Chicago Bears Reportedly Hiring Ian Cunningham as New Assistant General Manager

The move has been percolating for about 36 hours now, and it’s happening: new Chicago Bears GM Ryan Poles is poaching Ian Cunningham from the Philadelphia Eagles to be his new Assistant GM.

Ian Rapoport drops the news:

Cunningham, who has been in the NFL for 14 years (nine with the Ravens, and the last five with the Eagles), will serve as Poles’ number two. He was previously the director of player personnel for the Eagles after an ascent up the front office ladder. We’ll have more on Cunningham soon.

Jeff Hughes indicated earlier today that Cunningham was likely to be the Bears’ new GM, as part of a restructuring and deepening of the front office (the kind we’ve desperately wanted for years):

As Luis wrote when the Cunningham rumors got hotter:

One of the Bears’ biggest organizational short-comings has been in building out their front office. Chicago’s football team fancies itself as a family-run business and has been hesitant to expand and modernize. It is one reason why it took Ryan Pace to kick-start the efforts in refurbishing Halas Hall in 2015. And while that was an admirable first step in the process, it wasn’t nearly enough. But if Poles can do what Pace was unable to complete (building an upper-management juggernaut), then that could help accelerate the process. Heck, that Poles is already reaching out to those he knows around football with the intent on adding to the front office is encouraging.

In the end, this situation might be just the first of many to keep tabs on as we go on through this offseason. Sure, the general manager search might’ve taken some time to get cooking. But that Poles is wasting little time in trying to grow the organization sure feels like a sign of things to come.

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Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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