Early return not looking good for Chicago Bears and Ryan Poles
A look at the Chicago Bears 2022 free agent signings
To be fair, I don't think Ryan Poles was trying to assemble a contender last season. Most of these guys I'm about to list off were brought in on cheap, one-year deals and didn't matter in the master plan. There are a lot of names, here so I will list them and speak to the ones that were major failures or ended up providing something.
- Khari Blasingame, FB
- Dane Cruikshank, S
- Justin Jones, DT
- Trevor Siemian, QB
- Byron Pringle, WR
- Equanimeous St. Brown, WR
- Al-Quadin Muhammad, DE
- Patrick Scales, LS
- Nicholas Morrow, LB
- Lucas Patrick, C
- Dakota Dozier, OL
I think as fans, we too often try and see the positive in everyone. Whether that player came here in free agency or through the draft. I know I tried talking up Al-Quadin Muhammad after he came off of a solid season with the Colts under Matt Eberflus. I figured it would be a smooth transition. I was wrong. Muhammad looked awful and didn't deserve to be on the roster. To be honest, he might have been worse than Dominique Robinson.
It is sad when Patrick Scales, a long snapper, and Khari Blasingame, a fullback, are the two best free agent signings. The Lucas Patrick signing looks awful. Equanimeous St. Brown was brought back to watch Velus Jones play instead. Are you kidding me? Can you see why Matt Eberflus and his staff should be fired? Justin Jones is still here too, but has been extremely mediocre. This group is full of way more bad signings than even average ones.
To make matters worse, the Chicago Bears also traded a second-round pick to the Pittsburgh Steelers for Chase Claypool. I wasn't fully against the trade at the time because I wanted Justin Fields to have more help, but Claypool is not who I thought he'd be coming out of Notre Dame. Overall, this was a bad fee-agent offseason for Ryan Poles and I can see why fans are mad. However, as I said from the beginning, these guys were not part of the actual rebuild. Poles wants to build the Chicago Bears through the draft.
To help with that, Poles sent Khalil Mack, Roquan Smith, and Robert Quinn packing to gain additional draft capital.