The GM's Job is Amazingly Difficult

[Thurman#1]

8 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

Pick the right QB/HC

 

put feet up on coffee table 

 

 

Right. Because Dan Marino, for instance. The guy who drafted him lasted the length of Marino's career, didn' ... oh, sorry. Kinda proved myself wrong there.

 

Take Archie Manning. Oh, no, wait. Jim Kelly. Oh, no.

 

Philip Rivers? Fran Tarkenton? Warren Moon? Dan Fouts? Matt Ryan?

 

No. Because that idea is simply wrong.

 

Finding the right QB is a huge step in the right direction. Thinking the rest is a foregone conclusion is flat-out nuts.

 

(If I'm taking you way way too seriously here, apologies. Some here really seem to believe this, though. Which may well be your point if you were poking fun.)

 

 

Edited March 6 by Thurman#1

[machine gun kelly]

16 hours ago, JGMcD2 said:

Is it? Everyone here seems to have it figured out 😉

 

Very nice post. 

Nicely said JG Wentworth.  It’s almost annoying how simplistic posters try and make it when Beane has an incredibly complex position.  These guys never cease to amaze me.  What Polian did back in the day was phenomenal.

[Mr. WEO]

4 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Right. Because Dan Marino, for instance. The guy who drafted him lasted the length of Marino's career, didn' ... oh, sorry. Kinda proved myself wrong there.

 

Take Archie Manning. Oh, no, wait. Jim Kelly. Oh, no.

 

Philip Rivers? Fran Tarkenton? Warren Moon? Dan Fouts? Matt Ryan?

 

No. Because that idea is simply wrong.

 

Finding the right QB is a huge step in the right direction. Thinking the rest is a foregone conclusion is flat-out nuts.

 

(If I'm taking you way way too seriously here, apologies. Some here really seem to believe this, though. Which may well be your point if you were poking fun.)

 

 

 

 

Drafting HOF QBs is not good enough now? lol

 

The reason the Marino Dolphins, or the Kelly Bills, Tarkenton Vikes (throw in Rivers Chargers) didn't win a SB is NOT because their rosters were no good.....

[Kwai San]

23 hours ago, Sweats said:

I don't really think it's too difficult......i mean, come on, man.....do you think he is one individual who is managing all of it? He has guys working for him and guys working for those guys and guys working for those guys and on down.

At the end of the day, he's the guy at the top, so all of the minor Pions who work below him do all the work and shuffle it up, while the guy at the top takes all the credit. 

I've been in business for a long, longgggggggg time......i've seen how it works.

 

It's not one guy running the whole show. It's more like one guy at the top while everyone else does everything to make the guy at the top look good, in hopes that they might get noticed for their hard work and efforts.....which they never do and the cycle goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.......

 

Never thot I would see a Journey song on TBD!

22 hours ago, Bill from NYC said:

A 12 year old kid with a copy of the old Pro Football Weekly would have done a better job than Marv Levy as GM. 

 

This is a sad take but most likely true.  Marv should have NEVER taken the job.  NEVER EVER.

[Kwai San]

7 hours ago, machine gun kelly said:

Nicely said JG Wentworth.  It’s almost annoying how simplistic posters try and make it when Beane has an incredibly complex position.  These guys never cease to amaze me.  What Polian did back in the day was phenomenal.

 

Yeah but Polian had no cap......wide open free wheeling....same for Butts

[nucci]

19 minutes ago, Kwai San said:

 

Yeah but Polian had no cap......wide open free wheeling....same for Butts

He had Ralph

[Shaw66]

11 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Yeah, extremely difficult, and there is an absolute ton of uncertainty built into the system.

 

I'd argue you've overstated this in a couple of specifics.

 

It's not impossible at all to come up with a plan. I'm absolutely sure that every single GM does it. It's anything but impossible. But yeah, no plan will be precisely on target. All NFL plans have to have back-up plans, back-ups to the back-ups and back-ups to those tertiaries as well. Every plan will have to be incrementally adjusted again and again and again.

 

The other minor gripe I have there is that I think that after asking McDermott, Brady and Babich were asked about guys they needed or did not need, they might indeed say, " "It depends on who you bring in to help fill the spots that will become vacant." But they would then continue with, "But having said that," and reams and reams of ideas, requests and suggestions. (Which while helpful might also make the puzzle even more complex.)

 

Oh, and yeah, that Von Miller move was a huge risk, looking to be either a brilliant move that could bring championships, yet make our cap situation a lot worse. If he'd stayed healthy, IMO we'd have at least one Lombardi by now. But he didn't, and the cap consequences bit deep just the same as if he'd been healthy. No way to predict the injury, though I'm 100% sure they knew it was a realistic risk, but worth taking. Sigh.

 

And I think you might be underselling the difficulty and uncertainty involved in the draft process. Even if your scouting is perfect, there's no way to rule out the guys you want and need from being picked ahead of you, particularly if someone trades ahead of you.

 

Overall I think you're dead right. Immensely complex job, requiring tons of work, brains, extreme flexibility and adaptability and an understanding that even the best in your job make and have to accept responsibility for mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, and that few other jobs have so many people hanging on your smallest decisions ready to criticize within minutes, fairly and unfairly.

 

Great stuff.

Interesting comments.   Yes, to all.  

 

I don't know, but I wouldn't say they have plans and backups and backups to the backups.   I doubt they're really plans in the ordinary sense of the word.

 

A plan is something that takes you to a defined ending.  An engineer puts together a plan for the construction of the building.  In that case, the end product is known, and the plan is how to get from where you are today to the final building.  When the building is done, in all major respects the building comes out just like the original suggested it would.  

 

When Beane does is different.  There isn't a defined end, with player A at this position and player B at that position.   It's open-ended - assemble players that collectively can achieve what we want.  

 

When you say plans and subplans, I think what actually happens is like what Beane has described for the draft.   He's not planning so much as he's playing out scenarios in his head.   Who's likely to be available where I'm picking?  Who would I take?  What might I do if I trade up?  Trade down?  What if the guy I want isn't there?   He described it well after his first draft.  He had spent a day role playing a lot of different scenarios.  He admitted that despite all of his preparation, no scenario involved getting Allen and then being able to get Edmunds, too.  

 

It's sort of like it's impossible to have a "plan" for a chess game.  If you're playing white, you might be able to predict each of the six or eight moves, but sooner or later the available choices of moves are such that there are too many possibilities to plan for.  You can think about the scenarios and what you might do, but at some point you're not planning.  

 

And I agree the draft is mind-boggling that way.   The bad thing about the draft is that, unlike free agency, you have no idea how these guys are going fit in the NFL.  It isn't easy to predict.  In free agency, you've at least seen a guy up against Dion Dawkins, as an example, and that gives you some kind of gauge as what he might do.  (For example, when Colin Cowherd asked Dion Dawkins who was the best pass rusher he'd ever faced, before Cowherd finished the question, Dawkins said, "Von Miller."  That information is much more valuable than any information they can get about any edge coming out of college.)   When the Bills traded for Diggs, they said to themselves, "We got our receiver."   When they drafted Kincaid, all they could say was, "We hope we got a receiver."

 

The whole process is one in which you have to make choices with insufficient information, and the information that you did have that was relevant to yesterday's choice has changed when you have to make today's choice, because other teams and players have made moves, too.  

 

And, yes, I'm sure there are times when Beane doesn't want to hear any more from McDermott, because it just adds to the uncertainty of the whole process.  That's why it's so important to have a GM and coach who are real teammates in the process, guys with continuity together, so that the GM can develop a feel, an intuition for the kind of guy the HC needs.  

 

Obviously, Beane has lots of help developing all the information they have about the players who are available, either in free agency or the draft.  Eventually, however, he has to make the calls.  It takes a certain kind of personality to work well in that environment.  

[Thurman#1]

Man, you picked the right time to post this. 

 

Beane had some tough, painful decisions to make today.

[PromoTheRobot]

On 3/5/2024 at 1:06 PM, JGMcD2 said:

Is it? Everyone here seems to have it figured out 😉

 

Very nice post. 

 

Ask any dude at the bar.

[boater]

Beane made his life so much simpler today.

 

He reduced the number of moving parts drastically. He has significantly less uncertainty and much more certainty to deal with.

 

He can now dedicate his brain cells to almost full time draft planning, and that's a good thing. He needs to hit the ball out of the park at the draft.

[Success]

You know what, fellow fans?

 

We've got us a pretty solid GM.  Today was a bit of a master class...

 

 

[Kwai San]

8 hours ago, nucci said:

He had Ralph

Yeah - that he did......that he did!

[TBBills Fan]

Beane gathers his info from TBD. Don't tell anyone

[John from Riverside]

He earned his money today

[Thurman#1]

7 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Interesting comments.   Yes, to all.  

 

I don't know, but I wouldn't say they have plans and backups and backups to the backups.   I doubt they're really plans in the ordinary sense of the word.

 

A plan is something that takes you to a defined ending.  An engineer puts together a plan for the construction of the building.  In that case, the end product is known, and the plan is how to get from where you are today to the final building.  When the building is done, in all major respects the building comes out just like the original suggested it would.  

 

When Beane does is different.  There isn't a defined end, with player A at this position and player B at that position.   It's open-ended - assemble players that collectively can achieve what we want.  

 

When you say plans and subplans, I think what actually happens is like what Beane has described for the draft.   He's not planning so much as he's playing out scenarios in his head.   Who's likely to be available where I'm picking?  Who would I take?  What might I do if I trade up?  Trade down?  What if the guy I want isn't there?   He described it well after his first draft.  He had spent a day role playing a lot of different scenarios.  He admitted that despite all of his preparation, no scenario involved getting Allen and then being able to get Edmunds, too.  

 

It's sort of like it's impossible to have a "plan" for a chess game.  If you're playing white, you might be able to predict each of the six or eight moves, but sooner or later the available choices of moves are such that there are too many possibilities to plan for.  You can think about the scenarios and what you might do, but at some point you're not planning.  

 

And I agree the draft is mind-boggling that way.   The bad thing about the draft is that, unlike free agency, you have no idea how these guys are going fit in the NFL.  It isn't easy to predict.  In free agency, you've at least seen a guy up against Dion Dawkins, as an example, and that gives you some kind of gauge as what he might do.  (For example, when Colin Cowherd asked Dion Dawkins who was the best pass rusher he'd ever faced, before Cowherd finished the question, Dawkins said, "Von Miller."  That information is much more valuable than any information they can get about any edge coming out of college.)   When the Bills traded for Diggs, they said to themselves, "We got our receiver."   When they drafted Kincaid, all they could say was, "We hope we got a receiver."

 

The whole process is one in which you have to make choices with insufficient information, and the information that you did have that was relevant to yesterday's choice has changed when you have to make today's choice, because other teams and players have made moves, too.  

 

And, yes, I'm sure there are times when Beane doesn't want to hear any more from McDermott, because it just adds to the uncertainty of the whole process.  That's why it's so important to have a GM and coach who are real teammates in the process, guys with continuity together, so that the GM can develop a feel, an intuition for the kind of guy the HC needs.  

 

Obviously, Beane has lots of help developing all the information they have about the players who are available, either in free agency or the draft.  Eventually, however, he has to make the calls.  It takes a certain kind of personality to work well in that environment.  

 

 

One of the definitions of "plan" is "a systematic arrangement of elements or important points; a configuration or outline." According to American Heritage, anyway. Also "a proposed or intended course of action," and "an orderly or step-by-step conception or proposal for accomplishing an objective."

 

All of these are precisely what Beane does. There's nothing in there implying that because there's an objective, and because parts of things won't go as planned, that you can't call it a plan.

 

Of course a plan involving human beings isn't going to be as clear and precise at the type of plan you're talking about with a plan for a building. Buildings involve materials, cut to exact specifications. Involve humans and you can't be as exact.

 

But it's still a plan. Even if it's much much more complicated than what Beane deals with. Talk to the CEO of the biggest company in the world and he will tell you he has a plan. And he will.

 

You absolutely can have a plan for a chess game. No, of course no plan will work out move-by-move, but that doesn't mean you don't have a plan. It just means that you will work towards a certain kind of ending of the game but will have secondary and tertiary directions ready to work towards if your opponent makes your first goal impossible. Ask Magnus Carlsen if he has a plan. He does. It will be a fluid plan, but picking an opening is deciding which plan you are going to work towards.

 

A chess game might be more difficult to plan specifically for. Beane doesn't have an opponent whose primary goal is to stop Beane from reaching his goal. The other GMs certainly don't mind screwing up rivals plans, but give any GM a choice between screwing his primary opponent and making his own team better and they'll choose making their own team better every time. In chess, there's no dilemma there. Screwing your opponent and making your own situation better are one and the same. You've got a more direct antagonist. 

 

Playing out scenarios in your head is very much one of the things people do when forming a plan. Pretty much any plan.

 

I very much agree that the process involves making choices with insufficient information. But same with planning in any complex human situation. The more complex things are, the more secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary ... hell it goes all the way out to vigenary (had to look that one up - and beyond, though probably not in Beane's case) choices you're looking at. Just because you have to accept more uncertainty doesn't mean it's not a plan.

 

Anyway, regardless of this, we certainly agree that he's got a tough, tough, complex job, and that today he must have gone home feeling like crap despite the fact that he believes he did the right thing.

[Shaw66]

26 minutes ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

One of the definitions of "plan" is "a systematic arrangement of elements or important points; a configuration or outline." According to American Heritage, anyway. Also "a proposed or intended course of action," and "an orderly or step-by-step conception or proposal for accomplishing an objective."

 

All of these are precisely what Beane does. There's nothing in there implying that because there's an objective, and because parts of things won't go as planned, that you can't call it a plan.

 

Of course a plan involving human beings isn't going to be as clear and precise at the type of plan you're talking about with a plan for a building. Buildings involve materials, cut to exact specifications. Involve humans and you can't be as exact.

 

But it's still a plan. Even if it's much much more complicated than what Beane deals with. Talk to the CEO of the biggest company in the world and he will tell you he has a plan. And he will.

 

You absolutely can have a plan for a chess game. No, of course no plan will work out move-by-move, but that doesn't mean you don't have a plan. It just means that you will work towards a certain kind of ending of the game but will have secondary and tertiary directions ready to work towards if your opponent makes your first goal impossible. Ask Magnus Carlsen if he has a plan. He does. It will be a fluid plan, but picking an opening is deciding which plan you are going to work towards.

 

A chess game might be more difficult to plan specifically for. Beane doesn't have an opponent whose primary goal is to stop Beane from reaching his goal. The other GMs certainly don't mind screwing up rivals plans, but give any GM a choice between screwing his primary opponent and making his own team better and they'll choose making their own team better every time. In chess, there's no dilemma there. Screwing your opponent and making your own situation better are one and the same. You've got a more direct antagonist. 

 

Playing out scenarios in your head is very much one of the things people do when forming a plan. Pretty much any plan.

 

I very much agree that the process involves making choices with insufficient information. But same with planning in any complex human situation. The more complex things are, the more secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary ... hell it goes all the way out to vigenary (had to look that one up - and beyond, though probably not in Beane's case) choices you're looking at. Just because you have to accept more uncertainty doesn't mean it's not a plan.

 

Anyway, regardless of this, we certainly agree that he's got a tough, tough, complex job, and that today he must have gone home feeling like crap despite the fact that he believes he did the right thing.

That's great!  Thanks!

[HappyDays]

Turns out being a GM is easy. All you need is a sharp axe.

[Nephilim17]

Thanks, @Shaw66, for giving Beane The Witch some bulletin board material.

[Thurman#1]

46 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

Turns out being a GM is easy. All you need is a sharp axe.

 

 

Heh. Well, that's not ALL. But yeah, you better be able to use an axe.

 

1 hour ago, Shaw66 said:

That's great!  Thanks!

 

 

I was that boring, hunh? OK, fair enough.

 

Edited March 7 by Thurman#1

[SoonerBillsFan]

2 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

One of the definitions of "plan" is "a systematic arrangement of elements or important points; a configuration or outline." According to American Heritage, anyway. Also "a proposed or intended course of action," and "an orderly or step-by-step conception or proposal for accomplishing an objective."

 

All of these are precisely what Beane does. There's nothing in there implying that because there's an objective, and because parts of things won't go as planned, that you can't call it a plan.

 

Of course a plan involving human beings isn't going to be as clear and precise at the type of plan you're talking about with a plan for a building. Buildings involve materials, cut to exact specifications. Involve humans and you can't be as exact.

 

But it's still a plan. Even if it's much much more complicated than what Beane deals with. Talk to the CEO of the biggest company in the world and he will tell you he has a plan. And he will.

 

You absolutely can have a plan for a chess game. No, of course no plan will work out move-by-move, but that doesn't mean you don't have a plan. It just means that you will work towards a certain kind of ending of the game but will have secondary and tertiary directions ready to work towards if your opponent makes your first goal impossible. Ask Magnus Carlsen if he has a plan. He does. It will be a fluid plan, but picking an opening is deciding which plan you are going to work towards.

 

A chess game might be more difficult to plan specifically for. Beane doesn't have an opponent whose primary goal is to stop Beane from reaching his goal. The other GMs certainly don't mind screwing up rivals plans, but give any GM a choice between screwing his primary opponent and making his own team better and they'll choose making their own team better every time. In chess, there's no dilemma there. Screwing your opponent and making your own situation better are one and the same. You've got a more direct antagonist. 

 

Playing out scenarios in your head is very much one of the things people do when forming a plan. Pretty much any plan.

 

I very much agree that the process involves making choices with insufficient information. But same with planning in any complex human situation. The more complex things are, the more secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary ... hell it goes all the way out to vigenary (had to look that one up - and beyond, though probably not in Beane's case) choices you're looking at. Just because you have to accept more uncertainty doesn't mean it's not a plan.

 

Anyway, regardless of this, we certainly agree that he's got a tough, tough, complex job, and that today he must have gone home feeling like crap despite the fact that he believes he did the right thing.

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

Turns out being a GM is easy. All you need is a sharp axe.

The man went full Connan the Barbarian today.

[NastyNateSoldiers]

On 3/5/2024 at 7:51 PM, Shaw66 said:

I've been thinking about how hard a GM's job is.   The job is almost hopelessly complex, and it requires constant, complex thinking and decision making in an environment where you don't know the answers to many questions. 

 

Think about Beane:

 

Your team has about 70 players during the regular season, when you include guys who are injured or on the practice squad.  Fifteen or twenty or thirty of the players you had at the end of last season are going to leave your team in the next four months.  Your job is to fill the openings with players who, together with the guys who carry over, give your head coach the best opportunity to assemble a great team.  

 

Although 20 or 30 might leave, you don't know today which 20 or 30 that is.  That will depend on decisions they make in free agency, or you make about them.  You don't know which players are going to be available from other teams as the same thing is playing out in their offices.   You have essentially no idea who you'll be able to draft, and you have very little idea of which guys in the draft can help the team in 2024.  

 

You talk to McDermott and Brady, and ask which guys are essential and which are expendable.  Their answer is, "It depends on who you bring in to help fill the spots that will become vacant.  

 

What you do know is if you sign this guy you won't have enough cap room to sign that guy.  And the importance of the positions in your consideration changes as you keep or lose guys.  

 

One guy may be your priority, but you have limits on how much you can spend and how that spending can be structured, and the player may not like the financial package, so you don't even know if you can get your priority guy.   Occasionally, a guy who becomes your priority changes the whole picture for you, sometimes for multiple years.  Giving up picks for Diggs solved a problem but affected the shape of the roster because a first-round pick disappeared.  Signing Von Miller changed the whole picture, because he brought significant cap consequences to the equation going forward.  

 

In that environment, an environment where you're not sure who you're going to lose or who you're going to get, and all of it is limited by how much you have to spend, you have to make decisions.   You have to let some guys walk, extend some guys, rework some deals, all in preparation for when free agency hits.   When free agency starts, you have to start making decisions about players.  Every decision you make, every deal you work, changes what you need and how much you can spend.  Thirty-one other teams are making deals, too, so the players who remain available keep changing, and what they're worth keeps changing as the deals affect the market.  

 

When the draft comes along, you take a break from the free agency puzzle and run a mini-version of the whole problem in your head over three days to acquire 8 or 10 guys, each of whom may or may not perform the way you think they will (after all, you've never seen them against NFL competition).   Then you go back to working deals with other free agents, based on a revised picture of the roster as the result of the draft.  

 

The bottom line is that it's impossible today for Beane or any other GM to have a plan for what the roster will look like on September 1.  It's a huge puzzle the GM has to put together over the next five months, a puzzle where the actual picture of the completed puzzle keeps changing, and the pieces available to complete the puzzle keep changing too.  

 

 

It's amazingly fun as well I would love to have his job.