Chicago Bears: Another embarrassing situation for Ryan Poles

After dealing with the aftermath of losing a player due to a failed physical, Chicago Bears general manager has to now deal with a player in legal trouble.

Well, Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles continues to have an up and down offseason. He came in with high hopes of turning the team’s fortunes around.

When free agency began, however, he decided to avoid impact players and instead sign players who were only considered depth pieces on other teams. Now they are expected to play meaningful snaps or even start this season.

Yes, we all know that Poles and the Bears are putting all their eggs in the 2023 basket. They’ll have a ton of salary cap space to sign whoever wants to come to Chicago.

They’re also hoping to pick up some extra draft picks as well. As it stands, they have about $118 million in cap space for 2023 before the official salary cap number is announced and before cuts are made. In terms of the draft, they have seven 2023 draft picks before they try to wheel and deal for more.

While all that is well and good, we have to sit through another bad season in 2022. In fact, this upcoming season might be one of the worst we’ve seen in quite some time. We’ll have to watch some thoroughly horrible football with the understanding that the future should get brighter.

In the meantime, Poles has taken some hits. Some fans aren’t happy with how he is just throwing away the 2022 season. They didn’t necessarily expect a Super Bowl contender right off the bat, but they also didn’t expect to see players like Equamineous St. Brown and Dakota Dozier fight for starting spots, either.

Then there are some missteps. Poles’ biggest free agent signing, Larry Ogunjobi, couldn’t pass his physical, and Poles subsequently voided the deal. I say it was the biggest signing, but it was also his only big signing.

It was for 3 years, $40.5 million, with $26.35 million guaranteed. He hasn’t come close to those numbers with anyone else.

Poles had to take at least a little hit over that signing. One had to figure that when a team gives a player that much money they’d have to have more due diligence. However, it was good for Poles to void the deal rather than take a chance with an injured player like previous general manager Ryan Pace did with Pernell McPhee and Teven Jenkins.

After high hopes, McPhee spent three injury-plagued seasons in Chicago and the team released him. Jenkins missed 11 games in his rookie season.

Now Poles needs to deal with a legal matter. Wide receiver Byron Pringle, one of his discounted signees, got arrested over the weekend and was the latest athlete to appear on TMZ.

Police arrested him after he was caught in a sports car doing donuts while on a suspended license. Also, he had a child in the car. Furthermore, he was combative with the police.

This is a big headache for Poles and the Chicago Bears. How do they handle this situation? Poles wants to change the culture at Halas Hall. Does he continue building that and keep Pringle?

While Pringle was stuck behind some great receivers when he was with the Kansas City Chiefs, Poles saw something in him that he felt could be good for the Chicago Bears.

What Pringle did over the weekend wasn’t what Poles envisioned.

Now we’ll see how Poles reacts to this situation. It is a black eye to him having a player he knew from Kansas City do something like this. All eyes will be on him to see how he deals with it. In terms of his plan, he isn’t deterred from sticking to it at all costs. With all the talk about the type of players he wants on the roster, does he stick to that and release Pringle, or does he find a way to keep him?