Earlier in the week, we looked at some of the things that did not break the right way for Ryan Poles. A lot of people took it to think that it is viewing the Poles era as a whole, rather than just noting three things that did not go well.
So, to show that you can be critical and complimentary as well, we will now highlight the positives of Ryan Poles.
4. Ryan Poles reset the Chicago Bears cap and kept his future draft capital
The biggest reason Ryan Pace was fired, even beyond the Mitch Trubisky selection was how he continued to lose assets for the Chicago Bears. Pace kept spending and pushing money into the future, and he kept trading future picks for players in the now.
Still, at some point, the rent will be due, and Pace left Ryan Poles up against it. Poles mostly was resetting the roster then he was building anything back up. He is eating dead cap for Germain Ifedi, Danny Trevathan, Tarik Cohen Charles Leno, Jimmy Graham, Andy Dalton, Eddie Goldman, Nick Foles, and Khalil Mack this offseason.
It could have been easy to keep the trend going and try to push cap space into the next season, but he did not do that. Poles cleared what he needed to in space to be comfortable, but did not sacrifice the future.
In fact, they are set to have the most cap space in the NFL next offseason. To go from a bleak situation to the best is a great off-season overall.
Beyond that, he did not sacrifice future picks to do so. From Khalil Mack to Anthony Miller, and even to trading a future pick for Trevis Gipson Ryan Pace was always losing future picks. In his first draft Poles did not have a first-round pick.
Next year, Poles is set to have his first five picks as well as his seventh. The Bears have a potential conditional sixth coming back as well. Poles will enter 2023 with a pick in every round, and a great cap situation. Getting to that point took sacrifices this offseason, and he did a great job of still filling out the roster for this transition.