Two Unlikely Names Swayed Ryan Poles On Taking Caleb Williams

The Chicago Bears went through a long and detailed process to reach the decision of taking Caleb Williams #1 overall last month. It obviously involved tons of watching film and meeting with the player himself. However, it appears GM Ryan Poles was a little reluctant at first to consider Williams as it became clearer Chicago would pick high in the 2024 draft. There were misgivings about his ability to handle adversity, his status as a leader as USC’s season fell apart, and whether he was more of a “me” guy.

It turns out two men played a pivotal role in convincing Poles to go the extra mile in studying Williams. That meant meeting with various people around the young quarterback, from coaches to teammates, friends, and family members. According to Albert Breer of the MMQB, those two men were scouts Francis St. Paul and Reese Hicks.

“Three months later, the Bears wrapped up an encouraging 7–10 campaign that ended with a 5–3 flourish, and Carolina helped Chicago in floundering to 2–15 and locking up the No. 1 pick for Poles and Eberflus. By then, Poles had a baseline of information to work off.

Some came from national scout Francis St. Paul and West Coast area scout Reese Hicks, who kept telling Poles that he needed to get back out to California, and around the people at USC. He’d find out, they promised, that the narratives that circled Williams while the Trojans’ season circled the drain weren’t real. Investigate it yourself, they said. Read our reports. Investigate it.”

St. Paul has deep roots on the west coast.

Before becoming a national scout for the organization, he was their scout in that region since 2012. His efforts helped the Bears land guys like Kyle Long, Charles Leno, Jaylon Johnson, Kyler Gordon, and Braxton Jones. Hicks took over for him in May of 2022. He was an understudy of Thomas Dimitroff in Atlanta, who drafted Matt Ryan in 2008. Both men had done insane amounts of legwork on Williams since he got to USC.

Ryan Poles doesn’t fear trusting his scouts.

The same thing happened last year when he was encouraged by northeast scout Tom Bradway and co-director of player personnel Jeff King to give serious consideration to Tyson Bagent out of Shepherd. Chicago signed him as an undrafted free agent. He won the backup job and went 2-2 as a starter when Justin Fields got hurt. Poles did his own homework, but it was trusting the word of his people that got the ball rolling. It appears the same thing happened again, only this time on a much bigger scale.

Not trusting the scouts is a bad habit several previous Bears GMs had. Jim Finks passed on Joe Montana in 1979 despite many in the organization pushing for him. The same was true of Russell Wilson in 2012. Lack of consensus inside Halas Hall is often a big reason they keep missing that position. It feels like things finally came together where everybody was on the same page with Williams. Ryan Poles gave full credit to St. Paul and Hicks for getting the ball rolling in that direction.