Due to the roster upgrades he's made, Ryan Poles' third training camp as Bears general manager promises to be the most competitive.

"We're really excited to have that, and I think the beautiful thing about that competition is it brings the best out of everybody," Poles said Friday as the Bears kicked off training camp at Halas Hall. "You've got to be on top of your game."

Poles knows it won't be easy to make the final roster this summer. Not with a loaded defense that ranked among the NFL's best over the second half of last season and an offense that added a bevy of skill-position weapons during the offseason.

Those acquisitions included receiver Keenan Allen via a trade with the Chargers, running back D'Andre Swift and tight end Gerald Everett in free agency, and quarterback Caleb Williams and receiver Rome Odunze with the No. 1 and No. 9 picks in the first round of the draft, respectively.

"This is kind of a different situation than we've been in the first two years," Poles said. "A lot of these position battles are going to be tight. And it gets harder and harder to kind of create that 53-man roster just because there's an influx of talent. So, it's challenging, but it's a good problem to have."

Coach Matt Eberflus is excited about monitoring the elite competition throughout training camp and the preseason.

"Every spot on the football field is going to have that, and it's really because we've acquired and drafted well over the past few years," Eberflus said. "Our roster's better now, so there's more competition. We welcome that.

"We have to evaluate the numbers as coaches. Don't look at the person, the personality; look at what he's doing on the grass. That to me is going to be so important: how we evaluate that and really get our depth set because we know we're going to need everybody on the roster during the course of the year. We've got to develop those guys as we go."

The mentality the Bears will carry into training camp is reflected in "The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple (But Not Easy)," a book written by Admiral William H. McRaven that Poles encouraged his staff to read during the offseason.

"One of the chapters was talking about 'the only easy day was yesterday,'" Poles said. "And that's going to be our approach, a daily approach, a daily effort. The work ethic has to go in in training camp this year for us to reach our ceiling and really find who we're going to be in 2024.

"The chapter also talks about the character of the people that are leaders in that space, and it talks about passion and stamina to do it over and over and over again; the resiliency, coachability and grit. And the beautiful thing is the way that we scout our players and the types of people we bring in this organization. They have to have that, and we constantly are very intentional of developing those traits as well, which makes me feel really confident that, again, we're going to be able to reach our ceiling and have success."

While rookies have been at Halas Hall since Tuesday, veterans reported to camp Friday. After players ran sprints as part of a conditioning test on the practice field, Eberflus conducted a team meeting at 2 p.m.

"Really the message for those guys is 'leading from the front,'" Eberflus said. "We want those guys to lead from the front. It doesn't matter what the age is, what you are in your position, in your unit, the team, we're going to give you the keys to drive the car and lead from the front."

While the Bears are learning a new offense with a first-year coordinator in Shane Waldron and a rookie quarterback in Williams, there's a sense of urgency heading into Friday's first practice.

"We've got to get this thing going quickly," said tight end Cole Kmet. "There's not going to be time to kind of meander through this thing. We've got to operate at a high level. We've got to really take advantage of our walkthroughs when we get these things at night. The better we are through these things, the faster we will be on game day. But it's got to happen quickly."