Foreman was signed after David Montgomery opted to leave the Bears after four seasons and ink a three-year contract with the Lions.
Poles said he felt the Bears were “really, really close” to re-signing Montgomery.
“I would just kind of sum it up by saying players do have a choice,” Poles said. “I thought we communicated well. I thought we negotiated well. At the same time, you don’t always know what’s going on in the background, but I thought we did a good job, we were transparent, we were organized and it just, it didn’t happen. I felt like it was really, really close, though.”
Poles knows that the Bears will face a fired-up Montgomery twice this season.
“He definitely is going to run with a chip on his shoulder, so we’ll be ready for that,” Poles said. “But I communicated with him, too. Happy for him. He’s a guy I’ve respected since he was at Iowa State, and I love the way he runs. So, it’s all good.”
Bears focusing on draft prep
Traveling around the country to attend various Pro Day workouts has given Poles a chance to spend quality time with several NFL prospects.
“When we get back from [the owners meetings], we’ll hit the draft and lock in the draft room,” he said. “We took a couple really good trips, saw some guys that we liked, got some clarity on things by meeting with players. We’re about to turn the page with the draft and take that next step.”
Poles is excited about some of the prospects he met, but cautioned that “you want to be careful” in putting too much of an emphasis on measurables and in-person meetings.
“The further you get away from tape, the workouts in shorts and all that can sway you a little bit too far,” he said. “So, you kind of want to stay in the same range but we learned a lot more about the players. A couple of them we met early, got them on the board, talked ball, got our coordinators or position coaches with them.
“Just to get familiar sometimes we just went to dinner to [get to know] the person, so we definitely feel better about it now than we did before. I think the cool thing is it’s really weird, you get this job and you just take off and you run. You don’t spend a ton of quality time with your coordinators and sometimes even your head coach, so the time spent with our offensive and defensive line coaches or coordinators just sitting on the plane, at dinner, that part was cool, too, just bonding as a group.”
The Bears will also have 30 prospects visit Halas Hall leading up to the draft.
“We take them out to dinner; just want…
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