Hurney Legacy Good or Bad

[TylerVagyler]

2009:

Everette Brown (gave up a first round pick for this guy)

Sherrod Martin

Corvey Irvin

Mike Goodson

Tony Fiametta

Duke Robinson

Captain Munnerlyn

 

- Outside of Captain, all are trash.

 

2010:

Jimmy Clausen

Branden LaFell

Armanti Edwards (gave up a 2nd rounder to get)

Eric Norwood

Greg Hardy

David Gettis

Tony Pike

RJ Stanford

Robert McClain

 

- Absolutely terrible draft outside of Hardy

 

2011:

Cam Newton

Terrell McClain

Sione Fua

Brandon Hogan

Kealoha Pilares

Lawarence Wilson

Zach Williams

Lee Ziemba

 

- Cam was a great pick. Everyone else sucked.

 

These 3 drafts along with his spending spree hurt this franchise badly. To say Hurney was a good draft evaluator is a joke. Despite his F- performance in the post-lockout offseason, Hurney was known as a cap guy for good reason. Before those big deals were dished out he usually had the team in a good situation cap-wise. Sure he gave out a few bad contracts (every GM does) like the Delhomme deal but overall he did a good job. He should've been let go when Fox left. Seeing Fox leave, I think he felt the pressure from JR and went "all in" with the core we had. Unfortunately, that core wasn't good enough. At least not for the money they got.

[Cyberjag]

I did a similar analysis a couple years ago of all his draft picks.  What I found was that he absolutely nailed the first round, but in every other round he was just average.  People are quick to point to Dwayne Jarrett and Eric Shelton as examples of his drafting ability, but they forget about Ryan Kalil and Travelle Wharton at the same time.  His first round picks were almost always good, but the rest of them were hit on maybe 50% of the time (which is what you see around the league in general).

 

With that said, the Panthers scouting staff should get a lot of credit there.  And they have good continuity with Gettleman, so I'm expecting the first round trend to continue this year even though we pick late.

 

Initially Hurney did a great job at identifying holes and plugging them with free agents and the draft.  We went from 1-15 to the Super Bowl in two years, and if you remember we were generally expected to win a lot through at least 2006.  Then in 2008 he seemed to start two trends that pretty much spelled his end (or exposed his flaws, depending on how you want to look at it).  The first was to mortgage the future in an attempt to win the present.  We saw that with his trade to get Jeff Otah, and he did it again the next year to get Everette Brown. 

 

The second is kind of tied to the first in that he seemed totally unprepared for the Peppers mess (which, to be fair, was also caused by Peppers and his agent), because he showed that he was too loyal to "his guys" and was unprepared for them to not want to be here.  You could see that loyalty in the contracts he gave, but the real problem wasn't in the contracts so much as it was in trying to stick with the old guard players.  Every year he was here we were up against the cap, and every year he found money to do what he needed to do.  But when Delhomme was done, and Peppers left, and Richardson wanted the rookies to get more playing time, he was caught flatfooted--he just didn't have a good plan for the future.

 

I think the biggest damage done to the franchise was at Richardson's direction, but it landed us Cam.  And I also agree with the prior poster that Hurney should have been let go with Fox.  He wasn't up to rebuilding the team with a different coach, and it showed.

 

But overall as GMs go, he did a pretty good job for a while.  Right now he's getting blamed for everything that's gone wrong, which is silly, but in time I think that the mood toward him will soften.  It happened with Henning, and then with Fox, and it will happen for him too. 

[frash.exe]

Boom/bust designation due diligence by Hurney fans:

On linebackers:

Did he make like 100 tackles? Yes? Did we draft him? Yes? BOOM

On offensive tackles:

Did he make all the games? Barely a quarter? But did he look good when he was out there for like 30 minutes over the past two years? BOOM

On running backs:

How many years did he rush for over 1000 yards? Only 2 out of like 7? Good enough for me. BOOM

Hurney fans' perceptions of any player that fits any of the aforementioned criteria who were drafted by different teams and not by Hurney: LOL WAT A COLOSSAL BUST GLAD THAT IDIOT GM DOESNT RUN MY TAEM