LAKE FOREST – On the third day of the team’s search for a new general manager and head coach, the team had decided to look in-house in an attempt to find the top football spot in their franchise.
On Thursday, the franchise announced that they’d completed two interviews for the GM job, including Champ Kelly, who is the team’s assistant director of player personnel. They also interviewed Browns vice president of football operations Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as well.
These are two of the four confirmed interviews for the Bears since the firing of general manager Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy on Monday following the conclusion of the team’s 6-11 regular season.
Kelly has been with the Bears since 2015, first as the director of pro scouting for two seasons and then as the assistant director of player personnel since 2017. Before that, he spent eight years in the Broncos organization from 2007-2014 starting as a scout and working his way up to assistant director of player personnel.
A graduate of the University of Kentucky (Bachelors in computer science, Masters in business administration) where he played football, Kelly began his administrative career with the Lexington Horsemen – a team that he took the field for as a player from 2003-2006.
Adofo-Menseh has been the vice president of football operations the past two seasons after spending seven years in the 49ers organization. He was in the football research and development department in San Francisco where he was a manager and then a director.
A former basketball player at Princeton University, Adofo-Menseh earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the school and then earned his master’s in the same subject at Stanford University.