Falcons just dodged a major bullet with Ian Cunningham after shocking GM firing

In the NFL, timing is everything, and the Atlanta Falcons just gave a masterclass in timing. They hired Ian Cunningham to be their new general manager last night, and not even 24 hours later, they're lucky they put pen to paper when they did because another GM opening just shockingly became available.

The Minnesota Vikings stunned the NFL world by firing GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who led them to the playoffs in two of his four seasons at the helm. They now have the only GM opening, but if they fired him even 16 hours ago, the Falcons may have had to battle with another team to land Cunningham.

Not only is this abnormally late for a team to fire a general manager, it came at the tail end of Atlanta's own GM search. Either way though, the Dirty Birds' search was approaching a conclusion after their second round of interviews, but it's nice to have true confirmation that there's nothing to worry about.

The Falcons picked the best possible time to hire Ian Cunningham after Vikings fire Kwesi Adofo-Mensah

The other silver lining about the Vikings firing Adofo-Mensah is the stark difference in track record between he and Terry Fontenot. Fontenot lasted five seasons at the helm and never led the Falcons to the playoffs, yet the 44-year-old was fired after guiding the Vikings to two playoff appearances.

The main reason he was fired was his abysmal track record in the NFL Draft and the decision to move on from Sam Darnold, who is now starting in the Super Bowl for Seattle, for J.J. McCarthy. That alone was grounds for termination, yet Arthur Blank gifted Fontenot with five years of ineptitude as GM.

The Falcons knew they didn't have a GM up to snuff, but they do now. Cunningham won two Super Bowls as an executive (one in Baltimore, one in Philadelphia), learned under Ozzie Newsome and Howie Roseman, and helped spearhead one of the most impressive rebuilds in the NFL in Chicago.

Even though he was the frontrunner from the start in Atlanta, the 40-year-old has been a finalist for several other GM jobs over the years and turned down the Arizona job in 2023. This means there's a chance the Vikings would have wanted to interview him, but they don't have that chance anymore.

Given the GM search took weeks, Cunningham was always going to be heavily sought-after, so we can only be grateful it ended up the way it did so we have him as the Falcons GM rather than anywhere else.