Bears to interview Ryan Poles for their GM position

UPDATE: According to Tom Pelissero, the Bears have three finalists for their GM position. In addition to interviewing Poles on Tuesday, they will spend Monday interviewing two candidates: Morocco Brown, the Indianapolis Colts’ Director of College Scouting, and Omar Khan, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ VP of Football and Business Administration.

The search for a new General Manager for the Minnesota Vikings has been narrowed down to two candidates, both of whom will get second interviews with the team next week. It appears that they’re going to have some competition for one of those candidates, and that competitor is one that lives in their own backyard.

Adam Schefter of ESPN is reporting that the Chicago Bears have requested a second interview with Ryan Poles, who currently serves as the Executive Director of Player Personnel for the Kansas City Chiefs.

According to reports, Poles will be interviewing with the Bears on Tuesday, the day before he is scheduled to interview with the Vikings’ brass in the Twin Cities. The Vikings will be spending Tuesday interviewing their other known finalist, Cleveland Browns VP of Football Operations Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.

While I haven’t been keeping close track of the Bears’ GM search prior to today, Poles is the first name that I’ve seen on social media that has emerged as a finalist for their job. It could be that they’ve simply got a laser focus on Poles at this point, but I would be surprised that there isn’t at least one other name they’ve got in mind in addition to his.

There were four open GM positions in the NFL when the offseason really got underway, and Poles has now been a finalist for three of those four spots. In addition to the Bears and Vikings jobs, he was a finalist for the New York Giants’ GM position that ultimately went to Buffalo Bills assistant GM Joe Schoen.

We’ll see how the situation plays out between these two rivals in the race to hire a new General Manager. It appears that Ryan Poles will almost certainly be the new General Manager of an NFC North team by late next week, it’s just a matter of which one it will be.