My Windy City Gridiron colleague Bill Zimmerman and I had a disagreement on X/Twitter yesterday over whether Ryan Poles is a bad post-second-round talent evaluator and drafter. In case you missed it, the Chicago Bears extended Poles’ contract through the 2029 season, aligning him with head coach Ben Johnson.

First, the Tweet that sparked our debate:

Ryan Poles process and approach has always largely been solid. That was never the question with Ryan Poles.

The question is his ability to evaluate talent outside of the first two rounds. The results thus far have been dreadful.

If Poles can improve in that department, he has…

— Bill Zimmerman (@BillTZimmerman) July 11, 2025

Editor: You can head over to Twitter for Bill’s side of things.

Bill described Poles’ record outside of the second round as “dreadful” – but is it really? Bill would go on in the thread to argue that Poles’ record outside of the 2nd round doesn’t compare well with his predecessor, Ryan Pace, who many consider to be a “bad” GM. I’m not sure that’s an apples-to-apples comparison, given the fact that the reasons Pace is criticized for his Bears tenure have not, to my knowledge, featured his Day 3 picks, but rather his tendency to expend draft capital to move up in the draft for a targeted player, his failure at drafting a franchise QB, and his poor management of the Bears cap. Further, we have the full measure of Pace’s drafts, while Ryan Poles’ earliest draft classes are just now maturing, making comparing the two directly somewhat problematic. But let’s put that aside for the moment, as there is a more fundamental question at hand: what should we expect the hit rate for Day 3 picks for a GM to be in the NFL? What would be performing above average, average, or as Bill described it, dreadful?

PFF did a study focused on positional hit rates in the NFL draft, but they also looked at the overall hit rate per round. This is their graph depicting hit rate as a function of NFL snaps by the player, covering the seasons from 2006-2021:

Pro Football Focus

As we can see, from pick 65 to pick 100 (roughly the 3rd round), the hit rate goes from about 30% to 10% – so for just the third round – the hit rate is, on average, 20%. After that the hit rate plateaus, but falls to near zero by pick 250. So, let’s do some back of the envelope calculations to see if we can get an average hit rate for Day 3. We will assign the following hit rates for each round:

3rd round: 25%

4th round: 10%

5th round: 5%

6th and 7th rounds: 1%.

That’s an 8.4% hit rate for Day 3.

Now let’s look at Poles draft picks in those rounds – we won’t be able to use the PFF definition since it uses four seasons of data, and we don’t have four seasons yet for any of the Poles Day 3 draft picks and assign hit or miss for the pick. We will necessarily exclude this year as those players haven’t played at all in the NFL. If the player has played meaningful snaps in the NFL, we will call them a hit. If they have barely played, or been terrible when playing, we will call them a miss. I am also going to take into account the round in which they were drafted – we expect more from 3rd round picks than 7th round picks. Let’s make some calls:

2022 Draft

MISS – Round 3, pick No. 71: Velus Jones Jr., wide receiver, Tennessee

HIT – Round 5, pick No. 168: Braxton Jones, offensive tackle, Southern Utah

MISS – Round 5, pick No. 174: Dominique Robinson, defensive end, Miami (Ohio)

MISS – Round 6, pick No. 186: Zachary Thomas, offensive lineman, San Diego State

MISS – Round 6, pick No. 203: Trestan Ebner, running back, Baylor

MISS – Round 6, pick No. 207: Doug Kramer, offensive lineman, Illinois

MISS – Round 7, pick No. 227: Ja’Tyre Carter, offensive lineman, Southern

HIT – Round 7, pick No. 254: Elijah Hicks, safety, California

HIT – Round 7, pick No. 255: Trenton Gill, punter, North Carolina State

2023 Draft

MISS – Round 3, pick No. 64: Zacch Pickens, defensive tackle, Georgia

HIT – Round 4, pick No. 115: Roschon Johnson, running back, Texas

MISS – Round 4, pick No. 133: Tyler Scott, wide receiver, Cincinnati

MISS – Round 5, pick No. 148: Noah Sewell, linebacker, Oregon

HIT – Round 5, pick No. 165: Terrell Smith, defensive back, Minnesota

MISS – Round 7, pick No. 218: Travis Bell, defensive tackle, Kennesaw State

MISS – Round 7, pick No. 258: Kendall Williamson, safety, Stanford

2024 Draft

MISS – Round 3, pick No. 75: Kiran Amegadjie, offensive tackle, Yale

HIT – Round 5, pick No. 122: Tory Taylor, punter, Iowa

HIT – Round 5, pick No. 144: Austin Booker, defensive end, Kansas

Obviously, some of these calls are debatable – both ways. After all, I have rated Doug Kramer a miss, despite the fact that he was used (to varying effectiveness) as a fullback by the Bears in 2024, and he was resigned by the team. And while Dominique Robinson has not lived up to his initial promise in that first game against the Niners, he has played significant snaps over his tenure as a Chicago Bear. I rated him a miss because his play has been poor – but that may be too harsh a judgement, given he was a 6th round flyer. Is it too early to call Amegadjie a miss? On the other hand, I have rated Austin Booker a hit based on his promising rookie campaign, but he is still more promise than production. That said, I think this is a reasonable assessment of the hits and misses of Poles’ first three drafts. One thing to note is how many picks he has accumulated on Day 3 – a clear break with the Pace strategy of trading up for a targeted player. I suspect Ryan Poles is quite aware of the hit rate for draft picks on Day 3.

But returning to our big question: what was Ryan Poles’ hit rate on Day 3? Out of 19 Day Three picks, I gave him seven hits. That’s a hit rate of 36.8% on Day 3. Ryan Poles’ hit rate is nearly four times the average hit rate on Day 3 based on the PFF metric. Now, it isn’t all flowers and sunshine for Poles on Day 3 – clearly he missed on two of the three highest day 3 picks he had in those three drafts, and they were spectacular misses: Velus Jones, who was a net negative when he was on the field (which wasn’t often), and Zacch Pickens, who has done almost nothing as a Chicago Bear. Poles seems to have wasted a valuable 4th round pick on Tyler Scott, who has done little and is now buried on the depth chart, and Noah Sewell hasn’t done much to justify his 5th round selection. On the other hand, Ryan Poles found a starting left tackle, one who has played at least to the level of an average left tackle, in the 5th round of his first draft. That pick alone, given the value of left tackles in the NFL, balances the day-three tally in his favor.

In conclusion, I think Ryan Poles has, in fact, been good on Day 3 of the draft. He has arguably been well above average on Day 3. On the other hand, if you’re inclined to give Poles more of an incomplete, given how much projection we have to put into the assessment of his Day 3 drafts, I wouldn’t argue with you. But I also think Poles gets too much heat for his prominent Round 3 misses in Pickens and Jones, Jr., while not getting nearly enough credit for brilliant picks like Braxton Jones, Elijah Hicks, and Terrell Smith. Every GM in the NFL is going to miss, and the further down the draft board we go, the more probable that the pick will be a miss. I see little evidence that Ryan Poles has been bad on Day 3, as my colleague Bill Zimmerman contends. I think, in fact, he has been better than average.

But what do you think? Let us know in the comments below.