^Woody Johnson isn't really a hands on owner, though. He's not like Jerry Jones. You can be mad at him, but pretty much the only thing he's done is hire GMs, and with Idzik he hired a firm to do it, he didn't even do it himself. I don't know why fans blame Woody or praise Woody. He's just an owner, he doesn't really control all that much on the team.
Who decided that Rex stayed for 2013? You honestly don't think Woody had anything to do with Tebow? Yea I know, Tanny took credit for it - that doesn't mean Woody didn't have a hand in it. It only means Tanny decided it was in his best interest, for whatever reason, to publicly accept the blame for it.
But we do NOT have minimal talent across the board. We have minimal talent on offense and are loaded with high draft picks on defense. Very strong on defense, some lucky breaks and playing teams that are bad on both sides adds up to around a .500 season. It is not because of Rex's coaching. The rationalizations for Rex are amazing. And how people don't see that he is at the core of our offensive problems is beyond me. Rex needs to go.
This is a pretty big understatement. :grin: I think Woody had both hands and both feet in that move--it was 99% his call IMHO. _
Seriously, you want the owner, who has the football knowledge of towel boy, creating the vision for the franchise? Fine. Jerry Jones is trying to do that right now in Dallas. We see how dismal the Cowboys can be. They will never get anywhere with him calling the shot.
Not really a fair comparison considering Jones is also the GM in Dallas and has been since he fired the GM that built him a dynasty.
how about Pittsburgh's organizational structure? the GM does not absolute power to hire/fire coaches as they see fit. It's a big part of reason Noll, Cowher, and Tomlin are the only coaches i can remember over 30+ years. I'd like Woody to hire 1 more solid football guy as an executive, and begin triangulating important decisions. Woody is not competent enough to make decisions on his own, and i personally feel giving a GM full reign on coaches can kind of create a conflict of interest.
Again, where did I say anything of the sort? There is a real reading comprehension problem on these boards.
I think he knows this as evident by the fact he hired an outside firm to hire the GM. One would think he would take a similar approach to the HC hire. Agreed.
The only critical decisions that the owner needs to make in a given year are what the cash budget for the year is and whether the people he has hired are capable of doing their jobs. His long-term role is to set the direction of the organization and allow the people he has hired to fulfill that vision. The Steelers do this right most of the time. Jerry Jones is not just an active owner. He is the Cowboys owner and GM. That's why the Cowboys are having trouble putting things together. If he hired a good GM to go along with the coach he hired and just handled the money side of the operation things would likely go much smoother. Dan Snyder is not just an active owner. He steps into situations on the football side that other people should be handling and meddles in the process. He did this for years to Vinny Cerrato who was the GM and he has caused issues for several coaches with Mike Shanahan just the latest example. The reason that the non-hierarchical hires at GM and HC work is that both of the positions have different roles to play in a successful organization. The GM has to be looking more than a year out as he acquires talent. The HC needs to be focused on getting the most out of the talent made available to him and getting the most wins he can in the process. If you make the HC an adjunct of the GM it creates a double point of failure in your hierarchy. The HC is hired by the GM and so when the HC fails it is a failure on the GM as well. This weakens the GM and the organization as a whole. The HC works for the GM and so he has to balance getting the best results on the field with making the GM happy with his decisions on playing time. Accountability is much harder to place when you are looking at a hierarchical structure in which lower levels of the hierarchy are dependent on upper levels. When the two of them are non-hierarchical then they can both put all their effort into doing their primary function. Neither of them is on pins and needles in a given year due to the actions of the other. The owner is the one who set the organizational direction and he is looking at both of them to see whether they are doing their job well. The only people in Pittsburgh who need to be worried about Mike Tomlin right now are the owners. They're probably also assessing the work of the personnel side of the organization and what they're trying to do is to move the team forward. They'll either conclude that both pieces are in a down phase but valuable and retain them or that somebody needs to go. Strong pieces in the organization won't be wiped out just because a weak link had to go. It's a good structure. There's a reason the Steelers have won a bunch of Super Bowls.
When HC works for the GM, can't it create a situation where a shitty GM can fire coach for not winning enough with the shitty roster he gave him?
The Steelers historically haven't had a GM. Colbert is their first GM hired in 2010. The Steelers have had a player personal director and a HC. Colbert is getting a ton of heat for trying to force Bruce Arians out who immediately got a job with the Colts in 2012 and is now having a second good year as HC for the Cardinals after leading the Colts to the playoffs last year. Haley has installed a dink and dunk O with talent designed to go down the field. Reports in Pitt is Tomlin wasn't happy with either decision. The Pittsburgh model of strong HC with a strong player personal department is being undermined by A GM and HC who aren't on the same page. A first for the Steelers. The Jets don't really have a flow chart and it's possible the GM and the HC have equal positions and report to Woody. Unlike Pittsburgh their model was a very strong pro-personal man coupled with a strong HC who reported to ownership. Idzik isn't a strong pro-personal guy. The GM's we interviewed who had personal strength went elsewhere. Idzik is a strong contracts and cap man. There is nothing similar to the Jets and Pittsburgh in the way ownership has separated out management. As to making them happy. That's an interesting way to put it. The NFL has a very simple standard for success and failure of both GM's and HC's, wins and losses. If you win you keep your job if you lose see you later. Happy has little to do with it. Parcells and Young were at each others throats but not because of the direction of the team, because Parcells wanted more power. That's a natural part of any successful persons makeup. If your successful you want and deserve more power or you move somewhere else you can get it.
I agree with the bolded portion of this post. I've said for years that Woody's first move as the team owner should have been firing the Marketing/Real Estate putz that was serving as Team President, and hired an experienced, proven football man to run the team. Then let that Team President hire a new GM, and then the GM hire the new coach. What did he do? When the Team President that was in place resigned a year or so later, Woody replaced him with yet another Marketing/Real Estate type. I totally disagree with the model of having the owner or Team President do the hiring of the HC. That is part of the GM's responsibility, and I'd say that along with the draft, the two most important aspects of the job. There can be an underling that is a cap guru who works out the details of contracts with the approval of first the GM then the Team President. Similarly, the Pro Personnel Dept. should be responsible for FA or for signing prospects off of other team's Practice Squads. The Pro Personnel Dept. should get approvals for moves first from the GM, then the Team President. IMO the Heirarchy or Org Chart should look something like this: Team President >>>>>Sales & Marketing Dept. >>>>>Office Manager & Administrative Staff >>>>>Security Dept. >>>>>Maintenance & Cleaning Dept. >>>>>Concessions >>>>>General Manager >>>>>>>>Pro Personnel Dept. >>>>>>>>College Scouting Dept. >>>>>>>>Cap Guru >>>>>>>>Head Coach >>>>>>>>>>Offensive Coordinator >>>>>>>>>>>>Position Coaches & Quality Control Assistants >>>>>>>>>>Defensive Coordinator >>>>>>>>>>>>Position Coaches & Quality Control Assistants >>>>>>>>>>Special Teams Coordinator >>>>>>>>>>>>Special Teams Assistants >>>>>>>>>>Strength & Conditioning Personnel
The Steelers have always had a Director of Football Operations, who is essentially a GM that does not have control over the coaching staff. Tom Donahoe is the best example of this, holding the position during most of the '90's. He finally left when he and Cowher could not agree on the personnel and management decided that the head coach was more important for continuity. The difference between the Steelers setup and the more conventional setup is that Bill Cowher would have been fired by Tom Donahoe after 3 straight seasons out of the playoffs from 1998 to 2000. If things had gotten openly testy between them the Steelers probably would have fired Donahoe taking Cowher with him. Because the Steelers have the more rational setup they wound up letting go of the person they thought was less valuable and then the franchise rebounded instead of starting over again. Think of it this way: if the GM hires the HC then the HC is always fired when the GM is fired. Otherwise the new GM doesn't get to hire the HC. Now if you think that the HC should always be fired before the GM or that they should always depart together then tie yourself into a hierarchical system in which the GM hires the HC. If on the other hand you believe that both do independent jobs and are capable of contributing to the franchise independently then you need to hire them independently. The best talent will always be produced by hiring them independently. That's the method that allows you to retain the better of the two with no complications when changes need to be made. Maybe you will get rid of both of them at the same time. In that case it's your judgement that they both need to be replaced, not an inconvenience brought about by a hierarchical system.
They always had and it was always a Rooney before Donahoe was hired. Dan Rooney is not Woody Johnson. Dan Rooney played football and coached it in college. He was raised to run the football operations of the Steelers. He hired Knoll, Donahoe and Cowher. The Rooney family are football people not philanthropists. The problem the Steelers face is the brothers like every second generation are loaded and have other interests. The team has to move into the future and they have been moving in the direction of traditional general managers. Now if your arguing that Woody Johnson is qualified to run the Jets operation, make the football decisions on coaches and pro-personal people like the Rooney's are, I completely disagree. In this day and age I do think coaches, personal people and the head of football operations have to have the same vision for the team. The draft, FA and how players are developed and schemed are critical to the players that are picked up in FA and drafted. Football is becoming a specialty sport with packages on both sides of the field. You can't separate the coaches and the players from this reality. Coaches should be hired by GM's or the head of football operations not because they should control them but because they should philosophically have the same vision of the team, types of players, etc.,etc., etc. What's even more telling about Woody is he has had 2 GM's who's strong suit appears to be contracts not personal. Woody may well be following the Rooney model but unlike the Rooney's he doesn't have the football background.
The arguments you make are well thought out however they discount several factors. First, Woody Johnson has been owner of the Jets for 14 years now. He's not some neophyte sticking his nose into the business for the first time. He's had a good long look at what works and what doesn't and that likely has shaped his knowledge of the business moving forward. To this you have to add that the Jets have been fairly successful while he was learning on the job. They're not world beaters but there's a reason they are a dark horse candidate for a Super Bowl appearance so often. Second, the Steelers appointed a GM because Dan Rooney was going to be absent for a period of years during the term of his appointment as Ambassador to Ireland. It was a move made to give the team somebody on the home front with authority in the organization while the head of the operation was away on leave in a position that required him to have something other than the Steelers on his mind most of the time. They haven't liked what they've seen in the last couple of years and they may well move back to a DoFA arrangement if they decide to make a change. Note that the Steelers GM is not the guy who hired Mike Tomlin and most likely will not be the guy who fires him or hires the next head coach. Third, the Jets have never had an effective GM in terms of acquiring and maintaining talent in the Woody Johnson era. What we're looking at now is an experiment to see if the Jets can make the transition to a topflight organization from the upper ranks of the middle class that they have occupied for the last 14 years. I give them a better chance to make the leap with an independent GM and HC and an owner committed to getting the best out of both of them. The crap people post about Woody makes him sound like a combination of the worst sides of Leon Hess (doesn't know anything about football) and Dan Snyder (meddles constantly). I think the results the Jets have achieved over the last 14 years argue for much better interpretations.
There's that factor also. The thing I like about the Rex/Idzik pairing is that Rex tends to get results from what he is given and Idzik tends to value getting input from everybody in the decisions he has to sign off on. This argues that Idzik will value Rex's contributions on the personnel side, since Rex produces with what he is given, without getting too close and forming a clique that shuts out other people's contributions. In the end it is going to come down to whether or not Idzik can find Rex an offense to go along with the defense that is likely to be there by default. That Idzik is likely to be listening to a half dozen people and factoring them into the conversation gives the Jets a better chance to find the guys they need. It's very hard to get over-excited about a prospect when the organization is constantly challenging it's assumptions and when everybody knows who is responsible for the bottom line.
You've made some good points in your posts, but I still disagree by and large and that's fine. That's what makes these boards interesting. I have a question and a comment or two about your latest post. With regard to the first thing I've bolded (regarding the Jets never having had an effective GM), whose fault is that? Who hired those GMs? That goes on Woody. So you can't defend Woody, yet at the same time say he has been made to look bad because the team hasn't had an effective GM. As I said in an earlier post, I think there is some hope with regard to Woody, but I'm not high on him. IMO he's been far too much like Leon Hess. While I wouldn't put him at the level of a Dan Snyder or Jerry Jones, he has meddled, forcing Rex to keep Schotty and now forcing Idzik to keep Rex. IMO he needs to step back and let Idzik do the job he was hired to do. Then if Woody isn't happy with the results, he can fire Idzik, but he shouldn't meddle. I don't care if he has owned the team for 14 years. IMO he still doesn't know squat and shows it every time he opens his mouth and almost every time he makes a decision affecting the team.
