It was fitting when the word came down on a Friday, a holy day no less.
They call this a Friday news dump, and it is done to help reduce the amount of furor over something bad. In this case, it was the NFL shooting down an appeal by the Bears. The Bears will not get their third-round compensatory draft picks for losing assistant GM Ian Cunningham to Atlanta as its chief football executive, even though the Rooney Rule calls for this.
This is final, according to the report from Ian Rapoport of NFL.com/media. In other words, from the league itself. And in this case, the NFL has not only made the dumbest decision possible but has officially doubled down on its stupidity.
Cunningham is not the chief executive, the league says, even though the Falcons, Bears, Cunningham, Falcons owner Arthur Blank, and everyone with functioning brain matter says the opposite. The league considers newly hired team president Matt Ryan the top football executive even though Ryan himself also says the opposite.
Cunningham makes the trades, signs the free agents, handles the salary cap and drafts the players. Ryan gets to wear the colors. He's a team mascot minus the silly outfit and is not the boss.
The fact that George and Kevin went to the commissioners office in New York to make their case and this was the response kinda speaks to the lack of respect the league has for George and Kevin.
The Bears are a charter franchise of the NFL. George Halas is one of the main reasons…
— Greg Braggs Jr. (@GBraggsJr23) April 3, 2026
The league chose to live within the confines of a loophole in a law that it created rather than standing with the law's intent. They unnecessarily did this even though it invites accusations of racism.
You've really got to believe in your own stupidity to do that.
They tell you they care about equitable hiring and point to all of their public relations programs and stances suggesting high moral standards. Then they run away from all of it.
After all of the hoping by the Bears, after a trip to New York by ownership to appeal the initial decision, and now this rejection, the team still gets something far more valuable than a couple of late Day 2 draft picks. It's difficult for fans to see it, but it is true.
This is laughably misguided.
Ian wanted the job, which is absolutely a promotion. He spent part of his childhood in Georgia. You think Ryan Poles would tell Ian, one of his best friends, that he couldn’t leave because of some comp pick thing? https://t.co/knI9xKuqNc
— Patrick Finley (@patrickfinley) April 3, 2026
Standing above it all
Bears owner George McCaskey bent over backwards and tried to see the NFL's side during the owners meetings.
Long ago, McCaskey's grandfather, George Halas, invented the league and carried it on his shoulders well beyond infancy. Now it seems his grandson went out of his way to protect what little shred of integrity the NFL has remaining by softening their fall in this fiasco. It's nice of him but the league doesn't deserve it.
"The league has to think big picture," McCaskey told reporters at the owners meetings, obviously biting his tongue. "What are the consequences of us ruling in a particular way, in this particular case, and how would that be applied to the other 30 teams in the future?
"So it's a big question. It's not a narrow inquiry. They have to broaden the score of their inquiry."
The league really didn't explain why the Bears fail to qualify for the picks other than to gaslight and repeat the same earlier incorrect statement that Ryan is chief football decisionmaker.
@NFL @nflcommish You’re a joke for not giving the Bears their comp picks! You should be ashamed! 🤡🎪👎🗑️
— Jared Perry (@JaredDPerry23) April 3, 2026
Cunningham is a minority member, and when you invent a rule to reward teams for the development and hiring of minority members as personnel chiefs but then don't adhere to your own rule, there will be name-calling. It will get unnecessarily ugly, and the NFL deserves unnecessarily ugly in this case.
NFL takes the wrong stance again
The Rooney Rule is designed to promote hiring minority members for important team roles, in order to make up for past exclusion and promote future inclusion. It applies to personnel chiefs and also head coaches.
You can argue ad infinitum about DEI hirings and practices. Maybe it's necessary. Maybe it's against the Constitution. What can't be argued is the virtue of the intent.
Then the Falcons get 2 picks after the Bears developed him?
— James T Purcell (@jpheismn) April 3, 2026
That's not the real problem. The point is the league has designed this as its practice to put itself on what IT believes is moral high ground, and then is not even sticking to its own belief system. In fact, the league opted to willfully avoid its own rule to promote diversity and fairness and championed exclusivity when given an opportunity to do otherwise by the Bears' appeal.
In that case, why should anyone take anything the league says it believes as serious?
They'd be more proper simply by having no such rule and keeping silent on the whole topic because they wouldn't appear so deceitful. Concluding the entire topic with a Friday news dump through their own "reporter" with NFL Network made it all even sleazier.
The bottom line
The Falcons come out of this as winners because they get as their GM an executive brought up through the ranks in good organizations, in Baltimore and Philadelphia, before being given the chance to prove himself in Chicago at a higher level. He succeeded and blossomed there.
Ian Cunningham represented the Falcons in the annual GM photo, not Matt Ryan.
The NFL blew it here. pic.twitter.com/f3STBMxouC
— Caleb Williams Fan Club (@CalebFC18) April 3, 2026
As for the Bears, their victory is even more noteworthy. They rise well above the two draft picks they would have received. The Bears did something they believe in even without a reward and stand by it.
"We identified diverse talent, we recruited him, we created a position for him," McCaskey had said at the owners meetings about Cunningham. "We allowed him access to the general manager role to work hand in hand with (GM) Ryan Poles. We allowed him to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes. We gave him supervisory duties.
"We gave him training. We made him ready to be a GM in the NFL, and he's getting his opportunity and we're thrilled for him."
The intent of the Rooney Rule was to incentivize teams that develop minority Head Coaches and GM’s.
The Bears did this with Ian Cunningham, but since the Falcons hired their former QB as president - who has ZERO front office experience and is NOT the lead decision maker - the…
— Caleb Williams Fan Club (@CalebFC18) April 3, 2026
It is, as McCaskey pointed out, what the Bears normally practice regardless of the doggy biscuits the NFL gives out under the Rooney Rule to everyone except the Bears.
Something Cunningham said at the owners meetings indicates his time with the Bears really did rub off on him in the right way.
“Just from my position, especially being a Black man, there’s still work to be done,” Cunningham told The Associated Press at the league meetings. “Now that I’m in this position and have this platform, I’m going to be intentional about what we do from a grassroots effort to a director level.
“I do think it’s important to give people of all races and sexes a chance to be in a position to further their career.”
Roger Goodell says the Rooney Rule is not going anywhere, despite the recent political maneuvering.
“The Rooney rule has been around a long time, we’ve adapted, we’ve changed it, and we’ll continue to do that.”
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 31, 2026
He sure sounded like the top football executive even if the league says he isn't.
Meanwhile, the Bears now can take their draft picks at Nos. 25, 57, 60, 89, 129, 238, and 240, hold their heads high after seeing what Cunningham has become, and know they helped him get to this place. This was noble and proper.
They stand far above where the NFL is hiding, down there with its fake belief system and news dumps inside of a skanky little loophole.
Rooney Rule: Failure & Disappoimtmemt
Players: 75% Black
Head coaches: 10% Black (Only 3)
Owners: 0% Black
Yea this is definitely looking like high salary slavery..
The NFL doesn’t even follow its own rules..
They didn’t even give Chicago Bears their comp picks…
SMH https://t.co/scnn2ekm7V pic.twitter.com/omwUiWkYqD
— White Cunningham (@LostHebrew_Dre) March 31, 2026
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