New Title for Jeff King in Bears Organization

General manager Ryan Pace hands out promotions to fill scouting slots

Promoting people and rewarding them is a natural part of how a business operates.

The problem is, it can sometimes change the status quo. When the trend is positive, no one wants to do something risky.

The Bears on Tuesday announced the promotion of Jeff King to pro scouting director among several other scouting and front office changes. One of those could have quite the impact on the way they draft.

King had been a candidate for the Carolina Panthers assistant general manager job but did not get it, and has been given a new Bears title after serving as assistant director of pro scouting. King is a former Panthers player.

Before King, Champ Kelly had been director of pro scouting but he was promoted to assistant director of player personnel under player personnel director Josh Lucas.

Beyond this change, the Bears announced southeast region scout Sam Summerville is now assuming one of the team's three national scouting positions and Midwest region scout Scott Hamel will move to the southeast region. 

This could be a big blow to the Bears. At the very least, it's safe to say Hamel will have big shoes to fill. 

Summerville not only won the 2019 Fritz Pollard NFC Scout of the Year Award and has been credited with being important in the drafting of players from an area of the nation where the Bears and many other teams find their best players.  Roquan Smith, Eddie Jackson, Eddie Goldman and Tarik Cohen came from this region, as did former Bears pass rusher Leonard Floyd. 

Summerville has been with the Bears organization since 2012. The other two national scouts he'll serve with now are Chris Prescott and Francis St. Paul.

It's not like Hamel is completely inexperienced. As the Midwest scout, he was given much credit for the selection of running back David Montgomery in Round 3 in 2019. Cole Kmet and several other Bears are from this region.

Brenan Rehor, a member of the scouting department since 2015, has moved into Hamel's old role in the midwest and Drew Raucina has moved into Rehor's former spot as combine scout.  

Another change announced by the Bears was to give the title of vice president of player engagement to LaMar Campbell. He had been the director of player engagement since 2017.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven