The Chicago Bears have identified at least three general manager finalists to replace Ryan Pace. One of those three is Tennessee Titans director of player personnel Monti Ossenfort, who will interview for the opening for a second time in the coming days, per NFL Network.
The #Bears are interested in speaking again with at least 3 GM candidates. Per me and @MikeGarafolo, Ryan Poles of the #Chiefs, Monti Ossenfort of the #Titans, and Eliot Wolf of the #Patriots are expected for second interviews. Morocco Brown of the #Colts could return, as well.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet)
Get to know NFL general manager candidate Monti Ossenfort
Ossenfort, 43, has been a busy man this cycle. Along with drawing interest from the Chicago Bears, he also is a candidate for the Vikings’ opening and interviewed for the Giants’ GM job — which ultimately went to Joe Schoen.
Ossenfort’s football background
Ossenfort understands Midwest football. It’s his heritage. Born in a small Minnesota town — a stone’s throw from South Dakota and Iowa — he went on to start at quarterback for Minnesota-Morris, a Division III school. He took his studies as seriously as his sports, majoring in economics and management before pursuing master’s degrees in business administration and sports management from Ohio University.
Ossenfort’s first job in football came in 2001 when he interned during training camp for the Vikings. He got another internship, this time in the Texans’ pro personnel department, a year later. The Texans would later hire him as a pro and college scouting assistant. Ossenfort also had two stints with the Patriots — first as a personnel assistant and then later as an area scout, a national scout, and ultimately, the assistant director of college scouting. After working for Bill Belichick for 14 years, Ossenfort left the Patriots in 2020 for the Tennessee Titans and Jon Robinson, who served alongside Ossenfort in New England for years.
Should he get the Bears job, Ossenfort would presumably have a strong opinion about head coach candidate Brian Flores. They worked together for years with the Patriots.
How Ossenfort performed in 2021
The Titans were the AFC’s No. 1 seed, so, of course, that reflects well on their personnel department as a whole. It’s tough to isolate what decisions Ossenfort was responsible for, but he’s said to have Robinson’s ear, and the overall health of the organization is strong.
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Caleb Farley was an excellent first-round pick in 2021. The team will have some cap concerns in 2022, which are largely a reflection of the massive free-agent contract they gave Bud Dupree. However, the vast majority of their big contracts are relatively easy to get out of.
What they’re saying about Ossenfort
“(They) compiled an enormous amount of information both from a football standpoint, character, medical, and so forth on several thousand players, which gets whittled down to let’s call it 100 or so in the final analysis. It’s a very lengthy and tedious one that Monti and his staff have, I think, done a great job on. Those guys certainly deserve a lot of the credit for the success that we’ve had, the players that we’ve been able to acquire, and the enormous amount of work that they’ve produced, really, on a daily basis, but it adds up over weeks, months and years at a time.” — Bill Belichick on Monti Ossenfort, 2019, per Boston Sports Journal
