Idzik is supposed to be very strong at mathematics. He graduated magna cum laude as a Math major from Dartmouth. His first job was with IBM but his first love apparently was football. And yes, he did come up through the coaching and scouting ranks but has never coached in the NFL.
It's not scatterbrained. Personal scouting is a time heavy investment. Most GMs will have never been to a live game of the players they are drafting. Scouts go to games and write reports. After the season is over coaches and GMs will go to the combine and private workouts with players. From there the war room will include a few coaches, scouts, the GM and maybe the owner depending on the team. It is a collaborative effort with all parties involved. Saying MM was heavily involved in the Geno pick is fair. He worked him out redraft and was reportedly impressed with him. If we are going that far then the same can be said about shotty and Sanchez as they had the OC go to his private workouts as well. If the fan base is going to give Geno to Marty as a pick then shotty should take the brunt of the Sanchez pick, not Rex.
If you keep talking about the scouting dept. needing to be revamped then the first step needs to be firing Terry Bradway. He's a relic and his input has resulted in a lot of bad draft picks for the Jets. Yet he's now the SENIOR Director of college scouting. That doesn't bode well for future drafts.
I'm referring to the decision making process at large, which ultimately got Tannenbaum fired. Like any management, the minions may fuck it up, but the man in charge, in this case the GM, is responsible for the decisions that get made, gets rewarded when they work out and gets fired when they don't. Collaborative effort doesn't need to equal collaborative decision making. There should be a collaborative effort to make the best recommendations possible given all the work that is put in by the scouting department and organization leading up to drafts and major free agent transactions / trades. At the end of the day, the man responsible should make sure to bring balance to the excitable forces going on around him and make a calm level headed decision that keeps a long term strategy in mind and doesn't potentially set the organization back because it's so short sighted: see Stephen Hill. When the Jets traded up for Mark Sanchez, they made a move that made sense for developing a long term offense. That was followed up by bad pick after bad pick offensively, and free agent moves that were only meant to impact 1-2 years. The free agents made that impact successfully, though not successfully enough, then the offense imploded because there was nothing left to fill the void. Collaborative effort or not, the Jets are where they are today because of short sighted personnel decisions and poor personnel decisions. If the offense had been properly managed / planned then this team is competitive the last few years and we're not talking about firing Rex right now.
Just quoted you because Idzik didn't come out of Dartmouth as a business major. He came out of Dartmouth as a math whiz. He was also a receiver on the Dartmouth football team. A football player who is a math whiz is a kind of unique asset. If you look at Idzik's career he has done just about everything you can do in football except coach and play professionally. He has experience in a lot of different areas. I look at his actual experience and potential and I think Moneyball.
ok brad, i was going off the top of my head what i remembered on his bio. i think we agree that jets hired an extremely intelligent and well rounded person for the job. everyone reacting to his first offseason needs to relax and let this play out a little before jumping off the cliff
regarding bradway.... i am very unsure about what his role is in the draft process. maybe the jets are as well. i could care less what his given title is. we have seen the moronic bradway in the past (nugent/jolly nonsense) but have also heard of some shrewd scouting (was apparently in love with russell wilson). so who knows.
must have missed this thread yesterday when i posted in the coples thread about this. anyway, ill add tot he discussion. the job of a football head coach is extremely demanding. hes got the entire team to take care of including the coaches and other staff. on top of that people think hes evaluating college talent and making decisions for the team? he comes in after the season, gets a bunch of notes and tape on guys the scouting department chooses, and tells them who he likes and doesnt from that list. there are people that are paid a lot of money to work year round for the draft. rex isnt one of them. hes got to worry about who is on his team now, not who he can bring in. he tells the gm what he thinks he needs and what type of players he is looking for and the rest is on the gm and other staff to pull the trigger. of course rex has input. its his team. he is the one calling the shots on the field. but the gm needs to be the one finding the guys and making the moves behind the scenes. tanny got complacent. he started using his coaching staff as his scouting department and really just had no vision for a football team. he was all big names and tricky contract math to try and put together a team full of stars for the ny area to ogle over. thats why he was fired, and it was a good decision because the team had begun tailspinning when those contracts became too large or unmovable. everyone likes to say that rex won with manginis team. but he didnt. he brought in some veterans to install his system and won with defense. sure he lobbied for his first round qb, because he had fucking kellen clemens though. what was he supposed to do?
they also need to remember that there is no way a gm can come in to a team after a season right before the draft and not rely on the previous regimes scouting department. he did what he could with the guys he had to work with, but now he bought in his own people and hopefully the drafting will be better because of it.
I can't give him any credit for being shrewd regarding Wilson as we didn't pick him so hypotheticals are just that. I don't put much stock into titles either but if he's the senior director of scouting then what does that say about all the scouts underneath him? Bottom line is why the hell is he still employed by this team, it just defies all logic.
Very good post! btw...... I'm still sorry about DeWayne Robertson & Mike Nugent..... but at least I'm still employed The B stands for Bradway :grin:
I also read somewhere that Rex was too, and that's why he was openly unhappy about the Hill pick (unless he really just wanted a linebacker :wink
