Smart NFL General Manager Decisions
Blaine Gabbert has a job. Lol. The Arizona Cardinals signed Yo Gabba Gabba to a one year deal to duke it with Drew Stanton for the right to play when Carson Palmer gets murdered by week 6. I guess good for him? For the first time in his career, Blaine Gabbert seems to be exactly where he should be: fighting for the right to be a backup instead of a janitor. Maybe the Cardinals General Manager is the smart one here.
The first panel above is mostly something I’ve seen thrown sometimes. Usually based around in arguments by the “faithful” type of fan who seems to think GMs aren’t actually people and because they have achieved this job they are automatically incredibly smart and always knowledgeable. Until they aren’t of course, and then the demands for firings begin. GMs are just people. They are affected by dumb biases (Seriously Kaep deserves a job if Gabbert gets one) and make dumb decisions based on poor information all the time. GMs get portrayed or seen by a lot of people as these puppet masters, manipulating everything, strategically using press conferences and statements, political maneuvering. Everything is a smokescreen, GMs are incredibly smart blah blah blah.
GMs are certainly better at what they do than me or you, but they are just people. People with dumb beliefs that get outsmarted and proven wrong by players and such all the time. The rejoicing from Colts players after Grigson got fired should really say everything you need to know if someone ever tries to argue that (player) isn’t signed for purely football reasons. Grisgon was a huge douche. Scott Pioli was apparently a massive control freak who spied on his own people. I read that some GMs even check reddit of all places to get a gauge on fanbase reactions because they don’t even know themselves. To be fair, I saw that on Reddit, so it might have just been reddit patting itself on the back because lord knows if reddit is good at something it’s thinking that reddit is great and cool and original.
I didn’t really have a solid concrete point to make this one, I just dealt with a fan with this particular outlook recently and it had me thinking bout GMs. In case you haven’t noticed, most of these blog posts are pretty much just late night stream of consciousness “Gotta write something before I go to bed” stuff. 90% of each post on average goes into the comic itself.
If ever there was a riddle that would stop the Mono, it would be “who gave Gabbert a job”
Yessssssss
“Why did the dead quarterback cross the road? Because he was stapled to the chicken!”
I’ll take Crappy Quarterbacks for $100, Alex
Only somewhat related, but…
I still stand by the idea that if put in the right system Matt Moore could have been decent. And given the same thing Vince Young could have been spectacular.
Gabbert is from St. Louis. His existence is just another loss for St. Louis football.
Cutler deserved a QB job before Kaep and Gabbert (although I agree that Kaep was better than Gavbaet, but not by a lot; like my be Kaep should get mabye a little more than Geno Smith money, Gabbert got what he deserved, and Cutler should have gotten 7 mil), but that didn’t happen.
Speaking of Geno Smith, he was pretty good, scoring 9 TDs (although I didn’t mention it). Here’s the week 5 arena football recap: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YGlRgEYXVnA
Both of week 6’s games [Philly @ Baltimore (AFL Live, Monumental Sports Network, and Comcast on tape delay at 3am tomorrow) and Tampa Bay @ Washington (CBS Sports Network)] start at 7pm tonight. Also, Philly is the first team to be favored by 20+ points by oddsmakers. ‘joy’.
Completely agree. Heard someone make this argument recently about the Bears and Ryan Pace to defend the Trubisky decision. Apparently to some people, having the title of GM is all you need to make infallible decisions.
Also just about anything done by Cleveland Browns, especially drafting Weeden on first round. Also Eagles making dumb moves. For baseball, Frank Lane making trades for attention.
I think talking heads are the only ones who tried to justify drafting Weeden. I don’t know any Browns fans who liked the pick when it happened.
But it sucked because it felt inevitable.
There was even an article trying to justify by comparing him to Staubach because of their age, ignoring that Staubach start playing in the NFL late because he was serving in Vietnam.
Weeden? How about Johnny Cokeball two years later?
At least that draft gave us some classic Mike Polk Jr. skits. He didn’t made fun of Weeden that much surprisingly enough side from using a clip from the 1930s NFL era to “show case” Weeden’s highlights.
For a less humorous example, cutting Phil Simms after 1993 to justify Dave Brown…
Kaepernick lost his job mid season to Gabbert 2 years ago, then couldn’t win it back until mid season last year. He’s a bad QB. If he was actually good, he wouldn’t be “blackballed” someone would take him even with some fan outcry.
How many GMs are kids of NFL executives or other nepotism?
I hate it when people say stuff like “well if X player can get a job then Y player should too he’s better. It doesn’t make any sense. Yo Gabba Gabbert was signed for peanuts to compete for a backup job. I don’t think Kaep would sign for that situation, nor do I think that he should.
Now… if only Gabbert was starting on Week 12 of the regular season… Wouldn’t that be a weird matchup? XD
I think certain general managers deserve that constant benefit of the doubt. Bill Belichick is three steps ahead of everyone else, if he makes a headscratcher, I trust him to know more about football than I do. Ozzie Newsome, Thomas Dimitroff, Kevin Colbert, John Elway, and John Schneider aren’t as infallible to me as Belichick, but I still tend to give them the benefit of the doubt too. After those six, it’s a bit murkier. Those six I’m usually going to assume know better than I do though, even if I disagree with what they do.
That’s fair. An established track record speaks volumes. What I don’t get is when a GM doesn’t have a history of success (or possibly any history period, as they’re a newly minted GM) and people treat them like a savvy veteran.
Like with anything else in life, a good reputation follows from good work, not the other way around.
I think a lot of that comes down to a few things:
1. Lets fans have hope. If your team is replacing their GM, or your GM doesn’t have a history of success, your team probably isn’t going to be very good. When you’re a fan of a team that seems to be without direction, it’s a lot easier to give yourself hope that they know more than you and it’ll all work out when they go onto the field than it is to accept that rebuilds take time even in the best cases.
2. Lets talking head cover their asses. It’s a lot easier to say “I disagreed with what they’re doing, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. Looks like I was right!” than it is to say “I thought X was smoking crack when they drafted this player who just won MVP. I was very wrong and now viewers are going to question what I say regularly.”
3. Lets fans cover their asses. Again, it’s a lot easier to justify having faith in someone to do their job well than it is to admit you were completely wrong when you disagreed with someone being paid millions to successfully do something you thought you knew about. If you’re going to get it wrong – and we all do at some point, nobody bats 1.000 – it’s a lot easier to justify misplaced faith as “Well I thought he was the right guy for the job” or “I didn’t like it but I trusted the process” than it is to justify unwarranted scrutiny as “Well I guess they’re smarter than I am” or “I guess I don’t know football as well as I thought”
http://www.cleveland.com/livingston/index.ssf/2012/06/old_rookie_roger_staubach_prov.html
The guy was based off from maxalvis in the comments section wasn’t it? 😀