LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Bears CEO and team president Kevin Warren spent part of an eight-minute, 20-second opening statement extolling the virtues of the franchise he represents.

Sure, the Bears are in the midst of a six-game, season-ruining losing streak and had to fire their head coach in-season, but the foundation is solid and pieces are in place for speedy and significant growth.

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Warren isn’t wrong.

“We’re going to have plenty of salary cap space,” he said in a Monday press conference. “We have a young talented roster. We have strong draft capital in the upcoming draft. And we have a quarterback in Caleb Williams who’s shown that he’s very special, and in the right environment, he can become even more special than he already has shown.”

Check, check, check and check.

He also mentioned the McCaskey family’s willing to provide resources required to “build a championship environment,” an essential element of this hire in a super-competitive compensation market.

That’s why Warren believes Chicago’s head-coaching vacancy is “the most coveted job in the National Football League this year.”

That’s a bold statement, one the Bears are hoping attracts top talent to their hiring process.

After making it clear that Poles would remain as Bears general manager, Warren said that Poles would run point on the search for the next head coach. Both men were non-committal about hiring a search firm, but it initially sounds like they’ll conduct the hire in-house. They’ll both be involved in the process of finding the next guy.

“We need an individual who has extremely high standards,” Warren said, “who is tough, who is demanding, who is bright, who has attention to detail, who seeks and will win championships, who creates an environment of accountability, who’s creative, who’s intelligent, who’s a decisive decision maker, and who will represent the city of Chicago, all of our fans, this franchise, in a manner that is well deserved.”

In short, a leader of men. And someone who can handle a game’s critical moments with aplomb. After a swing-and-miss with Eberflus, Poles believes he’s better positioned to make the right choice this time around due to his experience building the roster and shaping the football operations department.

“I’ve learned a lot over the last few years,” Poles said. “I think the most critical thing is that I know from the roster that we have right now exactly what this team needs because of the core group that we have here. Before, that wasn’t really the case of understanding who is going to be here. It was a really tough situation to walk in to. So, knowing exactly the core of our team and what traits are going to help get that team to be a championship caliber roster.”

Poles talked about running a thorough interview process that will include interim head coach Thomas Brown and a bunch of external candidates to find the right fit for the franchise as it stands today. Warren will be heavily involved in the process, though he said the Poles will have final say on the coach in the case of disagreement.

“We will work closely. We will together on a daily basis to make sure that we bring the best person to the Chicago Bears as our permanent head football coach,” Warren said. “You have our word on that. It will be an exhaustive search. It will be organized. It will be diligent. We will do it the right way.”

Firings are never a positive. It’s a sign an organization has slipped, or that performance in a particular area is substandard and needs to get fixed. Better can come out of downturns, which is something the Bears long for while trying to emerge from a cycle of bad hires.

“I am confident, I’m energized, I’m excited about this unique opportunity,” Warren said. “We will get this right and we’ll be sitting up here in the future at some point in time, that we’ll look back on to this day and say, this was the day that really that we start pointing in the right direction to build the franchise that all of us know that we want to build.”