Ryan Poles eyes long-term future with QB Caleb Williams but Bears need a ‘green light’ first

PHOENIX — General manager Ryan Poles thinks of it as a crossroads — only better.

Bears quarterback Caleb Williams’ rookie year was a red light — inconsistent and not good enough. Last year’s season of breathtaking finishes was a yellow light, allowing the Bears general manager and millions of fans to dream about the quarterback’s future.

This year, Poles hopes, will be a green light — a bright beacon confirming Williams’ status as the Bears’ long-promised, long-term quarterback. Poles has allowed himself to tap the accelerator, emotionally, inching forward as he waits for the traffic light to turn green.

“It’s good to almost feel like you’ve got it,” he said. “If you go with a traffic light, it went red as a rookie to yellow. You can creep forward a little bit and start having some of these conversations to anticipate it. But we need him to give us a green light.

“I think we’ll find out this year about his progress.”

Williams’ on-field development is up to the quarterback and coach Ben Johnson, Poles said.

“Consistency,” he said, “is what I’m looking for.”

If Williams grows the way the Bears believe he will, Poles will be left with the ultimate good-problem-to-have: finding a way to make the former No. 1 overall pick one of the richest players in the sport — as early as January — while building a team around him that’s capable of winning a championship.

In a sit-down interview with the Sun-Times at the NFL’s Annual Meeting this week, Poles acknowledged all that awaits Williams — and the Bears — in his critical third year. The GM is on the verge of finding out whether the team has solved one of the most vexing problems in franchise history.

“Not just Bears history — football history,” Poles said. “There’s been some unbelievable teams that can’t get the quarterback right, and it doesn’t lead to much. Then there are times where the quarterback’s right — it usually bears the fruit that you’re looking for and results in being a contender and a championship-caliber team.

“We’re making progress. That is exciting, to even be thinking about planning for that. It’s exciting. But then there’s a challenge after that, too.”

Williams signed a four-year, $39.5 million contract with a fifth-year team option on the eve of training camp in 2024, a standard deal for the No. 1 overall pick.

NFL rules dictate that the Bears can sign Williams to a contract extension as soon as next offseason. That’s exactly what the Bengals’ Joe Burrow and the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence, quarterbacks who were the first overall picks in 2020 and 2021, did. After only three seasons, Burrow signed a five-year, $275 million deal with $219 million guaranteed. Lawrence signed a five-year, $275 million deal after only three seasons, too, and got $200 million guaranteed.

Reaching a deal with Williams will be more complicated that simply adjusting the salaries to meet salary cap inflation, though. Williams doesn’t have an agent. Few athletes on the planet have negotiated a deal that large without one.

“I’m sure it’ll present challenges,” Poles said. “We haven’t gotten that far. But if and when we get to that point, we’ll embrace that challenge.”

The Bears are just beginning the research what a potential Williams contract extension could look like. Matt Feinstein, the team’s salary cap guru and vice president of football administration, will be in charge of presenting Poles with potential extension ideas months before the Bears are allowed to negotiate with their quarterback.

“It’s really a summer project,” Poles said. “Matt Feinstein is digging into it now. We’ve had some preliminary [internal] conversations because we want to take some of these things into consideration as we build the team.”

Poles knows his defense needs to get younger and cheaper if he’s going to give right tackle Darnell Wright, another former first-round pick, a contract extension this offseason and Williams, perhaps, a new deal next year.

“Our offense is going to slowly get really expensive,” Poles said. “You want to continue to have young talent to come in and help us out on defense.”

Building a team around a pricey quarterback is a challenge that has flummoxed other general managers. The seven highest-paid quarterbacks in terms of guaranteed money at signing are the Browns’ Deshaun Watson, the Bills’ Josh Allen, Burrow, Lawrence, the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, the Chargers’ Justin Herbert and the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott. Those seven have won just three playoff games in 10 chances since signing their extensions.

The Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, as always, remains the exception. Since signing a 10-year contract extension in 2020 — the $450 million total value remains the league’s largest —he’s won two Super Bowls and has gone 13-3 in the postseason.

Poles worked for the Chiefs when they drafted Mahomes, and when they extended his contract. It’s unfair to compare Williams to him, Poles said, citing everything from Mahomes having veteran passer Alex Smith as a mentor to Mahomes inheriting a better team.

Every once in a while, though, he sees some similarities between the two when projecting Williams’ future.

“Obviously there were some moments that gave me that vibe,” he said. “Really, I need to make this an independent study. But I like the direction it’s going.”