Why this Chicago Bears front office hire is significant

The Chicago Bears announced that they hired as Assistant General Manager in Ian Cunningham. Cunningham came from the Philadelphia Eagles, and before that was with the Baltimore Ravens. Cunningham was the director of player personnel but worked on the scouting side in the Eagles front office as well.

What makes this hire important is multiple things. First, many thought that Ian Cunnigham was a GM candidate himself. Albert Breer of SI wrote about him as a potential GM, and The Athletic named him to their 40 under 40. That is a list of 40 executives across the NFL under the age of 40 that are going to be making waves in the NFL over the next few years.

Cunningham won Super Bowl rings with the Ravens and Eagles. He knows how to build football teams, and is just 35 years. The fact that the Bears pulled in a smart name like Cunningham should speak for itself.

Fans will eventually be worried that he will get hired away, but that will mean that the team is having success. It is always good when teams are stealing from you, and you are not hearing many Bears executives getting big jobs from the Ryan Pace regime.

Speaking of Pace, this hire is exactly why the name is the only thing similar between Pace and Ryan Poles.

Poles named a top executive across the NFL as his assistant GM. The Chicago Bears have never had an assistant GM before. What this shows is an addition to the front office structure and a changing of the guard where the GM has more checks and balances. This would prevent a GM from going rouge, keeping thoughts to himself, and shocking coaches on draft night.

Poles hiring an assistant GM that is his age, his former position, and has been in league meetings with him shows that he is not threatened to have strong names with strong opinions in the room with him.

Obviously, there is a long way to go, but the first hire has ripple effects that speak to how good of a decision it is.