What is your impression of Jeff Ireland as a GM ?

The interesting thing is what is happening in baseball. You have GM's who are being hired from Harvard, Yale - basically out of the Ivy League, instead of former players and/or scouts. The game has changed and how players are evaluated has changed. Now, obviously, baseball is not football and vice versa, but I feel like at some point we could see a similar change in philosophy regarding how players are drafted. One thing the NFL has (conveniently) is their own personal, free minor league system in the NCAA whereas baseball does not.

 

Exactly Clean...who's to say. That's been my point.

 

So you mean, that had I taken that job back in 93' I would have been ruining teams all this time till some geek got me fired?

 

Depending on what team you worked for, probably. Dems the breaks.

I'm actually conflicted because I do agree with you that it's not a science, because any time you're dealing with human beings there is always the human element that can **** up your perfect science, but at the same time certain teams have adhered to certain systems and it's worked out pretty well for them.

What we need is one of those machines like they had in GATTACA where it printed out everyone's statistics like intelligence, athleticism, etc. as soon as they are born.

 

And you also have Pat Riley, a HOF player and coach, pulling off one of the best team building coups of all time. Ozzie Newsome is a former player, Jerry Reese is a former coach and scout, and there are guys who become successful GMs without playing or coaching a snap. There's no right way to do it. But it's pretty funny that guys who can do a better job than professional GMs would rather sit here and chat it up with noobs like me when they could be making millions building Super Bowl caliber teams in Davie.

 

I was offered an assistant Regional Scout Job for the Caribbean, based in the Dom. Rep. for the Chicago White Sox. I am trying to think back, which players came from the Dom. Rep in that time and how it correlated with the White Sox needs.

BTW, my friend took the exact same job with the Montreal Expos, and within 2 weeks of being hired, he wrote a report detailing the best outfield prospect in a generation, with a suggestion to devote over 75% of their foreign signing budget on this player. When he turned in his report, they told him that they already had an agreement in place before he was hired. That guy was Vladimir Guerrero.

It was his first scouting assignment. Pretty cool huh? He was not the guy that discovered him..but he sure was the guy that the big club used to create a smoke screen around.

 

News flash: you don't really know that.

It could be that one player isn't good enough, and the rest, when you compare them to the other teams in the league, are.

If you haven't noticed by now, the quarterback's play is very strongly associated with winning in this league. Your roster could be excellent, and if your quarterback is not, you're going to struggle.

It could entirely be the case that Jeff Ireland has done an adequate or better job compiling the roster, and that the absence of an adequate quarterback is something he is not responsible for.

You really need to get your thinking a bit more sophisticated on this issue before you start communicating in a condescending manner (i.e., "news flash"). It's a real turn-off to any further discussion when someone who is thinking so simplistically is also being condescending.

 

Then you have guys like Michael Jordan...

No one is saying that former players CAN'T be successful GM's. That's not even up for debate. But I think it would be naive to think that with all the information out there nowadays that a regular person couldn't assemble a successful team. I think if one were knowledgeable enough it would be possible. I mean, how do people who didn't play the game become scouts in the first place? Everyone has to start somewhere.

 

That's pretty cool. A friend of mine was offered a scouting job with the Eagles, but turned it down. He's a doctor now. Idiot.

 

And that's not condescending? It's a full on insult, but it's ok, I don't take it personally.

First, I agree that good QB play is very important to winning and that we haven't had good QB play since Penny. You absolve Ireland of responsibility for this for reasons which you don't share which likely don't exist. But regardless, yes, a good QB covers alot of holes.

However, even teams with mediocre QBs can make the playoffs, have winning seasons if they are really good elsewhere (see NYJ 2 of 3 years, Cincy last season, etc.) Since we haven't sniffed the playoffs, it seems reasonable to believe that the rest of the roster isn't quite up to snuff and that it isn;t good enough to make up for poor or mediocre QB play.

All of that is on Ireland.

 

BTW, that job?

In 1993, they offered 26k a year, and a $50 (voucher) a day per diem.

At the time, I made almost double that, and was paying for my college, so I turned it down.

I have been successful in my field ever since.

and yes, you are damn right I regret turning them down.

BTW, quick research...

the Big signings at that time, would have been: Manny Aybar, Tony Batista, Luis Castillo, Bartolo Colon', and the biggest one of them all Octavio Dotel (this guy had everybody after him). You got one of those guys, you would have been a big shot. I would have gotten them ALL. DISCOUNTED.

 

So then please explain how this team went 6-3 last year when Matt Moore's QB rating was 97.

 

Truth be told, a 97 QB rating should correlate to a win percentage higher than .666

So they underachieved.

 

After an 0-7 start, of which Matt Moore was a part of 4 losses, it doesn't really matter. Matt Moore went 6-6 as a starter.

And sure, when we played a bunch of other crappy teams who also had nothing to play for we won some games. That's nice and all but we are also arguably worse today then we were then when we also weren't very good.

We've subtracted Marshall and Vontae and benched that QB who supposedly was good. We're now 0-1 and we'll see what happens.

I'll ask you a question, was the 2008 11-5 team really good or did Penny just cover up alot of weaknesses going against an easy schedule?

 

I'm not arguing anything about Matt Moore. I'm arguing the strength of the rest of the roster, and how it's not appreciably worse than a playoff team when an adequate QB is present.

And those moves represent Ireland's flexibility with regard to the preferences of his new head coach, which is actually a good thing.

No team is "really good" without a good QB. The 2008 team's roster was good enough to make the playoffs when it had good QB play.

You could make a case against Ireland if you had any evidence to show that the team doesn't play well enough to make the playoffs even when it has an adequate QB, but you don't.

 

Considering we've only had good QB play once (and Penny was historically good that year, particularly with the lack of turnovers) I don't have any evidence.

What I do have evidence of is that with average to below average QB play this roster wasn't just "not make the playoffs" bad, they were downright terrible.

And simply being able to make the playoffs once in a blue moon isn't the end of the matter. Again, I assume the goal is to win the Super Bowl, and to do that you need top flight QB play, plus multiple pro bowl caliber players at other positions. We don't have that

 

The difference between a .667 winning percentage and whatever winning percentage a 97 QB rating correlates with isn't enough to make the case that Ireland is a bad GM.

I mean come on already, it's not like a 97 QB rating is associated with a winning percentage of .750, and the roster Ireland compiled was just SO poor that all it could muster was a record below .500.

The way the team performed when it had adequate QB play supports Jeff Ireland's adequate compilation of the rest of the roster far more than it argues against it.

 

You'll find that when the rest of the league gets the kind of QB play the Dolphins have had, it doesn't do significantly better.

 

it is very difficult to look that up..but a quick search finds that it actually does correlate to a win percentage around .750...LOL!

 

Of the 2008 team....in all honesty I believe it was far worse than this one. We were lucky enough to strike gold with the surprise of the Wildcat to give us the boost we needed. Once it was figured out we were terrible.

 

C'mon, that's just ridiculous. 7-9, 7-9 and 6-10 is not "downright terrible." It's just not.

The 2009 team went 7-9 after losing its starting QB in week 3 and having to go with a QB who had never played in the NFL. In going 7-9, that team lost 4 games by a TD or less, including one to AFC Champion Indy. A blatant bad call on the Sharper fumble was the main thing that stopped the Dolphins from beating the SB Champ Saints.

The 2010 team went 7-9 after losing 3 of its games by a FG or less. One of the losses was to the AFC Champ Steelers on the ridiculous Roethlisberger goal line fumble call. That team beat SB Champ Green Bay at Lambeau.

The 2011 team went 6-10 with 5 of those losses by a FG or less. One of those 3 pt losses was to eventual SB champ NYG. Another was to AFC Champ NE.

Losses are losses, but your claim that those teams were downright terrible is downright absurd.

 

Most games in the NFL are close. Something like 60% of games are decided by a touchdown or less. Teams that are good win alot of those games. Teams that are bad do not.

The fact that we have been in a bunch of close games over the last 3 years isn't evidence that we're good. The fact that we didn't win many of them is evidence that we're bad.

 

And I suspect most GMs are "close" too, and that the real driving force in this league is whether you have a good enough quarterback.

 

No they they can't.

What you can do in reality is unscientifically pick names off of a framework someone else put together, and through blind luck and confirmation bias develop delusions of grandeur. If they put you in a cave with game film, interviews, and work-outs of all the draft eligible prospects and have you put together a draft, the result would be somewhere between Dave Wannstedt and random number generation. Without the work that other people do, you wouldn't know Jake Long's *** from Wayne Hunter's elbow.

You get a tremendous amount of information from "experts" like Mel Kiper and Mike Mayock, who in turn are leveraging their contacts and inferences from the teams to come up with a an idea who will go where. You taking that information, deciding you like a player off of your dubious qualifications, and then being reinforced off off that players success doesn't mean you made a good decision or had any idea what you are talking about. It means you rode someone else's coattails, not that you can do the job.

 

Yes, there are a lot of close games in the NFL. The reason is parity. Parity means that the talent level among NFL teams is pretty close, including the Dolphins.

Close games aren't lost because of lack of talent. They are close because the talent is comparable. They are won and lost based on execution at critical times (espcially in QB play), coaching decisions and, often, luck.

And we did win a lot of close games. From 2008 to 2011, the Dolphins won 19 games by a TD or less.

The last 3 years the Dolphins were slightly below average as a team and their record reflects that. But slightly below average is not "downright terrible" by any definition. And overall the Dolphins got what I think was below average QB play and below average coaching. Had those facts been better, it's hardly a stretch to say the Dolphins would have been a better than average team and a playoff contender.

 

And do you think Jeff Ireland does this work? Or a wide team of scouts who then collect all of the necessary information which gets handed over to a huge team of low-level workers and interns who then cut up the games into 2 hour reels of every snap the player made throughout the season.

He has all this and it still only took me viewing some highlight reels and a couple Texas and Penn State games to realize you don't pass on Earl Thomas when you have a gaping hole at Safety to collect yet another 3-4 DE who can't really rush the passer all that well.

I think everyone forgets to realize that Jeff Ireland doesn't work alone. He has an endless amount of resources that make his job easier. He probably has salary cap guys, an entire scouting team, interns and low-level techs that could get him a cut up of every snap that any given player played in a season at the drop of a hat.

 

Ok, you've convinced me. A team that started a season 0-7 was not terrible.

I'm making reservations for New Orleans and New York next year right now. Get your hotels and flights booked now

 

Why even have records that aren't just win super bowl or not?

Everyone but the Giants sucked last year.

 

Uh..no. I am not comparing Jeff Ireland to some dude in his basement watching espn.

I am talking about that dude having the same resources as Ireland having better results.

Because your random number generator doesn't discriminate.

 

There's a lot of truth in what you are saying, but I don't agree with your overall conclusion because I think it misrepresents what a GM does. A GM isn't locked in a cave with game film. He isn't left alone without a staff of advisors and talent evaluators. He isn't the one who pores over hours of tape of DIII prospects to "find" the unpolished diamonds. He has a whole staff of people who do that stuff. Whether it is Kiper or Mayock or just people on his own staff, he has people trying to figure out who will go where. And he has the same exposure to Kiper, Mayock and others that the casual draftnik does. What everyone judges a GM on is not how well he could sit in a cave with game film and break down players' strengths and weaknesses, but on the decisions he makes based on the all of the sources of information available to him. A lot of people can do that and a lot of them can do it better than a lot of GMs do.

The truth is that if you picked a random NFL team and went back and "re-ran" that teams draft over a period of years simply picking the highest rated player available on just about any draft commentators top players list (e.g., Kiper, Mayock, McShay, etc.) you'd get similar overall results to what those teams get. Some years would be better and some would be worse. Jimmy Johnson was widely praised in 1997 for getting Madison in the 2nd and JT in the 3rd. Many people look back at that as great drafting. And it was, to a degree. But those were guys that several of the draft commentators back then had as top 15 talents in that draft. Had the Dolphins simply drafted systematically from Joel Buchsbaum's top player list they would have still gotten Madison and JT. And the rest of their draft that year would have been even better than what JJ did.

For all we know, some top GMs may be relaying heavily on the draft commentators. And who cares, as long as they are making good decisions.

 

The team that started the season 0-7 was playing terribly at that time, but it wasn't untalented. That is why it won 6 of its last 9 games.

 

That's not what I meant and I suspect you know that, but whatever.

A team that starts 0-7 isn't good, ok. Can we agree on this relatively uncontroversial point?

 

Maybe we won 6 of our last 9 because we played other crappy teams and had zero pressure to do anything.

We still lost to every decent team we played, unless you want to count the Jets as a decent team.

And we are worse now than we were then.

 

Every team who didn't win sucks the same, is precisely what you've been arguing.

 

BS. These players are professionals and had plenty to play for, including jobs, contracts, pride, etc.

We'll see if we are worse now than we were then. I guess I don't have your knowledge of the future to make that call after 1 game.

From a true talent perspective, the only real position that we have meaningfully downgraded is at Brandon Marshall's spot. Some will argue Vontae too, although the coaches don't seem to think Richard Marshall is a downgrade at all. I came across an interesting stat on Brandon Marshall's time as a Dolphin -- the Dolphins were 6-14 in games in which Brandon Marshall had 5 or more catches and 5-2 in games in which he had 3 or fewer catches (including those games he missed). Make of it what you will, but I find that interesting. Not sure if that factored into the decision to trade him (either directly or implicitly), but I do get the sense that Philbin did not feel he made the team better.

 

I'm not talking about grunt work. I'm talking about actual, substantive decision making.

And what you are doing is the equivalent of sticking your head through this:



and claiming you are a body builder. It is gross, delusional vanity. Looking at highlight reels and deciding a player is going to be good is as asinine as it gets.

And I'm saying that if you had all that and final decision making, and no one told you what to do or what other teams were thinking, you would do so bad a job you would have to be put in a witness protection program.

 

This doesn't actually happen.

 

Why? Is there a special secret handshake that only former field goal kicking towel boys know to use to get these same resources?

Anybody with some money can obtain the very same information that Ireland has on draft day. There are enough independent scouting services to tap into.

 

That's odd. Then why didn't you ever say that was your point?

It did not sound like your point to me:

You said Schmooliot neglected to acknowledge there was a difference, now you seem to agree with me with who's to say there was a difference. Why should he have acknowledged something that is not certain to have existed?