The McCaskey family's eyes have been opened claims agent

"George was well educated," Smith told Zimmerman. "Kevin did a great job of preparing him before it started of kind of where this is going to go and what the NFL looks like today, both in salary and structure."

Smith said he has all the confidence in the world now decisions are made the correct way now after all the questions he asked about the organization and the way they were answered by ownership/management before Johnson signed.

"There were no walls put up," Smith said.

The idea was to let Johnson, himself, make his decision with a clear view of what he faced even if he was extremely strong on the thought of coming to Chicago from the outset.

"They allowed me to ask those hard questions and I wasn't shy," Smith told Zimmerman. "I went down to the core of everything and they were not offended by it.

"They allowed me to ask the questions. What I found in this process is there's a tremendous amount of self-awareness going on at Halas Hall. They understand the mistakes they made. I believe in human nature that you don't double- and triple-down on mistakes after three years and I think that they are absolutely ready to tie themselves at the hip with this new head coach."

The process of talking to all of the different candidates they did and the vetting done on all of those candidates prior to and after their virtual interviews opened eyes at Halas Hall about what is going on in the rest of the league.

Smith said it's not necessarily a Bears trait to insulate themselves and that it becomes easy for teams to do this, but this coach hiring and the thorough process has elevated their ability to make the right decisions based on the right information.

They now have a clear vision is the way he put it.

"The front office will be great partners with the head coach together moving forward, getting the right personnel in there, getting the guys that fit," Smith said. "Ben just came from a place in Detroit that had a clear vision of what they were looking for and have hit it out of the park.

"And I think the Bears have that ability to do the same thing."

It's an eye-opening interview spanning a little more than 30 minutes and ranges in various directions as it goes on, touching on several important aspects of the Johnson-Bears interview process and what's to come.

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