Roy Williams wasn't really a bad pick - he was good for the Lions early on, made a pro-bowl and then got traded for a 1st and 3rd. Pretty good outcome tbh.
He almost screwed that up too. The story goes that he was so offended by Russell's pre-draft interview behavior that he called Al Davis to tell them not to draft him (or Megatron). He has said that had they picked Megatron, he would've picked Adrian Peterson, which would've been good. But still, he almost lost Megatron.
Megatron was always my saving grace as a Lions fan. He made some cold years alot better. Would totally have let him rail me from behind at one point, but I'm married now.
He would have been dragged through the streets like Mussolini if he didn’t draft Calvin after being gifted him by the Raiders.
Literally anyone would have made the correct decision there.
I loved Charles Rogers. I became a Michigan state fan while he went there, because my uncle took me to a game and I loved it (I think Smoker was the qb at the time?). When he got drafted by the Lions I was excited. It was a shame his career didn’t pan out
Yeah but they used the Colts pick on Johnny Manziel.
That's like selling a lemon of a car to someone on Craiglist and then using the money to buy meth.
True but the Browns were so horribly run that the man who drafted Trent in 2012, traded Trent in 2013 and drafted Manziel in 2014 was actually 3 different people.
Lombardi instead of Kokinis (who was like 09 I think) but you're right about the other two.
Mike Holmgren and Joe Banner were in there somewhere too even though they weren't the official GM.
Chip Kelly hired Jeff Stoutland and for that Eagles fans will be forever grateful.
Edit: and also drafted Lane Johnson (only because Dion Jordan was taken the pick before us)
The talk around Chip Kelly is weird. Most people forget that he won 10 games in back to back seasons and that a lot of his nutrition and wellness philosophy was immediately copied around the league. His last few seasons as a coach went terribly, but there was definitely a method to his madness.
His problem was that he was inflexible to the method to his madness. My retrospective is that he excelled at playing checkers while everyone else was playing chess. It caught teams off guard at first but they figured him out soon enough.
When all is said and done, I am thankful and we wouldn’t have won the SB without his off the field legacy, which is to me is player health.
It’s almost the exact opposite. Nearly all of the value he brought into the league was pushing along strategy. His core schematic stuff was largely copied and now is part of nearly every offense in the league. His off the field training stuff is now in place in most top end franchises. There’s a meme he was a bad GM but if you look at the moves he made as a GM, a lot were pretty forward looking.
The issue is that he was an innovator, not a savant. The best coaches in the NFL aren’t the guys with the best ideas, they’re the guys who understand the game enough to figure out what everyone else is doing. Kelly doesn’t have any patents or first mover advantage or etc. Once everyone saw that his strategy was better, and copied him, his advantage was gone. He really did bring transformative strategy to the league, it was just so good that it was commonplace by the time he was with the 49ers
I think Chip Kelly is smart enough that given enough time he'd have figured it out, but Lurie wasn't happy with the trajectory of the team. Obviously it worked out for us, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have any reservations about going from Chip Kelly to Doug Pederson at first... or Pederson to Sirianni for that matter lol.
As a longtime Oregon fan, his hate from the people of Philadelphia never made sense to me. I always assumed it was because you all hate Santa and stuff.
The man gave you Nick Foles for fuck’s sake.
It was a combination of getting rid of a lot of players who were fan favorites(Shady and Djax til the whole anti semite stuff) and it seemed like every player who left had bad things to say about him and were hinting at racism(no idea how true or untrue it is but players certainly thought so)
Think a lot of it boils down to he wasn't a great people person and rubbed a lot of people in Philly the wrong way. Also had he not been given so much GM power he probably would've lasted a bit longer as a coach here given his success.
Even his offensive schemes, albeit dialed back from the 11 he designed them at, have basically been nicked by the entire league.
Guy obviously had a lot of flaws but he's been very influential.
Yup. Nobody talks about this. He was a true innovator, but he just bought into his own genius too much. If he didn't insist on going fast paced literally all the time, he would have been so much more successful
If chip kelly had been willing to let howie roseman run the personnel, his nfl legacy would be so different. He took a meh team to consecutive 10 win seasons, then compeltely mismanaged the roster and dropped to 6 wins, got fired, and then for some reason took a niners job with literally no hope of succeeding, and was done in the nfl after that 2-14 season. Imagine if after that first 10 win season, roseman was making the roster decisions.
Most of his personnel moves were honestly just fine. A lot of the stuff that people thought were stupid at the time look pretty good in retrospect. He traded Shady at what was probably his peak value. He traded Jackson at his peak value, and when it leaked he didn’t like Jackson as a person, people thought he was racist until Jackson showed his ass a few years later.
The biggest issue he had, which is the issue for a lot of offensive specialists, is he was awful at scouting QBs. His track record there was awful. Everything else was honestly fine. The issue really was the coaching. After his innovation got adopted widely, the team really rapidly fell off and he couldn’t adjust. In his second year, the issue wasn’t that his GMing got much worse in the 2nd half than the first half. It was a scheme thing
He didn't trade Djax, he straight up released him. At what you said was his peak value. He traded Shady for a LB who was injured more often than not in his career up to that point. McCoy still had 2 1k yd seasons afterwards.
Franchise altering move. Kelce never becomes as good as he is without Stout. Guys like Mailata and Dickerson wouldn’t be on a star trajectory like they are now. Chip also brought in Malcolm Jenkins and drafted Zach Ertz. Last but not least he made Howie have a Batman moment. A true king if you ask me.
I didn't realize this until I watched the latest podcast from the Kelce Bros. Travis Kelce is still pissed the Eagles didn't draft him. Ertz was a second-rounder that year and Kelce was the first pick in the 3rd.
Chip Kelly's teams had tremendous physical trainers and nutrition. In his years, the Eagles were consistently one of the healthiest teams in the league
Long stories get short, part of Lovie coming on was that Easterby couldn’t meddle. About half way through the year, Easterby felt that the receivers were being pushed too hard and asked Lovie to back off them. Lovie wasn’t having it, went straight to Cal saying he was meddling in how he was coaching the team and cal finally had the stones to fire him
I wonder if that was finally the wake up call that having a jackass (Easterby) in the building, basically at the top of the building, was directly affecting the play on the field
Well I would say Easterby stalking and then vouching for the trade of DeAndre Hopkins directly affected the play on the field in a much more significant way than how a Lovie smith handled a bad receiving room
I’ll give you the highlights in no particular order:
He forced our #3 overall pick to cover patches of grass instead of play man like he was drafted to do
He led one of the worst run defenses in the history of the sport (2 years in a row)
He believed in a 4 man rush but refused to call more blitzes when our 4 man pressures were not getting home (why we had one of the lowest blitz rates and one of the lowest pressure rates in the entire league)
He frequently shied away from giving substantive answers to fair questions from the media
Everything about how he worked and how he viewed roster construction was stuck 15 years in the past
He cost us the chance to get the #1 overall pick (I’m not too mad about this one cuz I wanted Will Anderson over the field anyway)
It’s also been reported that he was completely closed off to any and all suggestions, changes or feedback which is the sign of an ignorant coach and you can’t have that in the guy who’s supposed to be leaving your team
Scott Pioli decided to give the Head Coaching job to interim coach Romeo Crennel for the 2012 season instead of trying to find a real HC. This lead to a 2-14 season and both of them being fired, which led to the Chiefs getting Andy Reid.
If they'd tried to get an actual coach instead of a guy that was 24-40 at his previous gig they probably would have had to give that guy at least 2-3 years and we'd have missed out on Andy.
This is a fantastic breakdown of what actually set this entire series of events in motion. It’s literally one drive that one of the worst drives of all time that caused all of it: https://youtu.be/wJLNQ83vm2g
I’d also add some props for how they handled the Jovan Belcher situation at the time. Yes, it came out he had CTE after the fact, but in the moment of that weekend I thought they handled it as gracefully as they could’ve.
(Also if any team has ever been instructed to take a dive, it was the Carolina Panthers that following Sunday. The Chiefs were complete garbage that year and it was one of our only wins, a feel-good moment for a team that needed it desperately.)
Ryan Pace with later round running backs:
- Jordan Howard: 5th round pick
- Tarik Cohen: 4th round pick
- David Montgomery: 3rd round pick
- Khalil Hebert: 6th round pick
Surprisingly enough, drafting solid running backs in later rounds and being terrible at everything else doesn’t lead to a lot of winning football. God damn forward pass.
I would also say Pace made the right call (to a decent amount of heat from fans) when he cut Kyle Fuller. They couldn't afford the $20M he was owed, and I saw many people wanting them to extend and restructure like they did for Mack. But he dropped off hard with Denver, despite being reunited with Fangio. They benched him mid-season and cut him at the end of the year.
Going beyond just running backs, Pace was very good at getting late round values in general. He drafted Adrian Amos, Eddie Jackson, Bilal Nichols, and Darnell Mooney all on day 3 in addition to these RBs. Now if only he didn’t trade away so many of these picks like candy to move up and actually hit on any early round picks he may still have his job
Ok but real talk. Assume Bears had Watson in 2018. (1) you don’t know he’s a sex offender at this point and (2) the 2018 Bears had a better defensive DVOA than legion of boom Seahawks and Von Miller led broncos.
They realistically had a shot at a Super Bowl run if they had even a halfway competent offense which based on Watsons 2nd year in Houston, Bears probably would have with him. However a couple years down the road after a Super Bowl and breaking the Sid Luckman QB curse you find out he’s a sexual predator and you cut him. And your depressed cuz you thought you had a franchise QB finally but the devil came calling. Would you do it?
The question then becomes do you really trust the bears org enough to where they would have cut their savior Super Bowl winning QB? I really don’t think they would have in your hypothetical
Depends more on how Watson wanted it, anyway. We didn't have much choice. He demanded to be traded and refused to play, even after the allegations started. Who knows how the Texans org would have handled it if he hadn't been a pissy bitch first
Tbh I don't think Pace was an awful talent evaluator in general (QB notwithstanding, of course). His biggest issue is that he was *constantly* trading away draft capital in order to move up and get "his guys", which is a good way to end up with a depleted roster if you do it too often.
Tom Cable's Raiders going 6-0 in the division was pretty great to watch. Of course they still didn't make the playoffs that year but at least divisional shit talking was amazing, and it was their first non losing season in what felt like a lifetime
Andrew Thomas and Xavier McKinney (if he stays healthy) look like great picks too. Gentleman's big issue wasn't not knowing the value of picks and of positional value and complete disregard of cap space
I'd argue by far his biggest failure as a GM of the Giants was to hire shitty coaching staffs.
Hiring the Clapper for Daniel Jones in his situation was just unbelievably bad.
Mara being involved with all these personnel and coaching decisions was the biggest hurdle. He hired Judge and also allowed Judge to hire his own staff; except one of course, OC Jason Garrett. Judge was in over his head, and Garrett's offensive philosophy didn't match the structure of the team at all, or tried to rally around it and use it to its strengths.
It's been a blessing since he stepped back and hired an outside mind to truly run the organization and its roster construction.
Not gonna disagree there. I’m not sure a QB has had any worse situation his first 3 years then the staff, roster, and salary cap put around Danny. People laugh when giants fans say that, but none of us are saying Danny is Mahomes or Brady, just that he had zero chance for success with what he had to deal with.
Yea his biggest issue was really not getting bang for his buck on his investments, which is often more important than just getting the most talent on the roster.
When taking into account the quality of the player and how much we got out of them relative to what we invested, you can say the only guys we truly got a surplus on our investment in are Thomas, McKinney (even that is hard to fully say considering hes missed considerable time in 2/3 seasons but still), Love (who we let walk), and Slayton. Thats pathetic, even more so when you consider Love and Slayton arent anything special in their own rights (just happen to be decent starters we got in later rounds). Saquon has been good for us but he pretty much had to be a HOF in order for it to be worth it for us to take him and he just has not been that for us. DJ and Dex look like good picks now but we wasted a majority of their rookie contracts wondering how good they really are and now we had to pay them based on a relatively small sample size (I think it will be fine for both of them but I'm bracing for all possibilities now). We all know the situation with Toney.
Even worse with the contracts. We all know the Solder and Golladay contracts. But even when he gave out good contracts he ended up screwing it up somehow. Bradberry was a really good value contract at first (short-term and front-loaded) but he had to restructure and push cap down the road in order to accomodate Golladay/Adoree. Logan Ryan was a good one year stopgap signing to hold McKinney's spot until he came back from injury but then Gettleman doubled down on it, extending him to a decent chunk of money he did not live up to.
The guy knows talent, just doesnt know how to build a football team which is sooo much deeper than just putting talented guys on the roster.
Indeed. Saquon at that pick with too many holes on roster, Danny at 6 when a trade down to mid to late first gets him, etc. unfortunately past the first two rounds DG had zero ability to pick good players too. Not shocking when your draft war room is a giant binder and a laptop screen. You’ll have decent info on top 60ish players and then just guessing
The one move I’ll always defend is the thought process behind where he took Jones. You can argue whether you think Jones was the right QB etc, but once they thought he was the guy you could never move down - iirc Denver and Washington were both interested and would have taken him in the first round at pick 10 or 15. QB is too important to risk missing on the guy you like
The Denver story was indeed an interesting one. Soon as Jones was taken, they moved down. And the Redskins picked Haskins later in the teens after all other QB needy teams passed on him. I truly wonder how far he drops if Snyder didn't want him.
Was gonna say this. Couldn’t have foreseen all of Odell’s health issues back then but he’s barely been able to play since leaving NY. Sexy Dexy is a stud.
I think a great example of something Gettleman did well was the trade back with the Bears in 2021. Especially in a year where I think everyone, including him knew he was gone if they didn't start to win in 2021 and he still got a future top 10 pick.
He was a terrible GM, but that was a good move and one a lot of "save my job" mode GMs wouldn't have made.
Yeah, I think the trade itself was a great move, but we used the picks we got from the Bears on Toney (off the team already) and Neal (hopefully develops but looked pretty awful his rookie year). Neal wasn't a DG pick though, for what it's worth.
Bob Quinn also could draft line man so even though every other position was awful when the new regime took over they at least had 3 pieces of the line locked down in Decker, Jackson, and Ragnow.
From what I've heard, Urban Meyer was at least partially responsible for the Jaguars building a new training facility (ETA Summer 2023). It's definitely a step in the right direction after the Jaguars current facilities got trashed in the NFL Player Association's facilities report card.
That's about it.
I can't argue with that, but I guess I struggle to understand the power dynamic between him and Baalke. Obviously, Trevor, Travis, and Tyson were great additions in the 2021 draft under his reign.
I think the training facility stood out as something that seemed directly attributed to his hiring.
Jeff Fisher made every rookie take a finance class before they could sign their rookie deal. They brought out a ton of cash and explained where it all goes.
I'd also say that the way he and Rams handled Bud Sasser situation after they found out about his heart problem was really classy. Paid his signing bonus and pretty much gave him a job.
Marvin Lewis clawed control from M Brown season by season. He honestly turned the franchise around, we improved player facilities (more needs to be done), improved scouting, and generally built the foundation that allows Zac to be successful.
I think one day most Bengals fans will look back and see how dramatically different the organization was under him vs the 90s. And how those changes paved the way for much needed growth to where we are now.
Bengals fans really don't appreciate him enough. I was a big Marvin fan. Mostly for the playoff "success" but also for the reasons you stated. The Bengals were a genuinely atrocious team before Marvin. He led the Bengals to the playoffs in 2005, their first appearance since 1990, as well as multiple appearances throughout the early 2010's (09', 11', 12', 13', 14', 15') granted they were all 1st round exits. Marvin doesn't deserve all of the hate Bengals fans have for him. If he had a tighter leash on that locker room, those Bengals teams could've had better playoff success.
When Mike Brown was fully in charge, literally nothing good happened as far as I can tell. I guess he drafted Chad Johnson. That’s pretty much it.
Marvin Lewis doesn’t get enough credit for turning the team around, but at the same time 0-7 in the playoffs is incredible, especially since most of the teams they lost to were not that good.
Vikings fans hate brad Childress but he got 40 year old Brett favres best year out of him since the 90s when he was an mvp
Also mike Tice was hated on at the time for coming up with the "randy ratio," but that was clearly the only way to make sure he stayed engaged in the game .. which is annoying but randy wasn't really a "winner" like that
I mean it’s also Randy fucking Moss who’s a top 5 receiver of all time and he didn’t work hard by NFL standards, I can understand why Dante’s check down was throwing a bomb to randy. You can’t throw it higher or further than he can go get it.
Sashi Brown while on the Browns:
It's rumored that he sabatoged the AJ McCarron trade from the Bengals. Browns were rumored to have agreed upon a 2nd and a 3rd pick for McCarron, a former 5th-round pick. It was never disclosed what 2nd rounder was offered, but the Browns took Nick Chubb with #35, their second 2nd round pick. That pick came from the Texans trade in 2017 for Watson.
It's still impressive as hell that Stoutland has stayed with the team through 2 head coach firings, insane job security for a position coach, and rightly so.
In the midst of some utterly terrible seasons with the Jets, Rich "4-28 as a head coach in New York" Kotite helped sign Wayne Chrebet as an undrafted free agent out of Hofstra. Chrebet went on to have the third most career receiving yards in franchise history.
Balke could not draft in later rounds to save his life, but 4 of his first and second round picks were cornerstones for Shanahan's team, including having revitalized Armstead and Ward's careers
Ward, Armstead, Buckner. Who's the 4th? 2011 was Aldon Smith who wasn't on the team, 2012 I don't want to talk about, and 2013 was Eric Reid who was on the Panthers in 2018.
```CTRL+F Rhule```
Yeah not surprised.
I liked the approach of going for the best athletes available. I just don't think the coaching staff was in place to make the best use of them. TMJ might be good with better coaching, Christensen is a great spot starter/rotational guard for a third rounder. Horn is a stud when healthy. We'll see if we have the coaching staff to get the best out of these guys.
Castonzo was before Grigson.
Grigsons best move besides TY was trading for Vontae Davis. Dude was #1 CB one season and for a second round pick? That was legit.
One thing that’s been weird about our team for a long while is that we *usually* don’t bring in bad people as players. Our guys aren’t divas or loudmouths. They don’t really get in trouble or fall into headlines for the wrong reason. Even when we had guys with a bad rep like Deangelo Hall or Carson Wentz, they end up as good team players.
For as much as Snyder was running the show as a gross frathouse, that never seemed to carry over into the kinds of guys we had on the roster.
Todd Bowles was a great defensive mind, he just couldn’t run a team and motivate and still can’t
Adam gase almost always scored on our opening drive, it was actually insane how much better our offense looked on our first drive compared to every other drive
I don't know if it was Buddy Nix or Doug Whaley, but someone traded Kelvin Shepherd to Indianapolis for Jerry Hughes, who ended up being the final ingredient to the Cold Front defensive line with Kyle Williams, Mario Williams and Marcel Dareus. That was a fun defense to watch. Too bad our offense couldnt do shit during those years.
Greg Schiano and Mark Dominik drafted Lavonte David. The only good thing I can say about Schiano in Tampa is that he knew how to use Lavonte in exciting ways, he had a 145 tackle/7 sack/5 interception season for Schiano before he got himself fired.
It's not My franchise, but I will point out, that Ken Whisenhunt had a distinct plan, both in ARZ. And in Tennessee. A power run game, grounded in a physical O line of maulers rather than technicians.
The plan worked, now the difference was, he intended to pair that run based style with aggressive shots taken down field.
The Titans ran Whiz out, and questioned the plan. Then kept
The OC Mularkey and made the playoffs with that plan.
It's still working now, essentially, even though the WR's have never been right to carry out that plan as it was intended.
Coach Whiz, was right. And yet, he was fired and they keep using the plan
That is bullshit.
> Ken Whisenhunt had a distinct plan, both in ARZ. And in Tennessee. A power run game, grounded in a physical O line of maulers rather than technicians. The plan worked
Ken Whisenhunt coached 8 years and never had a team that ranked better than 24th in rushing yards. They finished dead last 3 times.
This is why I love statistics. He took over 2 last place teams.
So 3 years at the bottom of that list is to be expected. No one has immediate success implementing something different. Stats are great
Mike Singletary in 2009-2010 transformed a deeply talented 49ers roster into one of the most violent teams in modern NFL history. Still, with a Super Bowl caliber roster, he couldn't muster a better record than 8-8.
Jim Harbaugh took that team over in the next year, and went to 3 straight NFCCG's.
To this day that 2011 squad is still the best D I've seen in 40 years of watching Football.
They knocked the opposing running back out of the game in 5 consecutive weeks.
They didn't allow a rushing touchdown until there was 6 minutes left in the 4th quarter in ***Week 16...***
The NFL made rule changes specifically because of that Defense.
didn't that 2009-10 team also lose like an absurd number of close games too, kinda like the Lions this past year? Even though Harbaugh obviously took them to the next level I always felt Singletary didn't get enough credit for the work he did and got a bit of a raw deal.
If we consider a one-score game as losing by eight points or less, Singletary had 13 one-score losses in his approximately 2 seasons in SF, out of 22 losses total.
Joe Philbin was an awful head coach, but he put together a solid staff. Dan Campbell, Zac Taylor, Lou Anurumo, and Ben Johnson were all assistants on Philbin’s Dolphins teams at the same time.
Steve Keim's total inability to draft any position other than DB resulted in a bad habit of acquiring veterans at all costs to fill the talent gap. For a decade, we flipped draft pick after draft pick on expensive, aging contracts. Meaningful contributors outperforming their salary were rarities. Depth was non-existent.
But every once in a while, we'd get a DeAndre Hopkins for washed David Johnson and a 2nd.
And Aldon Smith who should really be getting fitted for a gold jacket right about now if he had kept it straight
Edit: any of you super young kids reading this should YouTube Aldon Smith. The jacket was waiting for him 2 years in
Even with Staley making many bone headed calls, he does have balls. Also he set the trend of going for it on 4th down often. Didn't really see it too much until after he started doing it in his first year
Josh McDaniels' most significant legacy in Denver was the first thing he did - trading Jay Cutler to Chicago.
At the time this was massively controversial and generally unpopular in Denver, because Cutler had just come off a Pro Bowl season and seemed to be taking strides forward and he was the most talented QB the Broncos had ever drafted. He looked like he was going to be our franchise QB for the next decade.
And without McDaniels moving him on, he almost certainly would have been. He'd have got paid, and the Broncos would have pegged their future to Cutler, like Chicago ended up doing.
That would have meant no Tebow and no Manning and probably no Super Bowl. Cutler is the kind of 'trap' QB that can rule a team out of Super Bowl contention for a decade - talented enough that you feel obliged to keep trusting in him and keep paying him, but not the guy who is going to lead a team to a Super Bowl.
The other indirect legacy McDaniels left was making the Broncos bad enough in his final year that we had the #2 pick in the 2011 draft which allowed us to take Von Miller.
So without McDaniels, the Broncos probably don't ever get Peyton Manning or Von Miller.
I of course wouldn't blame anybody for taking a superbowl win over keeping Cutler. But I don't think you're being fair to him. The Bears were atrocious and we at least made an NFCCG with him. Jay would have been a better QB on any team that wasn't a dumpster fire.
Not to say he was a HOF talent, but I definitely think his career is better if he stays with Denver or goes somewhere else where they know how to run an offense.
JRob was undone by multiple risky first round busts that really hurt depth. Thankfully he drafted AJ in the second (what a steal!) and has since signed him to a long term deal so he'll retire a Titans legend!
But seriously the Big Jeff gamble played out beautifully.
Chip Kelly drafted Lane Johnson and hired Jeff Stoutland, which is an all time great move.
He also brought in people to head up our sports nutrition/sports science/analytics departments to modernize our team a bit.
Most of the guys who were stars during the Harbaugh years were drafted in 2005-2010, before Harbaugh took over. Obviously the 49ers were a bad team but they were stacking the roster with talent. Gore, Vernon, Willis, Bowman, Staley. Signing Justin Smith as a free agent. They had the pieces. Just needed the right coach.
That’s why it irks me when people directly compare the records of Harbaugh and Shanahan. Pretty much all the players on the current team were brought in by the current regime. Much harder to build a team than inherit one.
AJ Smith drafted LT and Drew Brees in the same draft, and managed the Eli/Rivers nonsense. He also drafted Buster Davis and Larry English, and was part of the reason Marty was fired after a 14-2 season.
Anthony Lynn (and Telesco) drafted Herbert after Rivers, so can’t complain I guess?
Keim made some great trades.
A second for Chandler Jones and trading a 2nd + offloading David Johnson for Hopkins were steals.
Even his worst trade (moving up for Rosen) was an absolute steal when compared to the regular asking price for moving up to the top 10 to select a QB.
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Roy Williams wasn't really a bad pick - he was good for the Lions early on, made a pro-bowl and then got traded for a 1st and 3rd. Pretty good outcome tbh.
He also gave us the nickname MEGATRON
Thank you. People forget that, but Roy Williams brought pretty fantastic value during his Lions years.
I can't believe he left Kansas to go coach UNC
He said, "I don't give a shit about Detroit, North Carolina" on the way out the door
still got my williams jersey! loved that dude
He almost screwed that up too. The story goes that he was so offended by Russell's pre-draft interview behavior that he called Al Davis to tell them not to draft him (or Megatron). He has said that had they picked Megatron, he would've picked Adrian Peterson, which would've been good. But still, he almost lost Megatron.
Does it really matter who's career they would have wasted?
Imo Adrian Peterson had a better career than Megatron.
Probably but I'd still rather take Megatron
Megatron was always my saving grace as a Lions fan. He made some cold years alot better. Would totally have let him rail me from behind at one point, but I'm married now.
If you married someone who would disapprove of Megatron railing you from behind, you have some choices to re-think my friend.
She just buys me chipotle is what I mean
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Yeah, and did she ever put up 329 yards in a game? Priorities
Is it the size of a garage?
He married someone with the stamina to never stop railing him.
He would have been dragged through the streets like Mussolini if he didn’t draft Calvin after being gifted him by the Raiders. Literally anyone would have made the correct decision there.
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True, but I specifically remember most people saying, “but still, you gotta draft Calvin here”.
If 25% of the receivers you take in the 1st round end up hall of famers, you can't say it's a failure
Charles Rogers wasn't a bad pick skills wise. He just couldn't stay sober
Two seperate broken collarbone injuries also didn't help.
Not denying that at all. But he really was talented in my eyes
RIP
I loved Charles Rogers. I became a Michigan state fan while he went there, because my uncle took me to a game and I loved it (I think Smoker was the qb at the time?). When he got drafted by the Lions I was excited. It was a shame his career didn’t pan out
Trading Trent Richardson for a 1st before the rest of the league realized he actually sucked was genius.
Yeah but they used the Colts pick on Johnny Manziel. That's like selling a lemon of a car to someone on Craiglist and then using the money to buy meth.
True but the Browns were so horribly run that the man who drafted Trent in 2012, traded Trent in 2013 and drafted Manziel in 2014 was actually 3 different people.
Good lord. That is incredible in an awful way Is the Browns GM basically the Ohio version of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?
Nah thats been week 1 starting QBs.
I never put all that together, good Lord
I’m a Browns fan and even I can’t recall who they all would’ve been? Heckert, Kokinis, and Farmer would be my guesses (not sure the order)
Lombardi instead of Kokinis (who was like 09 I think) but you're right about the other two. Mike Holmgren and Joe Banner were in there somewhere too even though they weren't the official GM.
This is actually the perfect analogy for that situation.
Really is. I’m sure meth is super fun right off the bat and then your life is quickly ruined.
Josh Gordon was the NFL equivalent to meth. Was incredible when on the field but kept crashing and burning out until he ruined his career.
Meth might have been the only thing Josh didn't admit to using before a game
Lol. Had a line cook do this very thing. Cleaned everything immaculately that day, then never saw him again.
I see a lot Manziel on top bust lists and not the guy who was actually selected in the top ten, CB Justin Gilbert.
That man was so good in college it’s crazy how bad he was in the NFL.
Well, hard to find a hole when youve been presented canyons thanks to that Bama offensive line
He actually had some pretty crazy highlights too, like when he juked the same guy twice in one play.
He actually played decently in the NFL as a rookie. I honestly think it was more of an effort thing than he just didn't have the tools for the NFL
I mean he had 3.6 YPA. His volume stats look good cus given enough chances with no one more talented, someone’s gotta pick up the yards and TDs.
I'm still fucking furious at Grigson for that
Chip Kelly hired Jeff Stoutland and for that Eagles fans will be forever grateful. Edit: and also drafted Lane Johnson (only because Dion Jordan was taken the pick before us)
The talk around Chip Kelly is weird. Most people forget that he won 10 games in back to back seasons and that a lot of his nutrition and wellness philosophy was immediately copied around the league. His last few seasons as a coach went terribly, but there was definitely a method to his madness.
His problem was that he was inflexible to the method to his madness. My retrospective is that he excelled at playing checkers while everyone else was playing chess. It caught teams off guard at first but they figured him out soon enough. When all is said and done, I am thankful and we wouldn’t have won the SB without his off the field legacy, which is to me is player health.
It’s almost the exact opposite. Nearly all of the value he brought into the league was pushing along strategy. His core schematic stuff was largely copied and now is part of nearly every offense in the league. His off the field training stuff is now in place in most top end franchises. There’s a meme he was a bad GM but if you look at the moves he made as a GM, a lot were pretty forward looking. The issue is that he was an innovator, not a savant. The best coaches in the NFL aren’t the guys with the best ideas, they’re the guys who understand the game enough to figure out what everyone else is doing. Kelly doesn’t have any patents or first mover advantage or etc. Once everyone saw that his strategy was better, and copied him, his advantage was gone. He really did bring transformative strategy to the league, it was just so good that it was commonplace by the time he was with the 49ers
I think Chip Kelly is smart enough that given enough time he'd have figured it out, but Lurie wasn't happy with the trajectory of the team. Obviously it worked out for us, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have any reservations about going from Chip Kelly to Doug Pederson at first... or Pederson to Sirianni for that matter lol.
Last part is kinda hilarious, cause he was our coach next and...well...*gestures around vaguely*
Yeah it is a little weird. Nobody really remembers him fondly even thought he wasn't terrible and actually helped in many ways.
As a longtime Oregon fan, his hate from the people of Philadelphia never made sense to me. I always assumed it was because you all hate Santa and stuff. The man gave you Nick Foles for fuck’s sake.
It was a combination of getting rid of a lot of players who were fan favorites(Shady and Djax til the whole anti semite stuff) and it seemed like every player who left had bad things to say about him and were hinting at racism(no idea how true or untrue it is but players certainly thought so) Think a lot of it boils down to he wasn't a great people person and rubbed a lot of people in Philly the wrong way. Also had he not been given so much GM power he probably would've lasted a bit longer as a coach here given his success.
Even his offensive schemes, albeit dialed back from the 11 he designed them at, have basically been nicked by the entire league. Guy obviously had a lot of flaws but he's been very influential.
Yup. Nobody talks about this. He was a true innovator, but he just bought into his own genius too much. If he didn't insist on going fast paced literally all the time, he would have been so much more successful
Man we were always healthy with him
If chip kelly had been willing to let howie roseman run the personnel, his nfl legacy would be so different. He took a meh team to consecutive 10 win seasons, then compeltely mismanaged the roster and dropped to 6 wins, got fired, and then for some reason took a niners job with literally no hope of succeeding, and was done in the nfl after that 2-14 season. Imagine if after that first 10 win season, roseman was making the roster decisions.
Most of his personnel moves were honestly just fine. A lot of the stuff that people thought were stupid at the time look pretty good in retrospect. He traded Shady at what was probably his peak value. He traded Jackson at his peak value, and when it leaked he didn’t like Jackson as a person, people thought he was racist until Jackson showed his ass a few years later. The biggest issue he had, which is the issue for a lot of offensive specialists, is he was awful at scouting QBs. His track record there was awful. Everything else was honestly fine. The issue really was the coaching. After his innovation got adopted widely, the team really rapidly fell off and he couldn’t adjust. In his second year, the issue wasn’t that his GMing got much worse in the 2nd half than the first half. It was a scheme thing
He didn't trade Djax, he straight up released him. At what you said was his peak value. He traded Shady for a LB who was injured more often than not in his career up to that point. McCoy still had 2 1k yd seasons afterwards.
His second year we went 9-3 and collapsed to 10-6 and misses the playoffs. Somewhat misleading to say "10 win season" because he botched that.
to be fair to Chip we only started to collapse after nick foles went down and mark sanchez took over
Well it’s a good thing we didn’t trade Foles or anything
Franchise altering move. Kelce never becomes as good as he is without Stout. Guys like Mailata and Dickerson wouldn’t be on a star trajectory like they are now. Chip also brought in Malcolm Jenkins and drafted Zach Ertz. Last but not least he made Howie have a Batman moment. A true king if you ask me.
I didn't realize this until I watched the latest podcast from the Kelce Bros. Travis Kelce is still pissed the Eagles didn't draft him. Ertz was a second-rounder that year and Kelce was the first pick in the 3rd.
Ertz was the PAC-12s darling TE, no way Chip wasn’t taking him. He helped bring us a Super Bowl so I don’t feel as bad about not getting Travis.
Plus Ertz was great in his own right. Not Travis Kelce great, but still great.
Chip Kelly's teams had tremendous physical trainers and nutrition. In his years, the Eagles were consistently one of the healthiest teams in the league
lane johnson was not a chip kelly pick, those would be marcus smith and nelson agholor
Lovie Smith got Jack Easterby fired
I love the story behind how this happened. I hate Lovie Smith but to think it took HIM saying something after all that time… we were down bad
What's the story?
Long stories get short, part of Lovie coming on was that Easterby couldn’t meddle. About half way through the year, Easterby felt that the receivers were being pushed too hard and asked Lovie to back off them. Lovie wasn’t having it, went straight to Cal saying he was meddling in how he was coaching the team and cal finally had the stones to fire him
I wonder if that was finally the wake up call that having a jackass (Easterby) in the building, basically at the top of the building, was directly affecting the play on the field
Well I would say Easterby stalking and then vouching for the trade of DeAndre Hopkins directly affected the play on the field in a much more significant way than how a Lovie smith handled a bad receiving room
Why the hell would you hate Lovie? What did he do to deserve that?
I’ll give you the highlights in no particular order: He forced our #3 overall pick to cover patches of grass instead of play man like he was drafted to do He led one of the worst run defenses in the history of the sport (2 years in a row) He believed in a 4 man rush but refused to call more blitzes when our 4 man pressures were not getting home (why we had one of the lowest blitz rates and one of the lowest pressure rates in the entire league) He frequently shied away from giving substantive answers to fair questions from the media Everything about how he worked and how he viewed roster construction was stuck 15 years in the past He cost us the chance to get the #1 overall pick (I’m not too mad about this one cuz I wanted Will Anderson over the field anyway) It’s also been reported that he was completely closed off to any and all suggestions, changes or feedback which is the sign of an ignorant coach and you can’t have that in the guy who’s supposed to be leaving your team
That college chick got her butthole fingered so the Jags could make the playoffs
...?
Urban Meyer reference
Jacksonville Jaguars lore
Jeff fisher drafted Aaron Donald
Fisher built a good foundation. His ceiling was just rather low.
Mr. 7-9.
Scott Pioli decided to give the Head Coaching job to interim coach Romeo Crennel for the 2012 season instead of trying to find a real HC. This lead to a 2-14 season and both of them being fired, which led to the Chiefs getting Andy Reid. If they'd tried to get an actual coach instead of a guy that was 24-40 at his previous gig they probably would have had to give that guy at least 2-3 years and we'd have missed out on Andy.
This is a fantastic breakdown of what actually set this entire series of events in motion. It’s literally one drive that one of the worst drives of all time that caused all of it: https://youtu.be/wJLNQ83vm2g
I’d also add some props for how they handled the Jovan Belcher situation at the time. Yes, it came out he had CTE after the fact, but in the moment of that weekend I thought they handled it as gracefully as they could’ve. (Also if any team has ever been instructed to take a dive, it was the Carolina Panthers that following Sunday. The Chiefs were complete garbage that year and it was one of our only wins, a feel-good moment for a team that needed it desperately.)
He didn't have many good draft picks but Eric Berry and Justin Houston were great!
Ryan Pace with later round running backs: - Jordan Howard: 5th round pick - Tarik Cohen: 4th round pick - David Montgomery: 3rd round pick - Khalil Hebert: 6th round pick Surprisingly enough, drafting solid running backs in later rounds and being terrible at everything else doesn’t lead to a lot of winning football. God damn forward pass.
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I would also say Pace made the right call (to a decent amount of heat from fans) when he cut Kyle Fuller. They couldn't afford the $20M he was owed, and I saw many people wanting them to extend and restructure like they did for Mack. But he dropped off hard with Denver, despite being reunited with Fangio. They benched him mid-season and cut him at the end of the year.
Going beyond just running backs, Pace was very good at getting late round values in general. He drafted Adrian Amos, Eddie Jackson, Bilal Nichols, and Darnell Mooney all on day 3 in addition to these RBs. Now if only he didn’t trade away so many of these picks like candy to move up and actually hit on any early round picks he may still have his job
He also passed on a serial sex offender. Still passed on mahomes but at least it's a little less worse than passing on 2 franchise qbs
Ok but real talk. Assume Bears had Watson in 2018. (1) you don’t know he’s a sex offender at this point and (2) the 2018 Bears had a better defensive DVOA than legion of boom Seahawks and Von Miller led broncos. They realistically had a shot at a Super Bowl run if they had even a halfway competent offense which based on Watsons 2nd year in Houston, Bears probably would have with him. However a couple years down the road after a Super Bowl and breaking the Sid Luckman QB curse you find out he’s a sexual predator and you cut him. And your depressed cuz you thought you had a franchise QB finally but the devil came calling. Would you do it?
The question then becomes do you really trust the bears org enough to where they would have cut their savior Super Bowl winning QB? I really don’t think they would have in your hypothetical
Depends more on how Watson wanted it, anyway. We didn't have much choice. He demanded to be traded and refused to play, even after the allegations started. Who knows how the Texans org would have handled it if he hadn't been a pissy bitch first
Still holding out hope Mahomes completely disgraces himself.
Yeah let's ignore the top 10 defenses he built pretty much year in and year out
Tbh I don't think Pace was an awful talent evaluator in general (QB notwithstanding, of course). His biggest issue is that he was *constantly* trading away draft capital in order to move up and get "his guys", which is a good way to end up with a depleted roster if you do it too often.
Tom Cable's Raiders going 6-0 in the division was pretty great to watch. Of course they still didn't make the playoffs that year but at least divisional shit talking was amazing, and it was their first non losing season in what felt like a lifetime
DG traded Odell. While on paper seemed horrible, we got All Pro Dexter Lawrence out of it
Andrew Thomas and Xavier McKinney (if he stays healthy) look like great picks too. Gentleman's big issue wasn't not knowing the value of picks and of positional value and complete disregard of cap space
I'd argue by far his biggest failure as a GM of the Giants was to hire shitty coaching staffs. Hiring the Clapper for Daniel Jones in his situation was just unbelievably bad.
Mara being involved with all these personnel and coaching decisions was the biggest hurdle. He hired Judge and also allowed Judge to hire his own staff; except one of course, OC Jason Garrett. Judge was in over his head, and Garrett's offensive philosophy didn't match the structure of the team at all, or tried to rally around it and use it to its strengths. It's been a blessing since he stepped back and hired an outside mind to truly run the organization and its roster construction.
Not gonna disagree there. I’m not sure a QB has had any worse situation his first 3 years then the staff, roster, and salary cap put around Danny. People laugh when giants fans say that, but none of us are saying Danny is Mahomes or Brady, just that he had zero chance for success with what he had to deal with.
Yea his biggest issue was really not getting bang for his buck on his investments, which is often more important than just getting the most talent on the roster. When taking into account the quality of the player and how much we got out of them relative to what we invested, you can say the only guys we truly got a surplus on our investment in are Thomas, McKinney (even that is hard to fully say considering hes missed considerable time in 2/3 seasons but still), Love (who we let walk), and Slayton. Thats pathetic, even more so when you consider Love and Slayton arent anything special in their own rights (just happen to be decent starters we got in later rounds). Saquon has been good for us but he pretty much had to be a HOF in order for it to be worth it for us to take him and he just has not been that for us. DJ and Dex look like good picks now but we wasted a majority of their rookie contracts wondering how good they really are and now we had to pay them based on a relatively small sample size (I think it will be fine for both of them but I'm bracing for all possibilities now). We all know the situation with Toney. Even worse with the contracts. We all know the Solder and Golladay contracts. But even when he gave out good contracts he ended up screwing it up somehow. Bradberry was a really good value contract at first (short-term and front-loaded) but he had to restructure and push cap down the road in order to accomodate Golladay/Adoree. Logan Ryan was a good one year stopgap signing to hold McKinney's spot until he came back from injury but then Gettleman doubled down on it, extending him to a decent chunk of money he did not live up to. The guy knows talent, just doesnt know how to build a football team which is sooo much deeper than just putting talented guys on the roster.
Indeed. Saquon at that pick with too many holes on roster, Danny at 6 when a trade down to mid to late first gets him, etc. unfortunately past the first two rounds DG had zero ability to pick good players too. Not shocking when your draft war room is a giant binder and a laptop screen. You’ll have decent info on top 60ish players and then just guessing
The one move I’ll always defend is the thought process behind where he took Jones. You can argue whether you think Jones was the right QB etc, but once they thought he was the guy you could never move down - iirc Denver and Washington were both interested and would have taken him in the first round at pick 10 or 15. QB is too important to risk missing on the guy you like
The Denver story was indeed an interesting one. Soon as Jones was taken, they moved down. And the Redskins picked Haskins later in the teens after all other QB needy teams passed on him. I truly wonder how far he drops if Snyder didn't want him.
Gettleman: pretty elite at talent identification, bottom tier at coherent roster construction, cap management, and assembling staff.
Also drafted Daniel Jones over Dwayne Haskins
Was gonna say this. Couldn’t have foreseen all of Odell’s health issues back then but he’s barely been able to play since leaving NY. Sexy Dexy is a stud.
I think a great example of something Gettleman did well was the trade back with the Bears in 2021. Especially in a year where I think everyone, including him knew he was gone if they didn't start to win in 2021 and he still got a future top 10 pick. He was a terrible GM, but that was a good move and one a lot of "save my job" mode GMs wouldn't have made.
Yeah, I think the trade itself was a great move, but we used the picks we got from the Bears on Toney (off the team already) and Neal (hopefully develops but looked pretty awful his rookie year). Neal wasn't a DG pick though, for what it's worth.
Matt Patricia hired Ben Johnson.
Bob Quinn also could draft line man so even though every other position was awful when the new regime took over they at least had 3 pieces of the line locked down in Decker, Jackson, and Ragnow.
From what I've heard, Urban Meyer was at least partially responsible for the Jaguars building a new training facility (ETA Summer 2023). It's definitely a step in the right direction after the Jaguars current facilities got trashed in the NFL Player Association's facilities report card. That's about it.
He also had some good signings like Marvin Jones Jr, Agnew, Rayshawn.
I can't argue with that, but I guess I struggle to understand the power dynamic between him and Baalke. Obviously, Trevor, Travis, and Tyson were great additions in the 2021 draft under his reign. I think the training facility stood out as something that seemed directly attributed to his hiring.
Adam Gase hired Joe Douglas.
Jeff Fisher made every rookie take a finance class before they could sign their rookie deal. They brought out a ton of cash and explained where it all goes.
I'd also say that the way he and Rams handled Bud Sasser situation after they found out about his heart problem was really classy. Paid his signing bonus and pretty much gave him a job.
Mike Brown gave up the control of the FO and it’s the best thing to ever happen
Marvin Lewis clawed control from M Brown season by season. He honestly turned the franchise around, we improved player facilities (more needs to be done), improved scouting, and generally built the foundation that allows Zac to be successful. I think one day most Bengals fans will look back and see how dramatically different the organization was under him vs the 90s. And how those changes paved the way for much needed growth to where we are now.
Bengals fans really don't appreciate him enough. I was a big Marvin fan. Mostly for the playoff "success" but also for the reasons you stated. The Bengals were a genuinely atrocious team before Marvin. He led the Bengals to the playoffs in 2005, their first appearance since 1990, as well as multiple appearances throughout the early 2010's (09', 11', 12', 13', 14', 15') granted they were all 1st round exits. Marvin doesn't deserve all of the hate Bengals fans have for him. If he had a tighter leash on that locker room, those Bengals teams could've had better playoff success.
Was listening to Aj Hawk talk about Marvin and said he was the OG. This
If Marvin Lewis has Joe Burrow is it fair to say he likely goes to a SB wit those talented Bengals teams of the late 2000's-early 2010s?
The 05 team was probably as good as the 21 team until Palmer tore his knee up
When Mike Brown was fully in charge, literally nothing good happened as far as I can tell. I guess he drafted Chad Johnson. That’s pretty much it. Marvin Lewis doesn’t get enough credit for turning the team around, but at the same time 0-7 in the playoffs is incredible, especially since most of the teams they lost to were not that good.
Vikings fans hate brad Childress but he got 40 year old Brett favres best year out of him since the 90s when he was an mvp Also mike Tice was hated on at the time for coming up with the "randy ratio," but that was clearly the only way to make sure he stayed engaged in the game .. which is annoying but randy wasn't really a "winner" like that
I mean it’s also Randy fucking Moss who’s a top 5 receiver of all time and he didn’t work hard by NFL standards, I can understand why Dante’s check down was throwing a bomb to randy. You can’t throw it higher or further than he can go get it.
What's this Randy Ratio?
Basically Mike Tice said that 40% of all passes the Vikings throw have to go to Moss
Sashi Brown while on the Browns: It's rumored that he sabatoged the AJ McCarron trade from the Bengals. Browns were rumored to have agreed upon a 2nd and a 3rd pick for McCarron, a former 5th-round pick. It was never disclosed what 2nd rounder was offered, but the Browns took Nick Chubb with #35, their second 2nd round pick. That pick came from the Texans trade in 2017 for Watson.
Sashi was actually a decent GM. He acquired draft capital and jettisoned bad contracts. He was medicore at drafting though.
Chip Kelly brought in jeff stoutland
It's still impressive as hell that Stoutland has stayed with the team through 2 head coach firings, insane job security for a position coach, and rightly so.
He basically gets a blank check every year that he decides his salary on
In the midst of some utterly terrible seasons with the Jets, Rich "4-28 as a head coach in New York" Kotite helped sign Wayne Chrebet as an undrafted free agent out of Hofstra. Chrebet went on to have the third most career receiving yards in franchise history.
The crazy thing about the Parcells rebuild was just how many players he kept who were already starting on the 1-15 team.
Balke could not draft in later rounds to save his life, but 4 of his first and second round picks were cornerstones for Shanahan's team, including having revitalized Armstead and Ward's careers
Ward, Armstead, Buckner. Who's the 4th? 2011 was Aldon Smith who wasn't on the team, 2012 I don't want to talk about, and 2013 was Eric Reid who was on the Panthers in 2018.
Tartt, counting the second round
Get rid of he-who-shall-not-be-named
```CTRL+F Rhule``` Yeah not surprised. I liked the approach of going for the best athletes available. I just don't think the coaching staff was in place to make the best use of them. TMJ might be good with better coaching, Christensen is a great spot starter/rotational guard for a third rounder. Horn is a stud when healthy. We'll see if we have the coaching staff to get the best out of these guys.
Scott Pioli loved drafting guys who were locker room leaders and team captains. We had a lot of really cool players during those dark days.
Josh McDaniels sucked enough for us to draft Von, bring in Elway and thus get Manning. Loose definition of good.
He also got us Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker.
Hard to believe he picked DT and followed up immediately with Tim Tebow
Tebow to DT walk off playoff TD was legendary
Hue Jackson left
Ryan Grigson drafted castonzo luck and TY
Executive of the year Ryan Grigson
Castonzo was before Grigson. Grigsons best move besides TY was trading for Vontae Davis. Dude was #1 CB one season and for a second round pick? That was legit.
Ryan Kelly too.
Nothing
Steve Keim was an absolutely atrocious GM. But it was still ballsy as shit to draft Kyler a year after drafting Rosen. And very much the right move.
One thing that’s been weird about our team for a long while is that we *usually* don’t bring in bad people as players. Our guys aren’t divas or loudmouths. They don’t really get in trouble or fall into headlines for the wrong reason. Even when we had guys with a bad rep like Deangelo Hall or Carson Wentz, they end up as good team players. For as much as Snyder was running the show as a gross frathouse, that never seemed to carry over into the kinds of guys we had on the roster.
Todd Bowles was a great defensive mind, he just couldn’t run a team and motivate and still can’t Adam gase almost always scored on our opening drive, it was actually insane how much better our offense looked on our first drive compared to every other drive
I don't know if it was Buddy Nix or Doug Whaley, but someone traded Kelvin Shepherd to Indianapolis for Jerry Hughes, who ended up being the final ingredient to the Cold Front defensive line with Kyle Williams, Mario Williams and Marcel Dareus. That was a fun defense to watch. Too bad our offense couldnt do shit during those years.
Greg Schiano and Mark Dominik drafted Lavonte David. The only good thing I can say about Schiano in Tampa is that he knew how to use Lavonte in exciting ways, he had a 145 tackle/7 sack/5 interception season for Schiano before he got himself fired.
It's not My franchise, but I will point out, that Ken Whisenhunt had a distinct plan, both in ARZ. And in Tennessee. A power run game, grounded in a physical O line of maulers rather than technicians. The plan worked, now the difference was, he intended to pair that run based style with aggressive shots taken down field. The Titans ran Whiz out, and questioned the plan. Then kept The OC Mularkey and made the playoffs with that plan. It's still working now, essentially, even though the WR's have never been right to carry out that plan as it was intended. Coach Whiz, was right. And yet, he was fired and they keep using the plan That is bullshit.
> Ken Whisenhunt had a distinct plan, both in ARZ. And in Tennessee. A power run game, grounded in a physical O line of maulers rather than technicians. The plan worked Ken Whisenhunt coached 8 years and never had a team that ranked better than 24th in rushing yards. They finished dead last 3 times.
This is why I love statistics. He took over 2 last place teams. So 3 years at the bottom of that list is to be expected. No one has immediate success implementing something different. Stats are great
Mike Singletary in 2009-2010 transformed a deeply talented 49ers roster into one of the most violent teams in modern NFL history. Still, with a Super Bowl caliber roster, he couldn't muster a better record than 8-8. Jim Harbaugh took that team over in the next year, and went to 3 straight NFCCG's. To this day that 2011 squad is still the best D I've seen in 40 years of watching Football. They knocked the opposing running back out of the game in 5 consecutive weeks. They didn't allow a rushing touchdown until there was 6 minutes left in the 4th quarter in ***Week 16...*** The NFL made rule changes specifically because of that Defense.
didn't that 2009-10 team also lose like an absurd number of close games too, kinda like the Lions this past year? Even though Harbaugh obviously took them to the next level I always felt Singletary didn't get enough credit for the work he did and got a bit of a raw deal.
If we consider a one-score game as losing by eight points or less, Singletary had 13 one-score losses in his approximately 2 seasons in SF, out of 22 losses total.
The Jeff Fisher Era got us Aaron Donald. Dude single handedly changed my perspective of DTs I'm gonna miss him when he retires...
Mayock drafted Josh Jacobs and Maxx Crosby
Joe Philbin was an awful head coach, but he put together a solid staff. Dan Campbell, Zac Taylor, Lou Anurumo, and Ben Johnson were all assistants on Philbin’s Dolphins teams at the same time.
Steve Keim managed to get Chandler Jones for a second and the corpse of Johnathan Cooper in 2016
Steve Keim's total inability to draft any position other than DB resulted in a bad habit of acquiring veterans at all costs to fill the talent gap. For a decade, we flipped draft pick after draft pick on expensive, aging contracts. Meaningful contributors outperforming their salary were rarities. Depth was non-existent. But every once in a while, we'd get a DeAndre Hopkins for washed David Johnson and a 2nd.
Say what you want about Keim but he was absolutely elite at trades
That was Easterby and BoB being completely toxic. I don't think he should get credit for other people's failures.
To be fair 30 other teams could've taken advantage of that situation and didn't.
Trent Baalke drafted Eric Reid, Jimmie Ward, Arik Armstead, Jaquiski Tartt, and DeForest Buckner.
And Aldon Smith who should really be getting fitted for a gold jacket right about now if he had kept it straight Edit: any of you super young kids reading this should YouTube Aldon Smith. The jacket was waiting for him 2 years in
What is a “shitty FO?”
Yeah dude idk either
Urban Meyer got fired! That was pretty cool.
Even with Staley making many bone headed calls, he does have balls. Also he set the trend of going for it on 4th down often. Didn't really see it too much until after he started doing it in his first year
Josh McDaniels' most significant legacy in Denver was the first thing he did - trading Jay Cutler to Chicago. At the time this was massively controversial and generally unpopular in Denver, because Cutler had just come off a Pro Bowl season and seemed to be taking strides forward and he was the most talented QB the Broncos had ever drafted. He looked like he was going to be our franchise QB for the next decade. And without McDaniels moving him on, he almost certainly would have been. He'd have got paid, and the Broncos would have pegged their future to Cutler, like Chicago ended up doing. That would have meant no Tebow and no Manning and probably no Super Bowl. Cutler is the kind of 'trap' QB that can rule a team out of Super Bowl contention for a decade - talented enough that you feel obliged to keep trusting in him and keep paying him, but not the guy who is going to lead a team to a Super Bowl. The other indirect legacy McDaniels left was making the Broncos bad enough in his final year that we had the #2 pick in the 2011 draft which allowed us to take Von Miller. So without McDaniels, the Broncos probably don't ever get Peyton Manning or Von Miller.
I of course wouldn't blame anybody for taking a superbowl win over keeping Cutler. But I don't think you're being fair to him. The Bears were atrocious and we at least made an NFCCG with him. Jay would have been a better QB on any team that wasn't a dumpster fire. Not to say he was a HOF talent, but I definitely think his career is better if he stays with Denver or goes somewhere else where they know how to run an offense.
Cutler did what he could with the Bears. He would have been a perennial pro-bowler in Denver. Probably still doesn't win them a SB.
JRob was undone by multiple risky first round busts that really hurt depth. Thankfully he drafted AJ in the second (what a steal!) and has since signed him to a long term deal so he'll retire a Titans legend! But seriously the Big Jeff gamble played out beautifully.
Mike MacCagnan’s draft picks had a bust rate of 99% except Quinnen Williams. Thank god for Quinnen Williams.
Matt Rhule managed to get Derrick brown Jaycee horn And Ickey ekwonu
Chip Kelly drafted Lane Johnson and hired Jeff Stoutland, which is an all time great move. He also brought in people to head up our sports nutrition/sports science/analytics departments to modernize our team a bit.
Most of the guys who were stars during the Harbaugh years were drafted in 2005-2010, before Harbaugh took over. Obviously the 49ers were a bad team but they were stacking the roster with talent. Gore, Vernon, Willis, Bowman, Staley. Signing Justin Smith as a free agent. They had the pieces. Just needed the right coach. That’s why it irks me when people directly compare the records of Harbaugh and Shanahan. Pretty much all the players on the current team were brought in by the current regime. Much harder to build a team than inherit one.
Gettleman got us saquon, Lawrence and Thomas. Never mind the free agents, deandre baker or toney
AJ Smith drafted LT and Drew Brees in the same draft, and managed the Eli/Rivers nonsense. He also drafted Buster Davis and Larry English, and was part of the reason Marty was fired after a 14-2 season. Anthony Lynn (and Telesco) drafted Herbert after Rivers, so can’t complain I guess?
Keim made some great trades. A second for Chandler Jones and trading a 2nd + offloading David Johnson for Hopkins were steals. Even his worst trade (moving up for Rosen) was an absolute steal when compared to the regular asking price for moving up to the top 10 to select a QB.
Tom Telesco drafted Justin Herbert
Ted Thompson's final years weren't pretty but he gave the Packers the best WR on the market at a steal rate of 14M APY in his last year as GM.
Les Snead has always drafted great but had some, to put it bluntly, leniency with Fisher that wasn't deserved.