Yeah... this.

Yeah, I am.

When ****ing idiots like Walter can get 90% of the first rounder nailed, I think it's a bunch of bullshit.

Every year, the draft pretty much plays out like the internet draftniks predict. Then, when a player doesn't pan out, people give GM's a ****ing PASS!

"Well, everyone rated him highly." "He wasn't a reach". "Who else should he have taken?". Etc. and so on.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: IT'S ****ING FOOTBALL!

These kids have been scouted as far back as 7th GRADE! Most people have a good idea of where these guys should go, then the Combine pretty much cements it.

As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure why scouts are sent out because outside of a very few players each year, nothing is solidified until AFTER the Combines where guys are interviewed and tested.

Again, it's ****ing football, not rocket science. Jim Schaaf drafted excellent players for years but couldn't hire a coach for shit. And you want to tell me that he scouted colleges all over the country?

Then you've never had a good manager. Or you're unmanageable.

Managers aren't talentless hacks. Good managers are hard to find, and a lot of them suck.

In the case of a College Scouting Director, you have dozens of scouts trying to jockey for the 5 minutes of time Scott Pioli has to devote to them. These scouts are going to get their asses handed to them if Pioli passes on a good prospect in their territory, or if they make a wrong recommendation. These scouts recruit exactly the player that your CSD asks you to scout -- they work off of a very specific "playbook." The CSD is incredibly organized and makes sure the scouting operation is well run, that all the players have been thoroughly evaluated, and no stone is left unturned. And ultimately, they have to rifle through thousands of reports and make a very accurate read to Pioli in bullet points.

Maybe no team should have a college scouting director, since they're so unimportant and talentless. Or maybe NFL executives know a little bit more about how to run a team than a few of us sitting on our laptops.

When Carl Peterson was GM, they used to always say he controlled the first round and sometimes the second round. Beyond that, Chuck Cook was the only guy making the decisions. Of course draftniks will get the first round right. But that's not where scouts make their living. If you're a GM and can't draft better than Walter Football in the first round, you should be fired.

This couldn't be more wrong. Most good teams walk into the combine with a good idea of what they're looking for. The combine is there to find any positive or negative surprises. And combine interviews almost don't matter anymore. They're so coached up that even dumbass Terrell Pryor sounds halfway intelligent. Field scouts are tremendous at working their networks to really learn about a player's character and leadership. And when a player has a freakish combine performance, the field scouts have the evaluation to say that it's a complete fluke. I don't think it's a secret that the combine is incredibly overrated and that good teams rely a lot less on it.

If Jim Schaaf was a good drafter, then that's a credit to his scouting network.
You don't think the Patriots noticed a huge difference when they lost Thomas Dimitroff, and then magically became better when Caserio took over? You didn't notice how absolutely shitty the Chiefs drafted when Lynn Stiles was their personnel guy, and how much better it became when Kuharich took his place? Hell, Pioli went through the whole combine in 2009 -- you think that was a replacement for having a full year with your scouts?

You don't know what you're talking about. Managers are riders on the wagon I'm pulling, nothing more, and the more of your nonsense I read, the more convinced I become that you're one of these useless hacks. I don't konw what burger joint you're managing, but I work in a technical environment where the worker knows what the job is and the best way to do it, and I don't need some suit giving me pointers when he sounds like a lost child who wandered into a movie theater. Just go have your cigarette and let me get the job done.

Not every work place is set up like that, or has a full set of employees that know what the **** they are doing.

I gotta tell ya. Pepsi and captain morgan go pretty damn good together.

We have a thread for that ya know.

Then your first mistake is to assume that all environments are like the technical environment you work in. I worked in claims operations years and years ago. I didn't need a manager. Just someone who was quick and responsive. But don't make the ridiculous suggestion that all environments are like this. I manage in a Fortune 100 corporation. I've managed in cutthroat environments where if your people weren't delivering business results, you got drilled and they got drilled. I know that bad managers struggle to delegate work, and employees get under-utilized. I know that good managers dictate a clear strategy to their workers in an unclear environment.

I can promise you that right now, scouts have 20 minutes of information and Pioli has time to hear 2 minutes of it. And whereas Phil Emery probably took heat if a good prospect got passed up, now scouts will get grilled and maybe even fired.

Emery's job was to organize the scouts and take hours of information and condense it in to quick reads for Pioli. Not an easy job by any stretch. And definitely an important one.

imagine that

because this thread has a lot of merit

Matt Cassel to interim GM?

Here is a glimmer of hope in case Pioli was extended...

The thing that gets me is why in the hell would Clark even consider an extension with the way this season has started. That is just baffling that it could even be possible.

It's probably just completely false.