The Years Of Marty Hurney

[Raleighcat83]

Dont get me wrong, I'd like to be an elite team too. I'd like to compete for Super Bowl titles year in and year out. But it's not just one guy that creates that. It's a whole front office and whole coaching staff, an entire roster and a little bit of luck. The Patriots are that kind of team because they have great scouts, great coaches, plus they took a flyer on a 6th round guy who turned out to be a future hall of famer. The Giants are that kind of team because they didn't fire the coach when the impatient, unsatisfied, refuse-to-settle-for-average segment of their fanbase wanted to. Then they got an overtime gift from Brett Farve in the NFC title game and a maybe-a-little-bit-lucky helmet catch and then a couple years later a fumble on a punt return in overtime by the Niners and the next thing you know they're an elite franchise. The question is, if we fire Marty Hurney will that get us closer to that point than we are now? Probably not. There aren't a bunch of elite NFL GMs sitting at home waiting on a phone call, most of them already have jobs. And because the circumstances differ so much from one team to the next, past success isnt a great predictor of future success(see Scott Pioli in KC). This team just went from a hopelessly inept 2-14 to an exciting 6-10 team that was fun to watch and competitive in almost all the losses. The are plenty of experts picking us to make the playoffs next year, we have an abundance of young talent, and yet there are people who can't resist calling for somebody to get fired. It's baffling to me.

PS:One of the guys calling out our GM is the dude who spent all last year trolling about how horrible his pick of Cam Newton was and how he should have taken Andy Dalton instead. Now he says Hurney should be fired. What?

[AceMan]

Hurney is a pretty cool guy

[unicar15]

The problem for me with these kind of threads is lack of objectivity and totally biased subjective evaluations.You start off with the record and a few facts but the rest of it is totally opinion and supposition with little fact to back it up.

For example Hurney did everything he could to keep Peppers including being willing to pay whatever it took. Peppers did not want to be here and left for personal reasons not football ones. I have my theory but will keep it to myself. Just 1 of a dozen inaccuracies which renders the post useless to me.

The facts are in the original post...that he has been an average GM. I'm not saying he's the worst GM in football but if you want to compete for championships you have to compare yourself to the current champions. You saw the results when I did that. I pointed out that Hurney has a great track record in round 1. But he has a mediocre track record in round 2-3 and a flat out terrible track record in rounds 4-7 in comparison to recent champions. Some of that I put on John Fox and the fact that we had a mediocre QB for the majority of Hurney's tenure. But guess what...HE is one of the people in charge of extending or releasing that mediocre coach/QB tandem so some of the blame falls on him.

People can say the free agent contracts he's handed out have been good but for the most part they have been a mirror image of his draft...conservative and without adequate results. The Deangelo contract was terrible. Not because Deangelo is a bad player but becuase we have a more talented (IMO) running back who is younger coming in behind him AND we hired an offensive coordinator who likes to put the ball in the hands of the running backs 12 times per game instead of 25 times per game. If it was the other way around then the Dwill contract would have been accepted. The fact of the matter is that we thre 40 million bucks at a running back who is at the bottom of the league in touches among starters and it caused us to miss out on positions of need such as WR (Vincent Jackson) and CB (Johnathan Joseph). Who do you think would help our team more right now? A running back that is used sparingly or a pro bowl corner?

I'm not going to go back and highlight every other decision that I have already pointed out and maybe it was a little unfair but instead of looking at the Dwill deal, the Delhomme deal, the terrible record in rounds 4-7 of the draft, people come on here and try to defend Mike Wahle??? Really? The guy got 30 million bucks for being a mediocre offensive linemen. If that deal and the Lucas deal are the only two things people can point at and disagree with then I think I've made my case.

Also...if you go back and compare the drafts between the panthers and available talent you'll see that I left off a bunch of guys who could have been great picks. I focused on positions that were passed on earlier in the draft and then addressed later in the same draft with a bad pick. Or picks that were addressed early in the draft and Hurney missed the better player later. Not saying that other GMs don't do it...because they do all the time. But if you're the Giants GM and you make a bad pick...you still have two superbowls and a lot of playoff appearances to back up your work. Hurney doesn't have that...he has 3 playoff seasons in 10 years.

[FirstRoundPick]

Very easy to say someone whiffed on talent after seeing what panned out afterwards.

It is also easy to say someone hasn't been building a successful team after they haven't been building a successful team.

[unicar15]

It is also easy to say someone hasn't been building a successful team after they haven't been building a successful team.

Exactly...people can defend hurneys drafts but they can't defend the results, which have been average at best.

[Stroupe-a-loop]

The guy was signed to the richest interior lineman contract ever and played 3 seasons! How is that a solid investment? He failed a physical for the Seahawks and then we signed him if I remember correctly. Didnt he play on the line with Walter Jones and Steve Hutchinson? If that was the case then he's going to look good..probably better than he actually was.

You guys are pretty lenient on a GM of a team that has had 3 really good seasons in his 10 year tenure.

The problems with the chronology of this is fairly staggering. Maybe read up a bit before you go "rabble, rabble, rabble!"

[Stroupe-a-loop]

I love his "terrible record in rounds 4-7" because good gms get a pro bowler every year. This is silly goose stuff.

[FirstRoundPick]

I've long been a Hurney supporter. The question to me isn't putting up a long list of his mistakes, but comparing that list to other GM's. Every GM has misses, but many do not have the hits that Hurney does.

I don't think I'd put Mike Wahle and Ken Lucas in the misses section either. They were key starters for a while here who just declined as the years went by. It happens.

Hurney not upgrading the TE position? He drafted Jeff King, Donte Rosario, and Gary Barnidge back to back in the 5th round. Granted, that's not a huge commitment to upgrading anything, but it's something. Besides, Fox was the reason the TE's were never used much, not Hurney. We could've had Antonio Gates and he would've put up the same numbers as Rosario in Fox's offense.

Has he made some mistakes? Sure. Many. But he's been here for 10 years; of course he's going to make some mistakes in a decade. But he's also never missed in the 1st round and given us a pretty solid base of talent to work with. Our problem has been the QB position and inconsistent coaching more than anything. Hopefully we have both solved and can move on to actually developing some of the talent Hurney's brought in. I don't think some folks realize how little Fox was really interested in developing young players the way Rivera is. He wanted a guy to be able to play day one and if they needed any kind of coaching up or development, they rode the bench.

Just look at Charles Johnson, James Anderson, & DeAngelo Williams. None of them would've been given a chance to be starters if Fox would've been allowed to have his way. Hurney had to pry DeShaun Foster out of Fox's hands in order for Williams to get his shot and he responded with 1500 yards and 20 TD's. It took losing Peppers for Johnson to get on the field; you're telling me we couldn't have started him over Tyler Brayton? James Anderson as well; it took T.D. going down for him to get his shot.

All those situations were a direct result of poor talent evaluation and an unwillingness to trust young players by Fox. Hurney gave him the talent, but if Fox had gotten his way we'd have never even found out they could play until their contracts expired and they signed elsewhere and broke out.

Name 5 people who signed somewhere else and broke out. Witherspoon and Peppers already "broke out" eventhough I dont blame them for not signing Peppers for that $.

[FirstRoundPick]

It's been proven time and time again that a great running game, and great linebacking (43) core do not equal consistent success in today's NFL. No reason to argue this.

Marty hasn't been with the team for 15 years. He has not only spent half of his 1st rounders on LB's and RB's, he has also signed Beason to the largest ILB contract in the NFL. Has extended Davis with a pretty big contract after 2 ACL's. Has extended Anderson. Extended Morgan after never playing a full season. Signed DWill to a top 5 RB salary to be a back up. And brought in another RB in Tolbert.

It's a little ridiculous.

The first sentence is what people don't understand.

[Argus Plexus]

AE was the biggest facepalm ever.

[Raleighcat83]

If you compare our front office only to the top two or three front offices in the league over the last few seasons, ours is not as good. This is obviously true for the 30 or so teams that aren't in the top 2 or 3 over the last couple years. But it seems silly to suggest that all those teams should fire their front office staffs. People don't want to hear this because we like to have a cause and effect for everything and always have someone to praise or blame, but there's a huge amount of luck involved in drafting players, especially in late rounds. Thats not to say there's no skill involved, but let's look at he Giants: the current Giants GM is Jerry Reese, he took over a couple years ago for Ernie Accorsi, who he had worked under. Accorsi and Reese built the current two time champion Giants, but they've been in place since 1998. The Giants from 98-2006 were not a great team, in fact, they were a lot like the Panthers from 02-2011, a few playoff appearances, one Super Bowl loss, several losing seasons. Someone like unicar15 or ROCKnROLLA would have called for firings throughout that time. popcornpopper would have trolled message boards saying the Giants should have picked JP Losman and a DT instead of Eli Manning. But the Giants had a solid foundation, and when they hit on a little luck, both in the draft and on the field, they became the franchise we compare the Panthers to today.

[panthers55]

The facts are in the original post...that he has been an average GM. I'm not saying he's the worst GM in football but if you want to compete for championships you have to compare yourself to the current champions. You saw the results when I did that. I pointed out that Hurney has a great track record in round 1. But he has a mediocre track record in round 2-3 and a flat out terrible track record in rounds 4-7 in comparison to recent champions. Some of that I put on John Fox and the fact that we had a mediocre QB for the majority of Hurney's tenure. But guess what...HE is one of the people in charge of extending or releasing that mediocre coach/QB tandem so some of the blame falls on him.

People can say the free agent contracts he's handed out have been good but for the most part they have been a mirror image of his draft...conservative and without adequate results. The Deangelo contract was terrible. Not because Deangelo is a bad player but becuase we have a more talented (IMO) running back who is younger coming in behind him AND we hired an offensive coordinator who likes to put the ball in the hands of the running backs 12 times per game instead of 25 times per game. If it was the other way around then the Dwill contract would have been accepted. The fact of the matter is that we thre 40 million bucks at a running back who is at the bottom of the league in touches among starters and it caused us to miss out on positions of need such as WR (Vincent Jackson) and CB (Johnathan Joseph). Who do you think would help our team more right now? A running back that is used sparingly or a pro bowl corner?

I'm not going to go back and highlight every other decision that I have already pointed out and maybe it was a little unfair but instead of looking at the Dwill deal, the Delhomme deal, the terrible record in rounds 4-7 of the draft, people come on here and try to defend Mike Wahle??? Really? The guy got 30 million bucks for being a mediocre offensive linemen. If that deal and the Lucas deal are the only two things people can point at and disagree with then I think I've made my case.

Also...if you go back and compare the drafts between the panthers and available talent you'll see that I left off a bunch of guys who could have been great picks. I focused on positions that were passed on earlier in the draft and then addressed later in the same draft with a bad pick. Or picks that were addressed early in the draft and Hurney missed the better player later. Not saying that other GMs don't do it...because they do all the time. But if you're the Giants GM and you make a bad pick...you still have two superbowls and a lot of playoff appearances to back up your work. Hurney doesn't have that...he has 3 playoff seasons in 10 years.

You missed a lot of good picks, failed to acknowledge all the guys he has found who have been great in the later rounds or were undrafted free agents. You failed to mention what a coup he had getting Delhomme who was a perennial backup and led us to the Superbowl in his first season instead focusing on a resigning which was for cap reasons and largely included money he was going to get anyway.

Then to focus on who we could have drafted and skipped on in hindsight is more than ridiculous. You could second guess every GM and point out all the people they failed to draft, etc.

No one is saying that Hurney is great but your hatchet job was hardly objective or indicative of who he has been for us.

As for building a consistent winner, it takes a franchise quarterback. New England and New York have had success because of their quarterback more than any other factor. I suspect that we will do just that now that we have drafted Newton.

[TANTRIC-NINJA]

Dont get me wrong, I'd like to be an elite team too. I'd like to compete for Super Bowl titles year in and year out. But it's not just one guy that creates that. It's a whole front office and whole coaching staff, an entire roster and a little bit of luck. The Patriots are that kind of team because they have great scouts, great coaches, plus they took a flyer on a 6th round guy who turned out to be a future hall of famer. The Giants are that kind of team because they didn't fire the coach when the impatient, unsatisfied, refuse-to-settle-for-average segment of their fanbase wanted to. Then they got an overtime gift from Brett Farve in the NFC title game and a maybe-a-little-bit-lucky helmet catch and then a couple years later a fumble on a punt return in overtime by the Niners and the next thing you know they're an elite franchise. The question is, if we fire Marty Hurney will that get us closer to that point than we are now? Probably not. There aren't a bunch of elite NFL GMs sitting at home waiting on a phone call, most of them already have jobs. And because the circumstances differ so much from one team to the next, past success isnt a great predictor of future success(see Scott Pioli in KC). This team just went from a hopelessly inept 2-14 to an exciting 6-10 team that was fun to watch and competitive in almost all the losses. The are plenty of experts picking us to make the playoffs next year, we have an abundance of young talent, and yet there are people who can't resist calling for somebody to get fired. It's baffling to me.

PS:One of the guys calling out our GM is the dude who spent all last year trolling about how horrible his pick of Cam Newton was and how he should have taken Andy Dalton instead. Now he says Hurney should be fired. What?

Totally agreed with this post. GM is a thankless job..when we spent money on Mike Whale, Ken Lucas, and the center we had lukewarm results. I think they learned that when you sign Free Agent guys post 27 yrs of age in their career..they have played their best ball for another team. Now its looking for the best bargin in F. A. and retaing the asssessed core of the team.

[pOpCoRnPoPpEr]

Fans were ready to run Hurney out of town alone with John Fox just one short season ago. This was of course before Cam galvanized the franchise fanbase. Drafting Cam has pulled Hurney away from the edge in the eyes of many Panther fans. If winning season aren't forthcoming i wonder how long that will last?