences. There was the disastrous 2021 press conference where Ted Phillips and George McCaskey laid out the groundwork of why they retained Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy, except they didn't realize their rationale was precisely why they should be fired.

Yesterday, the Bears were self-aware enough not to even televise Kevin Warren and George McCaskey's press conferences. That silence speaks volumes.

The biggest concern any fan of this team should have is that this perceived incompetence isn't a facade but rather the bedrock of the organization. It'd be one thing if all this cloak-and-dagger behavior lent itself to results on Sundays, but we've been through this song and dance enough to know there's no 5D chess being played by anyone named McCaskey.

Beating the Packers on Sunday was a momentary solace in a season full of disappointment, and that euphoria was all but extinguished after the series of press conferences bestowed upon the public at Halas Hall yesterday.

Oh well, at least we have 1985. At least, that's what the McCaskeys hope you think.