(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — General Manager Ryan Poles oversaw his third NFL Draft with the Chicago Bears over the weekend, in which they selected five players, including quarterback Caleb Williams with the first overall pick.
Poles will tell you the work of building the perfect NFL roster is never truly done — but he will also say that adding Williams, Rome Odunze and the rest of this draft class means he’s getting closer.
“I’m pumped,” he said. “I’m pumped. We’ve done good work. Again, it’s one thing to bring talent in, but it’s another to bring talent that, like, they’re good people. It’s been a journey. I know it hasn’t been that many years, but it feels like it’s been a lot of years. We’ve done good work, but obviously, like I said the other day, we’ve got to win.”
That’s in line with Williams’ mentality. The screensaver on the 22-year-old’s famous pink cell phone always has a list of goals on it, and one of them was to be drafted No. 1 overall. He was, which means all that’s left on his sheet, for now, is to pick up rings.
“My reason to go out there is to win games,” he said. “My reason why I play is to win games and win championships, so I want to be a big portion of it. I want to go out there; I want to have fun; I want to enjoy it; I want to do it with my teammates. What better place to do it than the Chicago Bears.”
In 2022, Williams did a fair share of winning. He was awarded the Heisman Trophy and his University of Southern California (USC) finished the season as the No. 12 team in the country.
In 2023, though, USC lost five games and wasn’t even ranked. USC Head Coach Lincoln Riley said that experience only served to make Williams ready for the rigors of the NFL.
“He hadn’t really been through something like this, and certainly [not] on this big of a stage,” Riley said. “The stage is certainly just going to grow as he transitions to the NFL, and I just said, ‘Look, part of your ability to lead a team and become the player that you’re going to become is going to be your ability to handle failure.’”
As for Odunze, the standout receiving prospect said the situation he’s walking into — joining a Bears receiving room that already has DJ Moore and Keenan Allen — reminds him of how the pieces came together “for the incredible seasons” he had at Washington, which competed in the national title game in 2023.
“It really feels like that same feeling, having so many weapons on offense, [and] bringing in a guy like Caleb … at the helm of it all allows us to do so many different things,” he said. “I’m super excited for the attack mindset that we’ll have on offense, the explosiveness that we can bring to any football field, and I think it’ll be special.”
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