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The goal for Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles when he hosts draft prospects at Halas Hall and then takes them out to dinner is to get to know them and their knowledge of football in a more relaxed setting.
It’s an important step as the Bears weigh which player they will pick at No. 9 in the first round April 27. NFL teams are limited to bringing 30 non-local prospects to their facilities for a visit that doesn’t include an on-field workout, a process that wraps up April 19 this year.
“We just want to see if they let their guard down and just talk,” Poles said last week at the NFL’s annual meetings in Phoenix. “Sometimes when you go to the combine, they’re uptight, they’re nervous. It’s an intimidating setup. We just want them to relax a little bit.
“The intelligence piece, not that you can see everything, but get them on the board and just talk more ball, watch film and then see how they move around our organization, too, and meet different people. That helps. And again, it’s just part of the puzzle.”
The Bears have a major visit this week with Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter, who arrived in Chicago on Monday and was set to visit Halas Hall on Tuesday, a source said.
Earlier this year, Carter was viewed as a possible No. 1 pick, the type of player who could make an immediate big impact, especially on a rebuilding defense like the Bears. One of their top needs is defensive tackle, along with offensive tackle and edge rusher.
But a little more than a month ago, Carter was charged with reckless driving and racing in connection with a car crash that killed a Georgia teammate and staff member. Carter, who wasn’t driving the car that crashed, pleaded no contest to both misdemeanor charges and was given 12 months’ probation, a $1,000 fine, community service and a state-approved defensive driving course.
Coupled with Carter’s rough performance at his pro day, in which he was nine pounds heavier than at the combine and struggled to finish drills, NFL teams have a complex evaluation ahead when deciding whether to draft him.
The Bears, who traded the No. 1 pick to the Carolina Panthers, still could be in play for Carter. His agent, Drew Rosenhaus, told ESPN and NFL Network that Carter was declining visits with teams drafting outside the top 10 because they are confident he wouldn’t slip beyond that.
Carter’s visit at Halas Hall is one piece of what Poles called “a big puzzle” when determining what type of player and person the Bears would be drafting.
“You usually take it all the way back to high school, how they were recruited, how they handled that, and now you kind of play it through their career,” Poles said. “Sometimes there’s red flags that pop up and you’ve got to sit down and have discussions with different parts of your organization and say, ‘Does this guy fit what we’re trying to do?’
“You look at the risk. You’ve got to balance that. And again, for us, especially being so young, we want to make sure we’re keeping a good culture and maintaining this as we go.”
Poles said if the Bears were to consider a high-risk player, he would talk to Chairman George McCaskey and incoming President Kevin Warren about it. McCaskey has dealt with such evaluations in the past.
“I want to know what their football evaluation is, what their character evaluation is,” McCaskey said last week at the NFL meetings. “You’re scouting all of the measurables. You’re looking at tape in terms of football proficiency, and I want to know what else they’ve found out about the player, his background, what people are saying about him and what he has to say for himself.”
Poles and coach Matt Eberflus were among a Bears contingent that went to Carter’s pro day in Georgia in mid-March, one of many stops on the pro day circuit over the last month as the Bears deepened their draft evaluations. College pro days wrap up this week.
During those visits, Poles said the Bears met with a couple of the prospects early. They got them together with position coaches or coordinators and took them out to dinner to get to know them better.
They also obviously watched the prospects’ on-field workouts, though Poles said the Bears will exercise caution in how much stock they put in those.
“You want to be careful,” he said. “The further you get away from tape, the workouts in shorts and all that can sway you a little bit too far. So you kind of want to stay in the same range, but we learned a lot more about the players.”
For Eberflus, the pro days took him back to his time coaching and scouting in college at Toledo and Missouri, and he found them valuable.
“You can just glean that much more information about the way a guy catches, the way he moves in space, how he bends, how he moves with his coach,” Eberflus said. “I think that’s important. How much stamina he has, so you can see the preparation there.
“And then you get to talk to the coaches. … I met with all of the head coaches for 20-30 minutes on the field, defensive coordinator, offensive coordinator, and you can get really good information from a guy when you’re there in person.”
Poles said Eberflus’ background in recruiting makes him a valuable talent evaluator.
“He can kind of see not only what the the player is today but what he can become,” Poles said. “I think both of us — from my time in Kansas City with Chris Ballard and his time with Chris in Indy — he can see traits but yet the tape can be a little bit raw. And then (he can) understand how with coaching and with time we can develop players to be really good pros.”
The process has both Poles and Eberflus excited as they try to map out how they can improve the roster with the No. 9 pick — or with another trade back — and their nine other picks.
“It’s just adding to the core of players we want to win with here for a long period of time,” Poles said. “We have some needs that we have to fill. But again, it’s staying disciplined and really using the draft board and the value system that we have to do the right thing in the draft as well. This continues to set it up for this long journey that we’re on.”
