Bears won’t receive compensatory picks for Cunningham hiring
The Bears won’t receive any compensatory picks for the hiring of Ian Cunningham.
The NFL announced 33 compensatory picks Monday for the upcoming draft set to take place in April in Pittsburgh. The Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers and Jacksonville Jaguars were each rewarded picks in the third round.
Chicago brass believed they should’ve received two third-round compensatory draft picks after the Atlanta Falcons hired Cunningham to be their general manager in January as part of the NFL’s Rooney Rule. Teams usually receive the picks, one each in the next two drafts, for developing a minority executive who received a promotion.
But the Bears were told they wouldn’t receive the picks because the NFL views new Falcons president Matt Ryan as the franchise’s leader. Bears general manager Ryan Poles previously said the team reached out to the NFL about the matter.
“I’m really happy for him,” Poles said last month in Indianapolis at the NFL Scouting Combine. “How we do that and why we do that has nothing to do with compensation whatsoever. I want to make that very clear. There’s a set of rules that has been put in place that I think can be applied to this situation.”
“It was always my interpretation that if a general manager gets hired, that team would receive two third-round picks,” Cunningham said at the time. “I’m a general manager. I was hired. I would think they would get two third-round picks. I don’t know the wording of it. That’s just my perspective.”
Poles was vocal about the process when he talked at the combine. He called it “a little strange” and remarked how he watched the Kansas City Chiefs earn the picks when the Bears hired him away from Kansas City.
“It’s just a little odd,” Poles said. “But if at the end of the day, they think that’s what is best to help incentivize, then that’s what they want to do. But at the end of the day, like I said, that’s not the purpose of why we develop our staff. But if that is the rule they have in place, I think it’s very clear in the situation what should happen.”