Tag: Kevin Warren

Kevin Warren wants Bears to ‘replicate’ draft success from last year

Kevin Warren discussed replicating last year’s draft success again this year and how that could help make the Bears contenders.

All eyes are on the Chicago Bears and their looming decision at quarterback — stick with Justin Fields or draft a rookie (most likely Caleb Williams) at No. 1.

In an interview with WGN’s Jarrett Payton, Warren discussed a variety of topics, including the team’s big draft haul last year, when they traded the top pick to the Carolina Panthers for what became DJ Moore, Darnell Wright, Tyrique Stevenson, the No. 1 pick this year and a 2025 second-rounder still to come.

Warren discussed replicating last year’s success again in this draft and how that could help make the Bears contenders.

“You think of the draft Ryan made last year to get DJ Moore and turn that pick into drafting Darnell Wright and then Stevenson,” Warren said, via WGN. “To get those young guys a chance to play and then trading for Montez Sweat. Not only trade for him, but then extend him. If we can replicate back-to-back years, to really be smart about how we handle our draft capital this year, it could be a really special time for the Chicago Bears.

“You look at the ’85 Bears – how many individuals in one draft came out of that draft – all those starters. So, I’m very cognizant and conscientious that I need to be there to work hand in hand with Ryan. Be supportive. Challenge a thought process. But, make sure that we come out of this draft and this free agent summer, going into the year a much better football team.”

That’s a strong statement from Warren about Chicago’s current draft situation. It certainly seems he’s leaning in favor of trading the pick — coupled with his comments about being glad Justin Fields is a Bear — but it’s hard to say for certain. Then again, general manager Ryan Poles is the one who will ultimately make the call about what to do with the No. 1 pick. But it sounds like it’s going to be a team effort.

“One thing about Ryan and I’s working relationship is the fact that we’re in this together,” Warren said. “I know he’s spending every single day thinking about, not only that decision, but who to draft at number nine, our current roster, what we’re going to do in free agency, what are we doing from a contract negotiation standpoint. I’m sure he’s already starting to play out the draft in his mind.

“We’ll work together, but I have great trust, obviously, in Ryan, Ian Cunningham and all of our scouts. This is that crucial time and they’ve already been grinding away on it to be able to come together. I look forward to going to the combine later this month and then getting a chance to spend some time together because we’re in a very, very unique space and time in the Bears [history].”

The topic of Fields vs. Williams has already been discussed ad nauseam, and it’s just getting started with the NFL Scouting Combine just around the corner, where it will no doubt heat up once again. But, keep in mind, no one knows what the Bears are going to do. Except the Bears.

Bears president Kevin Warren shares strong support for Justin Fields

Did Bears president Kevin Warren just hint about the team’s direction at quarterback?

The Chicago Bears have a pressing decision to make at quarterback this offseason, one that will define the franchise potentially for the next decade.

At this point, the expectation is Chicago will move on from Justin Fields and draft USC stud Caleb Williams with the first overall pick. But amid the continuous speculation and discussion, no one truly knows what the Bears are going to do except, well, the Bears.

WGN’s Jarrett Payton recently sat down with president Kevin Warren, who shared his insights on Fields. And, from the brief sneak peek, Warren had a strong backing of Fields.

“Justin has a rare combination of intelligence, of size, of strength and speed,” Warren said. “You forget how big of a man he is until you’re up on him. He’s not a small man. I just think every year, he’s going to continually get better. So I’m glad he’s on the Chicago Bears.”

Those are strong words from Warren in support of Fields. On the surface, it would seem to indicate the Bears are leaning toward keeping Fields. But there’s nothing surface-level about this franchise-altering decision that general manager Ryan Poles has to make.

Warren’s statement could very well be a strong stance in favor of keeping Fields in Chicago. But it could also serve to drive up the price in a potential trade, where there will be no shortage of teams interested in Fields.

Poles made it clear during his end-of-year press conference that he’s going to do his due diligence when it comes to evaluating all quarterbacks — both this rookie class and Fields. But it certainly sounds like Williams’ skillset has made an impression on Bears brass — now, it’s about Williams, the person, making a similar impression.

Bears chairman George McCaskey and president Kevin Warren congratulate team’s Hall of Fame inductees

Bears chairman George McCaskey and president Kevin Warren had words of appreciation for Devin Hester, Steve McMichael, and Julius Peppers.

Chicago Bears greats Steve “Mongo” McMichael, Devin Hester, and Julius Peppers were officially elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame during the NFL Honors Night on Thursday. McMichael and Hester spent the vast majority of their careers in Chicago, while Peppers had four impactful years with the Bears. The other inductees include Dwight Freeney, Andre Johnson, Patrick Willis, and Randy Gradishar. Hester and Peppers were on hand in Las Vegas for the announcement, while McMichael was represented by his wife, Misty. McMichael was diagnosed with ALS in 2021.

Congratulations have been pouring in across social media, and the Bears brass made sure to give their kudos to these legendary players who shined on the lakefront for a number of years. Chairman George McCaskey had words of appreciation for all three inductees via Larry Mayer of the Bears website.

On McMichael, who spent 13 seasons with the Bears, totaled 92.5 career sacks, and was a key component of the 1985 Super Bowl team:

“This honor is well deserved and long overdue and we are so happy for Steve and his family. To be cut by a team early in your career and then go on to the Pro Football Hall of Fame is a tremendous accomplishment.  Steve showed us all what can be achieved through grit, toughness and hard work, and he has earned his place among game’s immortals.”

On Hester, who became the most dynamic return specialist almost immediately when he was drafted in 2006 and holds multiple special teams records:

“Devin revolutionized the game. No one had seen anything like him, and there hasn’t been anyone like him since. He had opposing head coaches telling their special teams coordinators ‘don’t kick to that guy’ and they suffered the consequences when the message didn’t get through. We’re delighted that the Hall has recognized Devin’s special talents.”

On Peppers, who was a Bear from 2010–2013 and made three Pro Bowls during that time:

“Julius was one of the best free-agent signings in Bears history, and a dominant player on the field. Our congratulations to him.”

In addition to McCaskey, Bears president Kevin Warren also shared his congratulations to all three players on their achievement:

“We are ecstatic and extremely grateful that both Steve McMichael and Devin Hester have been selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Both of these men were transformative football players who have always represented themselves, their families and the Chicago Bears with dignity, class and grace. Having Steve and Devin become the 31st and 32nd members of our franchise enshrined into Canton is very memorable and special. We would also like to congratulate Julius Peppers on his enshrinement and we deeply appreciate his positive impact on the Chicago Bears.”

All three players will be enshrined this August in Canton, Ohio.

Report: Bears’ focus for new stadium shifts to Chicago lakefront

According to a new report, the Bears are focused on staying in Chicago with their new stadium.

There’s been a significant update in regards to the Chicago Bears’ plans for a new stadium.

While the expectation was the Bears would build a new stadium at the 326-acre property in suburban Arlington Heights they purchased, the organization has pivoted in a new direction.

According to Greg Hinz of Crain’s Chicago Business, the Bears are re-focusing on the lakefront in Chicago as the location to construct their new stadium.

The Bears would build a state-of-the-art domed stadium on the Soldier Field south lot with the goal of hosting Super Bowls, Final Fours and other events, which was the plan in Arlington Heights, as well.

Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren recently praised downtown Chicago as a potential site for a new stadium.

“What intrigues me about downtown is I strongly believe Chicago is the finest city in all of the world,” Warren said at the team’s end-of-year press conference in January. “Very rarely do you get the opportunity to have such a beautiful downtown with a vibrant business community, with an absolutely beautiful lake and the energy that goes along. I always focus on, what’s a way that we could bring together the beauty of the lake, the beauty of downtown, the business community, all the art exhibits, to bring that together for an environment — because it’s always about the fans. How can we create an environment that they really enjoy?

“I live downtown. I love the city. And I just think we’re blessed to be able to live in a city like Chicago. It has many pluses. I’m a big proponent of the Chicagoland area. I’m a big proponent of Arlington Heights, but there’s something that’s really special about downtown Chicago.”

While Arlington Heights was once the focal point, there have been disagreements over property taxes that opened the door to the Bears exploring other locations.

Kevin Warren gifts Chicago worker free Bears tickets

Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren performed a random act kindness for a Chicago worker, giving him free tickets to an upcoming game.

Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren has only just arrived in Chicago, but he’s already giving back to the city.

In a video the Bears official Twitter account shared, Warren noticed a worker washing a window on the 15th floor of the Bears’ downtown office and decided to utilize his executive power by giving him free tickets to a Bears game.

The team’s new president/CEO had to play a bit of charades to communicate with the window washer, using a notepad to translate what he was trying to do. After asking the man if he was a Bears fan, the worker was then offered the opportunity to accompany Warren to an upcoming game this season. To close the video, Warren made sure to get the man’s name and phone number so he can keep his oath.

After the quiet exit of the polarizing figure that was former president/CEO Ted Phillips, fans were eager to have an individual that performed their job with personality and passion for the sport. Warren’s act of kindness toward a random Chicagoan proves that the team’s new leader has the right values at heart.

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Winners and losers following the Bears 2023 offseason

As we await the arrival of training camp, here are some of our winners and losers following the Bears offseason.

It’s been an eventful offseason for the Chicago Bears and general manager Ryan Poles. Armed with the most available cap space of any team in the league, coupled with holding the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Bears had plenty of resources at their disposal and made the most of the opportunities to improve the team. In just his second offseason as general manager, Poles took plenty of swings and now has the Bears effectively set as they prepare for training camp.

The offseason isn’t quite over just yet and a surprise move or two could still be on the way, but the majority of the work has been completed. As we await the arrival of training camp, here are the winners and losers of the Bears offseason.

Waukegan wants to be the next home of the Chicago Bears

With the Bears exploring other stadium options outside of Arlington Heights, Waukegan is the latest city to express interest.

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Following news that the Chicago Bears are exploring other stadium options outside of Arlington Heights, there has been plenty of interest from different cities in the area.

The latest is Waukegan, where mayor Ann B. Taylor recently sent a letter to Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren expressing interest in hosting the team’s new stadium, according to WGN.

In the letter obtained by WGN, Taylor pointed out that Waukegan is just 20 minutes from Halas Hall, the team’s facility in Lake Forest. There were also different areas of land identified as potential development for a state-of-the-art stadium and entertainment district.

“Our working class and diverse community is as tough as the 1985 Super Bowl-winning Bears, and our leadership team at Waukegan City Hall is as aggressive as Justin Fields running the ball downfield when it comes to creating economic opportunities for our city, our residents and the region at large,” Taylor said in the letter, per WGN. “Our city’s staff and I invite you and your leadership to come to Waukegan to learn about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity our city can offer the Bears.

“We believe that the Monsters of the Midway deserve the opportunity to continue the tradition of playing along the shores of Lake Michigan, with the market opportunity of having a year-round facility capable of hosting other major events, including the Super Bowl, the Final Four and other events on an international scale.”

The news comes after the Bears announced that Arlington Heights was no longer the sole focus of their stadium efforts. Since then, the Bears have also met with Naperville city officials about a potential stadium.

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Bears now considering stadium in Naperville as they look outside of Arlington Heights

In a statement released by the Bears, Arlington Heights is “no longer our singular focus” to build a stadium.

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The Chicago Bears are now looking at additional stadium options outside of Arlington Heights. Team officials met with Naperville Mayor Scott Wehrli on Friday to discuss possible options for a new stadium in the suburban city while demolition work on the Arlington Park property continues to take place.

In a statement released by Scott Hagel, senior vice president of marketing and communications, via NBC Sports Chicago the Bears say they’re looking at additional options outside of Arlington Heights.

“The Chicago Bears goal of building the largest single development project in Illinois history led by billions of dollars in private capital investment, and the jobs and economic benefits generated, is at risk in Arlington Heights. The stadium-based project remains broadly popular in Arlington Heights, Chicagoland and the state. However, the property’s original assessment at five times the 2021 tax value, and the recent settlement with Churchill Downs for 2022 being three times higher, fails to reflect the property is not operational and not commercially viable in its current state. We will continue the ongoing demolition activity and work toward a path forward in Arlington Heights, but it is no longer our singular focus. It is our responsibility to listen to other municipalities in Chicagoland about potential locations that can deliver on this transformational opportunity for our fans, our club and the State of Illinois.”

According to Kevin Schmit of the Daily Herald, the meeting comes a little over a week after Wehrli contacted Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren about offering up Naperville as an option for the team’s new stadium. The two met on Friday to discuss the possibility.

The Bears entered into an agreement to purchase the Arlington Park property back in September 2021 for approximately $197.2 million. A year later, team officials unveiled their vision for a mixed-use entertainment complex that would include a domed stadium on the 326 acres of land and move the team out of Soldier Field.

The team closed on the property earlier this year and demolition on certain structures from the former racetrack began this past week. But with uncertainties such as Cook County’s high property assessment and public funding for the land development outside of the actual stadium, Warren wants to consider other options.

While the Bears have flirted with other suburban options outside of Arlington Heights decades earlier, their statement on Friday is the first time they have publicly entertained other options since they agreed to purchase the land. When former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot proposed upgrading Soldier Field last summer, the Bears maintained their focus in closing on the Arlington Park property. But due to the risks, the team is doing their due diligence.

Naperville is the fourth-largest city in Illinois, just west of Chicago. The city is outside of Cook County and can be accessed via multiple interstates and railway routes. It is unclear where in the city the Bears might be considering for a stadium site.

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The central lesson taught by Mike Bohn of USC and Kevin Warren at the Big Ten

Bohn and Warren participated in moving USC to the Big Ten. Neither man will be around for the actual start of this new era.

In many ways, the common thread between former USC athletic director Mike Bohn and former Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren is that they both started something but didn’t finish it.

Both men participated in hammering out the deal which sent USC and UCLA from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten Conference last year, but neither man will be around for the actual beginning of that new era in college sports, a new era for both USC and the Big Ten.

There’s a lesson here.

To be very clear, the ways in which Kevin Warren neglected his job with the Big Ten Conference aren’t nearly as severe or as troubling as what Mike Bohn is alleged to have done at USC. An increasing collection of reporting from multiple news outlets continues to add detail to a picture in which Mike Bohn treated a lot of people poorly within the USC and Cincinnati athletic departments. That’s extremely bad. Kevin Warren has not been reported to have done anything close to that.

However, Bohn and Warren can still be connected in that they were both very sloppy on the job and did not earn the full respect of the people they worked for. Warren, as Pete Thamel of ESPN has reported in recent days, did not finalize television contracts and did not communicate specific details to member athletic departments, which has caused a mad scramble throughout the conference’s schools. Budgetary projections have to be revised. Allocations of resources have to be re-examined. Kevin Warren no longer works for the Big Ten, but he has made life more difficult for a lot of people who work at Big Ten schools.

What we have here with Mike Bohn and Kevin Warren — even though the severity of their actions exists on different levels — is a clear-enough reality in which both men knew they had registered fundamental achievements. Bohn hired Lincoln Riley, which he and everyone else in college sports knew was a game-changer for USC football and USC athletics. The move to the Big Ten was similar. Kevin Warren knew that landing USC as a new Big Ten member, and then arranging the framework (though not finalizing all the details) for massively lucrative TV deals, would print money for Big Ten schools.

The ways in which Bohn and Warren neglected their respective jobs were different. Again, Bohn behaved very poorly, whereas Warren did not — they’re in two very different moral universes in that regard. However, in one specific way, the two men are fundamentally the same: They surely thought or realized that they were making a lot of money for themselves and for their respective institutions. They knew they had increased the value of the places they worked for.

They neglected various other aspects of their jobs: Bohn not treating people well and not showing up for meetings, Warren not communicating to Big Ten athletic departments and not finalizing TV contracts. They both got sloppy. They both coasted to a degree. They both are somewhere else now. Bohn is disgraced. Warren, though not disgraced, is now working with the Chicago Bears and doesn’t have to deal with the Big Ten anymore, leaving others to clean up his mess.

There’s a very clear lesson here: Just because someone makes a lot of money for himself and/or others, that doesn’t mean one can or should coast on the job and get sloppy. It’s not a reason to neglect parts of one’s job description. Yes, the checks are going to cash. USC will get paid for joining the Big Ten. Kevin Warren and Big Ten schools will get paid for these TV deals Warren set in motion (but which current commissioner Tony Petitti has to finalize).

Yes, Bohn made money for USC and Warren made money for the Big Ten. We can acknowledge that. It doesn’t mean what either man did afterward was okay or acceptable.

Making money doesn’t mean moral, ethical, or professional failures are somehow made acceptable. That’s the lesson taught by Mike Bohn and (to a lesser but still real degree) Kevin Warren.

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Big Ten is dealing with a mess its former commissioner left behind

A commissioner bungled a TV deal … but it’s not Larry Scott. Fortunately for #USC, the Trojans won’t have to deal with Kevin Warren.

Here is a story of a conference commissioner being sloppy and ineffective, and it does not involve Larry Scott. It turns out that when former Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren arranged the TV deals for the new era of the conference, with USC and UCLA as incoming members, that “arrangement” was very loose and not tied down with specifics.

Pete Thamel of ESPN came out earlier this week with a report on just how dysfunctional Warren’s handling of TV contracts was.

Here’s a small snippet from Thamel’s story, which illustrates a portion of the fallout from this mess the Big Ten and new commissioner Tony Petitti are scrambling to contain:

“They are going to have to pay back nearly $40 million to Fox because, according to sources, Warren delivered NBC the Big Ten football title game in 2026 without the full authority to do so. This all has unfolded under the complicated backdrop of the Big Ten conference not actually controlling the rights to the inventory of this latest deal — the Big Ten Network does, which is majority owned by Fox. (More on that below.)”

Basically, unfinished TV contracts and unclarified terms which some Big Ten schools are unhappy with are leading to a nasty combination: On one hand, the Big Ten is having to pay back some of its TV partners. On the other hand, the full value of previously negotiated — but uncompleted — TV deals might not be realized. Big Ten schools and athletic departments are confronting the reality that previous budgetary projections exceed actual incoming revenue.

Yes, the Big Ten is still going to make a ton of money for its member schools, but no one likes, wants or needs to receive a set of projections and then realize the actual numbers will be several millions of dollars short, quite possibly tens of millions short.

This is Kevin Warren’s mess. Larry Scott can relate. Tony Petitti is playing the role of George Kliavkoff, trying to clean up what his predecessor left behind.

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