{"id":852857,"date":"2026-04-04T07:09:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/852857\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T07:09:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:09:37","slug":"nfl-publicly-rejects-bears-draft-demand-after-matt-ryan-falcons-poach-front-office-figure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/852857\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Publicly Rejects Bears’ Draft Demand After Matt Ryan & Falcons Poach Front Office Figure"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Ryan Poles left the Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> to become the Chicago Bears<\/a>\u2019 general manager, the Chiefs collected two third-round compensatory picks. The Rooney Rule had worked exactly as designed. But four years later, Poles lost his own assistant GM Ian Cunningham to the Atlanta <\/a>Falcons <\/a>and got nothing back because of Matt Ryan. And now, the league has made that official.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe matter is now closed following the club\u2019s appeal,\u201d Ian Rapoport shared the league\u2019s statement on X. \u201cThe NFL informed the Bears today they will not receive compensatory picks. The policy is designed to provide picks for the Primary Football Executive position. The league determined Mr. Cunningham did not fill that role with the Falcons as it is defined in League rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Under the resolution JC-2A, passed by the NFL owners in 2020, teams get two third-round picks across back-to-back drafts when a minority executive is hired away as a head coach or general manager. Ian Cunningham went to Atlanta as their GM. Chicago\u2019s case looked clean at face value.<\/p>\n

But before the hire was announced, Atlanta created a special position for their former quarterback (and former CBS Sports analyst) Matt Ryan: \u2018President of Football.\u2019 With this title, Ryan can lead the franchise\u2019s front office hires and report directly to owner Arthur Blank. Ryan found Cunningham and named him the GM. But Cunningham can\u2019t be classified as a \u2018primary football executive\u2019 because Ryan sits higher atop the Falcons leaderboard than him. And that\u2019s why the Bears don\u2019t get the picks.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Blank has already made it clear that Matt Ryan won\u2019t affect Cunningham\u2019s authority, throwing the league\u2019s decision, as well as Atlanta\u2019s hierarchy, into sharp contrast.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMatt\u2019s made it clear to me. He has no desire to do their jobs,\u201d Blank had said. \u201cThe coach will pick the position coaches, coordinators, etc. The GM will style out their organization, helping draft and with free agency, etc. Matt will be involved in that. But Matt did not sign up to do their job. He signed up to get the best people.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about the compensatory picks, Ian Cunningham was also direct about what he believed the Bears deserved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the general manager, I was hired, I would think they would get two third-round picks,\u201d Cunningham said.<\/p>\n

Cunningham made the case that he wouldn\u2019t have gotten the Falcons job if the Bears hadn\u2019t developed him in the first place. The league heard him and still said no. Meanwhile, Ryan Poles\u2019 position is more difficult. At the Combine, he questioned whether the compensation mechanism should exist at all.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cAt the end of the day, you should want to develop your staff regardless of the color of their skin,\u201d Poles said. \u201cI think that\u2019s important. We take a lot of pride with the Bears on how we are set up, and I take a lot of pride in that. To be compensated for that\u2019s a little strange. I saw the Chiefs get a pick because of me, and then I watched that player go and play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poles is running two arguments at once here. One is about what the rule should be in principle, and the other is about what it owes the Bears under its current language. But the NFL didn\u2019t engage with either. It just read Atlanta\u2019s organization chart and closed that file. That\u2019s the internal discord. But the external one the league is facing is quite a bit louder, and it hasn\u2019t moved on that front either.<\/p>\n

Roger Goodell vs. the Rooney Rule<\/p>\n

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in late March demanding the NFL scrap the Rooney Rule for Florida-based teams (Miami Dolphins<\/a>, Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a>, and Jacksonville Jaguars<\/a>). He set a May 1 deadline, calling the rule a violation of state law that \u201crequires race-based considerations in hiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Goodell responded at the annual owners\u2019 meeting in Phoenix and held his ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing that doesn\u2019t change is our values,\u201d Goodell said. \u201cWe believe that diversity has been a benefit to the National Football League. We are well aware of the laws, where the laws are changing or evolving. We think the Rooney Rule is consistent with those. We certainly will engage with Florida [Attorney General] or anybody else, as we have in the past, to talk about the policies and what they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The league\u2019s defense is straightforward. The Rooney Rule only mandates interviews, not hires. A team can conduct the required interview and still hire whoever they want. But whether this is enough to save the rule from court proceedings or not is a different question with no answer yet. Meanwhile, Art Rooney II, whose father created the rule, confirmed no formal action was taken at the meetings.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a little discussion about the Rooney Rule,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were some questions about it. There was no action taken, just a statement from the Florida Attorney General. So, probably have some conversations with the attorney general down there just to make sure he understands what exactly we do. It\u2019s not a hiring rule. So, I think we\u2019re comfortable with where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But comfortable isn\u2019t the same as safe. The Bears\u2019 case with Ian Cunningham showed the rule\u2019s compensation trigger can be neutralized by a title like Matt Ryan\u2019s. A Florida AG is now testing whether the interview requirement survives outside a courtroom. The league\u2019s answer to both has been similar. The rule isn\u2019t going anywhere, but it does keep losing ground without a fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ryan Poles left the Kansas City Chiefs to become the Chicago Bears\u2019 general manager, the Chiefs collected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[23809,223,254,2554,391,14854,224,7,53720,125,110,2859,251,6,99237,1034,250,2661],"class_list":["post-852857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-atlanta-falcons","tag-arthur-blank","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-atlantafalcons","tag-chicago-bears","tag-compensatory-picks","tag-falcons","tag-football","tag-ian-cunningham","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-matt-ryan","tag-miami-dolphins","tag-nfl","tag-rooney-rule","tag-ryan-poles","tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","tag-the-falcons"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116345192152143601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852857","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=852857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}