Houston Texans<\/a> assistant GM James Liipfert, but the Bears assistant clearly separated himself in the interview process. Cunningham will now take over for former Falcons GM Terry Fontenot.<\/p>\n“As a Falcons fan growing up in Roswell when the Dirty Birds were rolling, the Braves were on fire and the city was hosting the Summer Olympics, I lived the passion of Atlanta sports fans and I can’t wait to be part of bringing that fire and energy back to the city,” Cunningham said in a statement. “It’s been incredible to build a relationship with Matt over the last several weeks and to have an immediate connection with Kevin. I can’t wait to work with both of these great football minds to put a team on the field everyone will be very excited about. We all share the same vision for what the Atlanta Falcons should and will be and it’s time to work.”<\/p>\n
While the team has no first-round pick in 2026 and just $17 million in salary cap space before the expected release of quarterback Kirk Cousins, Atlanta’s roster has an impressive amount of talent on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n
So, what did those around the NFL say about the Falcons’ decision to hire Cunningham?<\/p>\n
Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a>NFL world reacts to Falcons hiring GM Ian Cunningham![\"\"]()
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 30, 2026, 6:06 a.m. ET After interviewing six different candidates, the Atlanta Falcons officially hired Ian Cunningham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[95878,223,254,2554,224,7,6,96607,96608,95882,96609,96089,95953,101504,97157,95896,95888,95895,95899,95906,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-716543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-falcons","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-atlanta","10":"tag-atlanta-falcons","11":"tag-atlantafalcons","12":"tag-falcons","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sstssportsnflfalcons","16":"tag-sstsnfalcons","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagatlanta-falcons","19":"tag-tagchicago-bears","20":"tag-taghouston-texans","21":"tag-tagjessie-bates-iii","22":"tag-tagkirk-cousins","23":"tag-tagnational-sports","24":"tag-tagnfl","25":"tag-tagnfl-hub","26":"tag-tagoverall-neutral","27":"tag-tagoverall-positive","28":"tag-tagsports-news","29":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115984202967547822","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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