The Bears are not ready to let the NFL off the hook.
Following the hiring of former assistant G.M. Ian Cunningham as G.M. of the Falcons, the Bears continue to appeal the league’s decision to not award the team a pair of third-round compensatory draft picks.
Via Courtney Cronin of ESPN, both president and CEO Kevin Warren and owner George McCaskey said the Bears expect a final answer soon.
The effort included a visit by McCaskey, Warren, and G.M. Ryan Poles to the league office, for a meeting with Commissioner Roger Goodell.
The league has said that the Bears didn’t get the picks because Matt Ryan — the Falcons’ president of football — is the primary football executive in Atlanta. Ryan has made it clear, however, that Cunningham is operating as the team’s General Manager.
“He is the G.M.,” Ryan told PFT Live on Monday. “He is the G.M. I’m learning — I mean you talk about things that are coming on your desk every day, management council things, different things like that, why they rule certain ways, why they don’t rule certain ways. I’m not experienced enough to give you a really credible answer on that at this point. I would say this, I think in every facet of the word, Ian’s a General Manager in this league.”
The NFL is in a pickle on this one. If the league had just given the Bears the picks in the first place, no one would have said a word about it. Now, after the league said “no” for so long, it will be reluctant to admit the first decision was a mistake.
Especially with the Florida attorney general currently hounding the league regarding the Rooney Rule.
With Patrick Mahomes on the mend from a torn ACL suffered late in the 2025 season, there’s certainly a chance he won’t be ready for the start of the regular season.
That’s part of why Kansas City traded for Justin Fields to be the team’s backup QB.
The No. 11 pick of the 2021 draft, Fields has plenty of experience for a backup, having started 53 games for the Bears, Steelers, and Jets over the last five seasons.
But while Fields has been more effective as a runner than a passer in the league, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid noted on Tuesday how the different elements of Fields’ skillset can fit within the offense.
“I like his game,” Reid said at the annual league meeting on Tuesday. “He can do the drop back game, he can do the movement stuff, play-action — whether it’s a naked or a sprint-out game. He has that whole package that he can do. He understands the screen game, understands how to set it up. He obviously — he’s going to be one of the better athletes on the field when he’s out there. He’s fast, big, likes to play the game. So, I mean, all the stuff I like.”
Given Fields’ athleticism, talk seems to follow the quarterback wherever he goes that there could be some sort of package to get him on the field at a different position. Reid effectively said he’s not planning much for that, but the head coach also didn’t close the door on that idea.
“We’ll see how that goes. I’ll talk with him and see where he’s at with that,” Reid said. “But he’s more than a gadget guy, that’s not how I’m looking at it. That’s not why we brought him in. We brought him in to play quarterback if he’s needed to play quarterback.
“And then whatever goes from there — if he gets bored, we’ll have a couple of things for him,” Reid added with a chuckle.
Fields rushed for 1,143 yards with eight touchdowns in 2022, leading the league at 7.1 yards per carry.
Last season for New York, Fields started nine games, compiling a 2-7 record. He completed 62.7 percent of his passes for 1,1259 yards with seven touchdowns and one interception. He took 71 carries for 383 yards with four TDs, which works out to 5.4 yards per attempt.
While the question of whether the Bears will or won’t (they won’t) get a pair of third-round compensatory picks as a result of the hiring of former assistant General Manager Ian Cunningham by the Falcons as General Manager has been resolved, many still wonder why the provision rewarding teams for developing minority candidates for high-level promotions didn’t apply to Chicago.
On Monday, we asked Falcons president of football Matt Ryan if he understands why the Bears didn’t get the picks, given the clear impression that Ian Cunningham is the Atlanta G.M.
“He is the G.M.,” Ryan said. “He is the G.M. I’m learning — I mean you talk about things that are coming on your desk every day, management council things, different things like that, why they rule certain ways, why they don’t rule certain ways. I’m not experienced enough to give you a really credible answer on that at this point. I would say this, I think in every facet of the word, Ian’s a General Manager in this league.”
Obviously, it’s not Ryan’s call. It’s the league’s call. And it’s still not clear why the league called it the way they did.
Maybe, frankly, it was part of the apparent “no sudden moves” strategy aimed at avoiding the kind of assault on the Rooney Rule that Florida attorney general James Uthmeier started last week.
“The environment has changed,” as Steelers owner Art Rooney II said last week. Perhaps that changed environment has prompted the NFL to change its approach to granting the picks where a new General Manager has someone else between him and the owner in the football operation.
Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren is expecting to have a stadium solution in place for the club by late spring or early summer of this year, Warren said in an interview with PFT from the annual league meeting on Monday.
The Bears are currently focused on Arlington Heights, Ill., and Hammond, Ind., as potential stadium sites.
“We have the legislation passed in Indiana, and they’ve been a great partner to work with,” Warren said. “We are going through legitimate due diligence because we have working through traffic, and construction items, and transportation and all those kinds of different things. It’s progressing right on pace.
“Illinois, they’re still working on legislation and we have a wonderful piece of land in Arlington Heights — 326 acres. So we don’t have a set deadline, but I am confident that sometime this spring/summer, we’ll know.”
Warren continued that the goal for the Bears is to “build a world-class environment with a fixed roof that our fans can really enjoy to make sure we have the proper ingress and egress and tailgating, and parking, and all those different accoutrements that great stadiums have.” The enclosed stadium will allow the Bears to host more events, like the Final Four and potentially a Super Bowl. Warren also called it “imperative” for the new venue to have a mixed-use development surrounding the stadium, which means the Bears need the space for it.
That’s part of why downtown Chicago near Soldier Field is no longer a part of the discussion.
“We strongly believe the only site in the state of Illinois and Cook County is Arlington Heights,” Warren said. “Because when you see that property, having 326 acres with the train station there, the things that we would be able to do — there are some great sites, we talked a couple of years ago about doing something at the Museum campus. There was not an appetite at that point in time there. And there are some other sites that just don’t fit.”
So at this point, Warren anticipates having the situation settled in the next few months.
“It has to,” Warren said. “Especially if you look, I’m always intrigued by the financial markets, the capital markets, those are something that we have to focus on because this is challenging work now from a legislation [standpoint], but the real work comes in the construction. That’s really where it comes in. For us to be able to finish the design and build the stadium, that’s the work. The longer we wait, our costs go up about $150 million a year.”
And while Warren and the Bears may not know where the stadium will be or what it will look like quite yet, they do want the new building to have at least one characteristic.
“I think the biggest thing we kind of promised ourselves is to make sure that you know you’re in Chicago,” Warren said.
The Bears thought they had found a long-term left tackle in Ozzy Trapilo last season, but the rookie’s run came to an end when he tore his patellar tendon in the team’s first playoff game.
Trapilo’s recovery from the injury is expected to stretch into the 2026 season and he may not be able to return at all, so the team’s plans at the position came up when head coach Ben Johnson spoke to reporters from the league meeting in Arizona on Monday.
Johnson said, via Jason Lieser of the Chicago Sun-Times, that the team will consider all options when it comes to filling Trapilo’s spot in the lineup. Those options will include both short- and long-term ones and Johnson said that the process makes it hard to predict how the position will look in the coming years.
Theo Benedet, Kiran Amegadjie and Braxton Jones all return from last season and the Bears have also signed Jedrick Willis as a free agent. The draft will offer more chances to add to those options, so it will likely be a while before the plans are clear in Chicago.
