My wife does executive recruiting. A "headhunter" if you will. Her clients give her parameters of what they want in a client. Education, accomplishments and so on. She says when it comes down to deciding who to hire between very similar candidates the client usually picks the person they like the most. Analytics, success history and all that is important but the fact is people are people and they'll pick the person because they have a good feeling about them.
I have a hard time formulating a hot take on any of these guys. We generally have little to no idea on the decision making process of our own team that we obsess over 365 days out of the year, so I have no idea whether Seahawks guy had any actual role in the good decisions they’ve made the last few years. The Jennings signing is good work, obviously, but I could go either way on the Greenard trade, and Rob was the one who pushed the awful Thielen trade over the line, so his record isn’t flawless. I’d be fine with him taking over, though. If anything, he should have the benefit of knowing that he’ll still have a place in the building even if it doesn’t work out. Kwesi pushed in all of his chips before the chip pushing evidence was in, so you gotta wonder if he felt pressure to win now with the apparent tensions in the building. Can’t have your GM making short sighted decisions.
Brzezinski's role in August was to follow instructions, not come up with the plan himself. Clearly there was some disfunction at that point, but the buck stops with the person who is in charge at a given time. Brzezinski has done a very good job since being put in charge. I don't love the Jones and Wilson signings, but at those price points the downside/risk is minimal. There are concerns about Murray and Jennings, but again, at those dollars and one-year deals they were unequivocally great choices to make.
Agreed, we don't have enough information to evaluate any of the other candidates. A lot of guys who worked for Belichick (or to put it more accurately, were in the building/on the sideline with the best QB ever) have handfuls of rings and didn't succeed elsewhere. There is a lot of uncertainty when it comes to hiring a GM, especially when it's not an in-house successor.
The biggest key to having good drafts is having picks to use, especially in rounds 1-3. There are certain folks *cough* who repeatedly critiqued KAM's lighting draft capital on fire throughout his tenure. When it a hole, stop digging, which has now happened.
Spending money is a good thing, but it has to be spent intelligently. Keeping one's own great players is good. Spending too much (aka the winner's curse) for aging/hurt players that other teams were content to let walk ends poorly. Water under the bridge now, but it was an option to spend money keeping a guy named Hunter who had 27 sacks the last two years. . .
My wife does executive recruiting. A "headhunter" if you will. Her clients give her parameters of what they want in a client. Education, accomplishments and so on. She says when it comes down to deciding who to hire between very similar candidates the client usually picks the person they like the most. Analytics, success history and all that is important but the fact is people are people and they'll pick the person because they have a good feeling about them.
I have a hard time formulating a hot take on any of these guys. We generally have little to no idea on the decision making process of our own team that we obsess over 365 days out of the year, so I have no idea whether Seahawks guy had any actual role in the good decisions they’ve made the last few years. The Jennings signing is good work, obviously, but I could go either way on the Greenard trade, and Rob was the one who pushed the awful Thielen trade over the line, so his record isn’t flawless. I’d be fine with him taking over, though. If anything, he should have the benefit of knowing that he’ll still have a place in the building even if it doesn’t work out. Kwesi pushed in all of his chips before the chip pushing evidence was in, so you gotta wonder if he felt pressure to win now with the apparent tensions in the building. Can’t have your GM making short sighted decisions.
Brzezinski's role in August was to follow instructions, not come up with the plan himself. Clearly there was some disfunction at that point, but the buck stops with the person who is in charge at a given time. Brzezinski has done a very good job since being put in charge. I don't love the Jones and Wilson signings, but at those price points the downside/risk is minimal. There are concerns about Murray and Jennings, but again, at those dollars and one-year deals they were unequivocally great choices to make.
Agreed, we don't have enough information to evaluate any of the other candidates. A lot of guys who worked for Belichick (or to put it more accurately, were in the building/on the sideline with the best QB ever) have handfuls of rings and didn't succeed elsewhere. There is a lot of uncertainty when it comes to hiring a GM, especially when it's not an in-house successor.
There are two huge two takeaways:
The biggest key to having good drafts is having picks to use, especially in rounds 1-3. There are certain folks *cough* who repeatedly critiqued KAM's lighting draft capital on fire throughout his tenure. When it a hole, stop digging, which has now happened.
Spending money is a good thing, but it has to be spent intelligently. Keeping one's own great players is good. Spending too much (aka the winner's curse) for aging/hurt players that other teams were content to let walk ends poorly. Water under the bridge now, but it was an option to spend money keeping a guy named Hunter who had 27 sacks the last two years. . .