Dodged addressing the QB question? They understandably wanted to see Fields with a better supporting cast. Obviously it didn't work out, but to say he mismanaged it by giving Fields another year is just revisionist history. Sure Stroud looks great, but he wasn't a cant-miss prospect, so giving up on Fields to draft Stroud made little sense at the time. Besides, this roster can support a rookie QB significantly better than last years, especially if we didn't have DJ Moore and Darnell Wright from the #1 overall pick trade.
Also, what are you taking about with this veteran alternative as a failsafe stuff? What do we need a failsafe for? If Caleb sucks his rookie year, we'll just suck. There's no reason to have a "failsafe" outside of just having a normal backup QB. Did you expect us to sign like, a starting-caliber QB in addition to drafting Caleb? I legitimately have no idea what you're critiquing Poles on here.
How is the OL patchy? At worst:
Braxton Jones: average LT
Nate Davis: okay guard
Coleman Shelton: okay center
Teven Jenkins: good guard
Darnell Wright: good RT
Ryan Bates: quality IOL backup
Larry Borom: okay swing tackle
Matt Pryor: okay swing tackle
All 5 of the starting offensive linemen have shown they can play at a respectable or better level in the league, as have the top backups. We lack star power, but it's a solid offensive line with no true weakness. It's more than serviceable, and certainly more than "patchwork."
You do know Keenan Allen is a slot receiver right?
If the Bears go into the season with this exact group of WRs then I agree it's thin on depth. That being said, I fully expect us to sign a couple WR3-WR4s, and potentially add a WR at #9 or in the 3rd round. All in all, the room is shaping up to be good-to-great, so to criticize it for being "thin" when it's clearly set up to be very good is just grasping at straws here.
Bears are going to run a RB-by-committee along with nearly every team in the NFL at this point, so saying that Swift is going to be the rookie QB's "backfield protection" while ignoring everything else he does good is clearly you just looking to criticize the move. Swift can run the ball well and catch the ball well. He's a good addition to the room. You can say we overpaid, I think that's basically the only potential issue here.
All in all, you're just looking to complain just to complain. Poles overall has done a solid job of building this roster out. He has had misses (Claypool, Edmunds imo), but he has built the best situation a #1 overall QB has gone to in recent memory, and if Caleb hits then the sky is the limit for this roster for years to come. Why not be excited by that instead of just searching for questionable-at-best criticisms?
A better supporting cast last season, which included Chase Claypool as a starter to begin with? Poles is on the same timeline as Everloose. He cratered the roster his first season, creating the suspect supporting cast by letting James Daniels go, keeping older and much more expensive Whitehair, counting on Jenkins to be healthy and playing a new position, and signing the likes of part-time starter Lucas Patrick (who statistically gave up ZERO sack last season, better than Sheldon Coleman) and Nate Davis ("average" but unavailable on multiple occasions). Now they are again counting a healthy Jenkins and Davis to be available, while the statistically worse Coleman, or the five-year non-starter Bates, will take over at center. Don't you wonder why the Rams are willing to let their two-year starting center leave in FA? The Bearswire link I posted a few pages back had some interesting assessment about Coleman, that he could hold up well with good guard play next to him. So if one of the starting guards goes down, gulp.
Poles dodged the QB question by trading the No. 1 pick which in fact cost them the chance to get the rookie QB solution in Stroud, and only getting a formerly non-premium position RT at No. 10 and a very good WR in Moore, but it's been said in this forum good WR could be found outside the first round (just look at where GB drafted the Donald Driver, Antonio Freeman, Devante Adams of the world). Before you go find the gloating posts in these Bears threads about how many picks/players Poles parlayed that No. 1 pick into, first answer the question whether that was worth it for losing the chance to draft Stroud, the long-awaited franchise QB solution, and why it's different this draft, where all of sudden they must take the alleged No. 1 rated (not necessarily by draft position) QB prospect. BTW, there was an article on Suntimes weeks ago, that the first drafted NFL QBs have almost NEVER turned out to have the best career among their peers from the same draft. Say it's hindsight all you want, why would this year's No. 1 rated QB prospect turn out to be a statistical outlier and worth keeping the No. 1 overall pick for, while last year's wasn't? It's exactly because Poles badly mis-judged the QB evaluation last year, so now he's forced into having to count on a rookie QB starter (again, with veteran QB failsafe), to succeed right away, in order to save his own job. It's a tall order, especially given the franchise's history at the position. And to top it off, a franchise that has had a long line of excellent centers (Hilgenberg, Fontenot, Kreuz, Casey Wegeman who went to KC to start many years) now has to turn to a turnstile of ho-hum castoffs from other teams.
So what the rookie QB starter sucks, it is asked? Well, isn't it obvious that could mean the GM carousal would be turning again, which is never good for a struggling franchise. That also means an allegedly good young defense is again being wasting away due to questionable QB play as a result of GM buffoonery. It would be sorta like the first season of Ryan Pace/Matt Nagy, where Vic Fangio's excellent D carried them to 12-4, but was one-and-done in the playoffs due to Nagy's fraudulent offensive coaching ability (of course Waldron is not Nagy riding off his ex-boss's coattail) and Trubisky's QB play. Of course, would the defense actually still be good this upcoming season is in fact another question mark, bearing in mind it was playing a last-place schedule last year (yeah yeah, it still is this coming season), suffered multiple collapses, and members of the secondary seemed particularly brittle, and finished sub-500. I have my doubts about Byard too, given he was a former Pro Bowler let go by TN for a paultry 5th rounder, and let go by the team that desperately traded for him mid-seaon. Again, have few picks left to draft depth/alternative.
What would be my ideal situation? A veteran starter (not like McGlennon, but more like Andy Dalton) since the start of last season, with Stroud or this year's rookie sitting and learning. Trade both No. 1 picks for a haul, accumulate picks and build out from the trenches (OL and DL). As of this writing, the OL is still patchy (not just injury-risk wise) as I allege, and the DL is still missing the proverbial other edge and a 3-technique, yet the GM is not spending enough of the cap to address the DL and has few picks left to fill those holes. Poles would have my respect if he again trades the No. 1 for more picks/players, doing what's better for the franchise long term, instead of toting the conventional line of drafting the highest rated rookie QB (again, rarely ever turns ot to be the best of the class) and thrusting the poor sap into the starter role hoping to save his own job. The extra picks/players don't even have to all pan out.
As for Swift, well, Chicago and Detroit practically swapped him (8 mil per) and David Montgomery (6 mil per). And who let Montgomery walk?
Why not feel excited? I guess this time of the year every fan base has nothing but excitement for the upcoming season, but just the odds of a rookie QB lighting it up right away in Chicago, given how few has done it league-wide, never mind the other questions concerning the rest of the team. When Roquan Smith was traded, the narrative was the ILB was no longer a premium position which could be filled by undrafted Jack Sanborn. Then Poles went and spent on "long" Edmunds for allegedly more takeaway potential. So they got a second-rounder out of it. But now they must keep hoard No. 1 pick instead of replenish more picks, after giving it away and bypassing Stroud, because they'd be certain to draft "the best" rookie QB this year? Color me very skeptical.
