According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, who emailed the NFL for confirmation, the Chicago Bears will not receive compensatory draft picks for losing assistant general manager Ian Cunningham to the Atlanta Falcons, where he will serve as their general manager.
“The policy for receiving picks pertains to the head coach or the primary football executive,” the NFL told PFT on Tuesday via email. “The primary football executive position was filled by Matt Ryan.”
This was the expectation all along,
since Matt Ryan was hired to be the Falcons’ president of football, a position Cunningham also interviewed for. Had Cunningham been hired for that job, which is Atlanta’s primary football executive, then the Bears would have been awarded two third-round draft picks by virtue of the Rooney Rule.
What brought this subject up again was Ryan’s recent declaration that Cunningham will take the lead on roster decisions.
After being asked if he would be actively involved in the draft and free agency, Ryan said, “Ian is in charge of that space.” Ryan went on to say that he’s looking forward to learning about the draft process because he’s never even sat in a draft meeting, and that he “has a lot to learn.“
He reiterated that Cunningham is “driving this boat, and he’s the one that’s leading us moving forward,” but Ryan will be involved and helping out in any way he can. “This is Ian’s regular season right now; he is in it, and he is driving the ship for us.”
Every team has a primary and a secondary football executive position on file with the league, and no matter what that’s called from team to team, or what the responsibilities for each of those are, there’s no getting around the 1-2 front office hierarchy that each franchise has set up.
