Also from Breer (regarding some of our old friends)

[Mr. Scot]

From the same article as the other thread...

WASHINGTON'S WEALTH OF EXPERIENCE

If you’ve been around scouting types, you’ve heard this complaint in the past: General managers don’t get second chances the way head coaches do. And that grievance is, for the most part, rooted in truth.

Fired GMs don’t dive back into the director level of NFL scouting departments with nearly the same regularity that fired head coaches become coordinators again, and far more fired GMs than fired head coaches wind up out of football altogether.

That’s why Washington’s new structure intrigues me so much. Last year, between the nickname change and revelations of a toxic workplace (which went all the way up to the ownership suite), the organization went through as a full a reset as you’ll see in professional sports. A new coach, Ron Rivera, was ushered in to lead the football side; a new president, Jason Wright, was hired to lead the business side; and just about everything that long needed to be reckoned with was reckoned with.

Over the last two months, a second phase of that process was launched, with the team detonating the top of its scouting department and starting from scratch. In doing so, as I see it, they preyed on that no-second-chances-for-fired-GMs dynamic and maybe, just maybe, found a market inefficiency in rebuilding the personnel operation. Just consider …

• New GM Martin Mayhew was the Lions’ GM from 2009 to ‘15, building a playoff team in 2010, and one that went to the playoffs a year after his ouster.

• New EVP of football/player personnel Marty Hurney was the Panthers’ GM from 2002 to ‘12 and again from 2017 to ‘20, twice building Super Bowl teams.

• New director of pro personnel Chris Polian was the Colts’ GM from 2009 to ‘11, going to a Super Bowl and making the playoffs twice in that time.

• New senior director of player personnel Eric Stokes was assistant GM in Miami from 2014 to ‘15, and ultimately wound up out of the job as a result of GM Dennis Hickey being fired.

This is not usually how scouting departments are built. Normally, a new GM is hired, and younger guys connected to him come along with promotions. In this case, Washington has collected people who’ve been in these roles before and bring an ability to lean back on those experiences.

“This has come up several times in our conversations already, about things going on with the team currently, just in our meetings,” Mayhew said on Saturday. “Our experience in those conversations always comes up. Eric can say ‘When I was in Miami, this happened.’ Chris can say, ‘When I was in Indianapolis, this is how it played out.’ And I can talk about Detroit and Marty can talk about Carolina. So that experience is very valuable.

“We’ve all made mistakes. Anybody who’s had this job has made mistakes. And we’ve all learned from them. I think we do a very good job of bouncing ideas off each other. I think one good thing about all of us is we’re very opinionated. None of us hold our tongue or hold back. We all have opinions on things, and we will get them out on the table, and get them out and discuss them.”

“I certainly, speaking for myself, think it’s helped me,” Hurney said Friday. “And I’ve had two chances to do that. You start, when you first get let go, by looking at all the things you did wrong. And then after a while, you start looking at the things you did right, and you start getting more confident in the things that you did right. And you look at how to improve the things you did wrong. For me, it was a terrific help.”

On paper, Mayhew and Hurney are equals—both reporting to Rivera in Washington’s self-dubbed “coach-centric” model. And they swear to the fact that, in practice, it’s that way too.

So when I asked who’s in charge, I got a pretty straightforward answer.

“Ron’s in charge, actually,” Mayhew said. “Marty and myself both report to Ron. Ron has the ultimate say. He makes the final decision. It’s going to be the two of us working with Ron, making recommendations of what we think should happen. And Ron makes the ultimate decision.”

Mayhew added that, “Our jobs are very similar and very loosely-defined roles. There hasn’t been anything that’s [like] I’m definitely in charge of this area, Marty’s definitely in charge of this area. I think we work very well together.” And the truth is, if Mayhew (55) and Hurney (65) were younger and still climbing the ladder, or didn’t have a relationship, that might be a problem.

Age and experience have made each secure in who he is, and that brings us back to the benefit of having this sort of knowhow in the building. Along those lines, both guys brought specific examples to illustrate what they’d learned from previous failures as GMs.

For Hurney, it relates back to the clogged cap that helped lead to his initial ouster from the Panthers in 2012 and his relationship with then Carolina cap chief Rob Rodgers, who happens to be in Washington now, too.

“He has a very good feel for the numbers,” Hurney said. “Sometimes I think, at least in my case, I would get emotionally involved in trying to get a player, trying to make the team better, because that’s what you’re focused on—winning games. I learned that, Hey, listen, this is his area of expertise. He knows how to translate a player’s résumé to what he should make and the contract negotiation part of it. And I think he would tell you the second time around was much better. Overall, and big picture-wise, that’s what I’ve learned.

“People have their areas of expertise, and not that you don’t give your opinion, but you listen and let them do their jobs. That was one of the big things I learned from the first time around.”

Mayhew’s example wasn’t totally dissimilar—it also came over time, and proved true from one experience (Detroit) to another (San Francisco, where he was the last four years).

“One thing that I’ve learned is we have to be fully aligned and fully on the same page,” Mayhew said. “That’s not just coaches and the personnel department. I’m talking about the players have to be fully bought in, ownership has to be fully bought in. And I saw that firsthand in San Francisco in 2019, the way that season went, and also the start of this past season. Obviously didn’t go the way we wanted, but the alignment was definitely there.

“And everybody was on board. Everybody was doing their part in moving toward that common goal. You really can’t say that about the entire time that I was in Detroit. There were fits and starts. Times when things worked well and we were all communicating well and things were moving in the right direction. But it wasn’t consistent enough.”

In that way, Mayhew contended that he could connect the Super Bowl team he played on in Washington in 1991 and that San Francisco team of 28 years later. “That’s part of what excites me about working with Marty, working with Ron, is to see that process, see that setup happen again,” Mayhew said. “I want to be a part of it.”

And that’s really going to be happening in earnest in the coming days, as Rivera’s coaching staff starts presentations for the new scouting department, with plans to detail the schemes and spell out prototypes for every position, something that also highlights how early in the process of melding the operation together Washington really is.

But the hope is that, given the experience of the guys involved, all of this comes together relatively quickly. Because while on one hand, Hurney affirmed that being part of the reinvention of the Washington Football Team has special meaning to him and Mayhew, given their deep roots with the organization (Hurney being from the area and Mayhew having played there), Mayhew was quick to remind me this isn’t a total rebuild.

“I wouldn’t call it a blank canvas,” Mayhew said. “We’re not coming into a situation of a team that was 1–15 or 2–14 last year that has no talent. To me, that’s what a blank canvas is; you can start anywhere and put it together. I think we have some areas of the team that are very strong, and we’re going to build around those areas. … We’re not at a point where I was when I first took over in Detroit or when I first got to San Francisco. We’re much further advanced than that, and we just want to build on what we already have.”

Which, of course, is what someone who’s been there before might say.

[DFive]

The blind leading the blind. Ignorance is bliss. As cliché as those two statements are they hold so much truth after reading that article. I can’t wait to see the train wreck that is the Ron-centric model fueled by input from Hurney 3.0 and other castoffs. 

[joemac]

10 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

From the same article as the other thread...

WASHINGTON'S WEALTH OF EXPERIENCE

If you’ve been around scouting types, you’ve heard this complaint in the past: General managers don’t get second chances the way head coaches do. And that grievance is, for the most part, rooted in truth.

Fired GMs don’t dive back into the director level of NFL scouting departments with nearly the same regularity that fired head coaches become coordinators again, and far more fired GMs than fired head coaches wind up out of football altogether.

That’s why Washington’s new structure intrigues me so much. Last year, between the nickname change and revelations of a toxic workplace (which went all the way up to the ownership suite), the organization went through as a full a reset as you’ll see in professional sports. A new coach, Ron Rivera, was ushered in to lead the football side; a new president, Jason Wright, was hired to lead the business side; and just about everything that long needed to be reckoned with was reckoned with.

Over the last two months, a second phase of that process was launched, with the team detonating the top of its scouting department and starting from scratch. In doing so, as I see it, they preyed on that no-second-chances-for-fired-GMs dynamic and maybe, just maybe, found a market inefficiency in rebuilding the personnel operation. Just consider …

• New GM Martin Mayhew was the Lions’ GM from 2009 to ‘15, building a playoff team in 2010, and one that went to the playoffs a year after his ouster.

• New EVP of football/player personnel Marty Hurney was the Panthers’ GM from 2002 to ‘12 and again from 2017 to ‘20, twice building Super Bowl teams.

• New director of pro personnel Chris Polian was the Colts’ GM from 2009 to ‘11, going to a Super Bowl and making the playoffs twice in that time.

• New senior director of player personnel Eric Stokes was assistant GM in Miami from 2014 to ‘15, and ultimately wound up out of the job as a result of GM Dennis Hickey being fired.

This is not usually how scouting departments are built. Normally, a new GM is hired, and younger guys connected to him come along with promotions. In this case, Washington has collected people who’ve been in these roles before and bring an ability to lean back on those experiences.

“This has come up several times in our conversations already, about things going on with the team currently, just in our meetings,” Mayhew said on Saturday. “Our experience in those conversations always comes up. Eric can say ‘When I was in Miami, this happened.’ Chris can say, ‘When I was in Indianapolis, this is how it played out.’ And I can talk about Detroit and Marty can talk about Carolina. So that experience is very valuable.

“We’ve all made mistakes. Anybody who’s had this job has made mistakes. And we’ve all learned from them. I think we do a very good job of bouncing ideas off each other. I think one good thing about all of us is we’re very opinionated. None of us hold our tongue or hold back. We all have opinions on things, and we will get them out on the table, and get them out and discuss them.”

“I certainly, speaking for myself, think it’s helped me,” Hurney said Friday. “And I’ve had two chances to do that. You start, when you first get let go, by looking at all the things you did wrong. And then after a while, you start looking at the things you did right, and you start getting more confident in the things that you did right. And you look at how to improve the things you did wrong. For me, it was a terrific help.”

On paper, Mayhew and Hurney are equals—both reporting to Rivera in Washington’s self-dubbed “coach-centric” model. And they swear to the fact that, in practice, it’s that way too.

So when I asked who’s in charge, I got a pretty straightforward answer.

“Ron’s in charge, actually,” Mayhew said. “Marty and myself both report to Ron. Ron has the ultimate say. He makes the final decision. It’s going to be the two of us working with Ron, making recommendations of what we think should happen. And Ron makes the ultimate decision.”

Mayhew added that, “Our jobs are very similar and very loosely-defined roles. There hasn’t been anything that’s [like] I’m definitely in charge of this area, Marty’s definitely in charge of this area. I think we work very well together.” And the truth is, if Mayhew (55) and Hurney (65) were younger and still climbing the ladder, or didn’t have a relationship, that might be a problem.

Age and experience have made each secure in who he is, and that brings us back to the benefit of having this sort of knowhow in the building. Along those lines, both guys brought specific examples to illustrate what they’d learned from previous failures as GMs.

For Hurney, it relates back to the clogged cap that helped lead to his initial ouster from the Panthers in 2012 and his relationship with then Carolina cap chief Rob Rodgers, who happens to be in Washington now, too.

“He has a very good feel for the numbers,” Hurney said. “Sometimes I think, at least in my case, I would get emotionally involved in trying to get a player, trying to make the team better, because that’s what you’re focused on—winning games. I learned that, Hey, listen, this is his area of expertise. He knows how to translate a player’s résumé to what he should make and the contract negotiation part of it. And I think he would tell you the second time around was much better. Overall, and big picture-wise, that’s what I’ve learned.

“People have their areas of expertise, and not that you don’t give your opinion, but you listen and let them do their jobs. That was one of the big things I learned from the first time around.”

Mayhew’s example wasn’t totally dissimilar—it also came over time, and proved true from one experience (Detroit) to another (San Francisco, where he was the last four years).

“One thing that I’ve learned is we have to be fully aligned and fully on the same page,” Mayhew said. “That’s not just coaches and the personnel department. I’m talking about the players have to be fully bought in, ownership has to be fully bought in. And I saw that firsthand in San Francisco in 2019, the way that season went, and also the start of this past season. Obviously didn’t go the way we wanted, but the alignment was definitely there.

“And everybody was on board. Everybody was doing their part in moving toward that common goal. You really can’t say that about the entire time that I was in Detroit. There were fits and starts. Times when things worked well and we were all communicating well and things were moving in the right direction. But it wasn’t consistent enough.”

In that way, Mayhew contended that he could connect the Super Bowl team he played on in Washington in 1991 and that San Francisco team of 28 years later. “That’s part of what excites me about working with Marty, working with Ron, is to see that process, see that setup happen again,” Mayhew said. “I want to be a part of it.”

And that’s really going to be happening in earnest in the coming days, as Rivera’s coaching staff starts presentations for the new scouting department, with plans to detail the schemes and spell out prototypes for every position, something that also highlights how early in the process of melding the operation together Washington really is.

But the hope is that, given the experience of the guys involved, all of this comes together relatively quickly. Because while on one hand, Hurney affirmed that being part of the reinvention of the Washington Football Team has special meaning to him and Mayhew, given their deep roots with the organization (Hurney being from the area and Mayhew having played there), Mayhew was quick to remind me this isn’t a total rebuild.

“I wouldn’t call it a blank canvas,” Mayhew said. “We’re not coming into a situation of a team that was 1–15 or 2–14 last year that has no talent. To me, that’s what a blank canvas is; you can start anywhere and put it together. I think we have some areas of the team that are very strong, and we’re going to build around those areas. … We’re not at a point where I was when I first took over in Detroit or when I first got to San Francisco. We’re much further advanced than that, and we just want to build on what we already have.”

Which, of course, is what someone who’s been there before might say.

Those quotes from Hurney are hilarious.

[chknwing]

[CarolinaSunday]

This sounds like a disaster in the making. 

[Mr. Scot]

It's true that their personnel braintrust consists of three former GMs and one former assistant GM.

It's also true that all of them failed in those roles (one of them twice).

Yeah, it could work, but it's kinda like putting together a squad of Ryan Leaf, Trent Richardson, Freddie Mitchell and Tony Mandarich and thinking "this time it's gonna be different".

 

[hepcat]

Quote

New EVP of football/player personnel Marty Hurney was the Panthers’ GM from 2002 to ‘12 and again from 2017 to ‘20, twice building Super Bowl teams.

wait, what?

[Mr. Scot]

1 minute ago, hepcat said:

wait, what?

Yeah, that's an "oops".

[PhillyB]

imagine organizing your entire football operation around ron rivera's executive authority 

[Panthera onca]

Hurney is so full of poo that it defies belief.

[Mr. Scot]

14 minutes ago, joemac said:

Those quotes from Hurney are hilarious.

"And I think he would tell you the second time around was much better."

Uuummm

Edited February 22, 2021 by Mr. Scot

[manu4t]

40 minutes ago, hepcat said:

wait, what?

I was wondering about that one myself......

[Waldo]

I am going to love this show. Complete trainwreck incoming and its going to be beautiful. LoLz

[*FreeFua*]

1 hour ago, Mr. Scot said:

“I certainly, speaking for myself, think it’s helped me,” Hurney said Friday. “And I’ve had two chances to do that. You start, when you first get let go, by looking at all the things you did wrong. And then after a while, you start looking at the things you did right, and you start getting more confident in the things that you did right. And you look at how to improve the things you did wrong. For me, it was a terrific help.”

This is funny.

I’d love to hear him talk about the things that he thinks he did right

Edited February 22, 2021 by *FreeFua*