CHICAGO — The losses have far outnumbered the wins under Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles’ watch. The misses — at this point three years into his tenure — have been as prolific as his hits. The coach firings are adding up.

But at their end-of-season media availability to wrap up a 5-12 campaign, Bears Chairman George McCaskey and President Kevin Warren again professed their trust that Poles would help the Bears get back on track — at least in the short term.

After the Bears fired coach Matt Eberflus on Nov. 29, Warren backed Poles at a joint news conference and said Poles would be the point person on the upcoming coaching search. But there were still questions about whether Warren would hold true to that backing as the Bears’ losing streak reached a franchise record-tying 10 games, and Poles’ three-year record dropped to 15-36, including 3-15 in the NFC North.

On Tuesday, as the Bears prepared to ramp up their coaching search with virtual interviews, Warren offered another endorsement of Poles, calling him talented, curious, hard-working and passionate about turning the Bears into a winner. Warren said he trusts Poles and believes he has shown the right amount of self-reflection as he tries to right his wrongs.

“I think his greatest attribute is he’s willing … to raise his hand and say here are some things where he fell short,” Warren said. “He’s as hard on himself more than anyone could be hard on him. And he strives every single day to do the right thing.”

However, the Bears also haven’t publicly demonstrated that support for Poles by announcing a contract extension, something they did for former GM Ryan Pace when they fired coach John Fox at the end of the 2017 season. Poles declined to answer whether he had been given an extension, calling the terms of his contract “personal,” but said he would speak about it with coaching candidates who had questions.

Warren wouldn’t entertain a hypothetical about what would happen should a coveted coach want to bring in his own GM. And when Warren was asked if he was committed to Poles long term, his answer made it seem like the backing of Poles is dependent on his performance in the year to come.

“When we say long term, you know, a year is a lifetime,” Warren said. “I know 2025 is important not only from a football standpoint, from a stadium standpoint, from an operations standpoint. Again, I trust Ryan. I trust the process that he has put together. I’m confident it will yield positive results. We will hire a world-class coach, whether it’s (interim coach) Thomas Brown or someone who currently does not work in our organization. We will get this right and I’m looking forward to it.”

It certainly would be a valid question for prospective coaches to wonder how Poles’ job security might affect their own — or whether they might be working under a different GM in 2026.

However, McCaskey tried to downplay the notion that a coach might be concerned about joining a GM near the end of his contract.

“In the interviews that I have participated in, that has never been a factor,” McCaskey said. “No one has ever come in and said, ‘I’m not going to come here unless the general manager and I are on the same timeline.’ So I don’t think that’s going to be a factor.”

McCaskey’s backing of Poles centered on his leadership, communication and a staff that includes assistant GM Ian Cunningham and senior director of player personnel Jeff King. Cunningham could be a GM candidate in this upcoming hiring cycle. King joined the Bears well before Poles arrived in 2015 but has risen in the ranks under the GM.

McCaskey also acknowledged one of Poles’ challenges ahead as he tries to sort out some of the issues with the roster he has assembled — with notable needs to fortify the offensive and defensive lines.

“He’s in a business where in the player personnel department there are going to be hits and there are going to be misses,” McCaskey said. “And the key is you have to have more hits than misses, so that is the challenge for him and for his staff.”

In a 26-minute solo news conference before Warren and McCaskey spoke, Poles addressed some of the missteps he has made along the way. He expressed confidence in the future potential of his first-round draft picks — quarterback Caleb Williams, right tackle Darnell Wright and wide receiver Rome Odunze — and some of the players in the secondary, while also noting he and his staff are trying to learn from their misses.

But much of his self-reflection came on the topic of how things fell apart this season under Eberflus — a topic that most often over the last two months has landed on the word accountability.

Poles said he wants to be better at supporting and pushing the coaching staff to set a foundation at the beginning of the year, maintain their standards and address issues head-on when they come up.

“We look at the wins and losses, but you’ve got to go to the root cause on how we got there,” Poles said. “I do think we need to challenge our guys more. And when we talk about accountability, there’s systems of accountability. It’s how we’re going to put tape up of, ‘This is not how we do it.’ And then with examples of, ‘This is how we do it.’ Sometimes that can be uncomfortable. I call that healthy friction, and I definitely think we need more of that, and that would help result in closing the gap on some of these games that we came up short.”

The Bears fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron after just nine games of working with Williams this year. Eberflus’ firing followed a few weeks later.

Poles said he believes there were “compatibility” issues between Williams’ inexperience and need for growth and the way coaches tried to teach him. With Eberflus and the team as a whole, Poles said he believed there needed to be more consistent follow-through to address problems within the organization.

Poles said he challenged some of the players in their exit interviews to incorporate such follow-through into their leadership.

“I was in the same category and some of our guys were too in terms of, I saw this — should I say something about this? Should I step up?” Poles said. “We’ve been together long enough. There’s continuity. We aren’t going to take things personally anymore, amongst each other, both in the front office and then football operations, but also in the locker room and in coaching. We’ve got to be able to have healthy friction like I talked about, to say, ‘Hey, that’s not the way we’re supposed to do it. Let’s clean it up and get better.’ Because, again, that will show up later in the season.”

Those are all topics Poles will keep in mind as he and the Bears search committee narrow down their lengthy list of coaching candidates.

Poles hired Eberflus from a pool of three finalists when he first arrived with the Bears three years ago, and he oversaw Eberflus’ hiring of Waldron. Now, McCaskey and Warren are betting on Poles’ ability to learn from his past mistakes in evaluating coaches too.

“Ryan has the benefit of his experience,” McCaskey said. “And he has the benefit of the guidance from Kevin, who has been through this process before. So we’re hoping for a better result.”

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