Mac’s drafts have been bad & the team is still directionless. But what causes me pause is folks are underestimating part of a GMs job is to draft players that fit the HC’s scheme & vision.Knowing what we know about how flawed,backwards & incompetent Bowles entire overriding philosophy truly is..im not sure ANY GM would have success picking players for what TB tries to implement
Pretty obvious Macc has been mediocre, but I wouldn't say bad. His performance is comparable to other GMs around the league. People just hate because the Jets are losing and thus fans point the finger at everyone under the sun. The thing is, they are in the middle of a rebuild, which was purposely set up to give us $100m+ to spend next year to surround our young QB with talent. This is by design that the Jets suck right now. They have mostly signed cheap young guys to contracts that have an out after 2 years, with a few exceptions. Also, don't forget about UDFA Robby Anderson and Luvu who have made solid contributions along with Henry Anderson for a 7th this year, which was a bargain and a half. Macc has hit on some late round draft picks as well, which are much harder to hit on than 1st rounders. Then you have the fact that every first rounder drafted by Macc is a current starter, many GMs cannot say that. I feel that people are being over critical. Remember the Trumaine Johnson fiasco, where everyone was whining that Macc made a horrible signing, simply because he got hurt? But now he's healthy and making impact plays almost every game. Not even the best GMs can perfectly predict the future. Draft picks are almost always a crap shoot, and injuries happen whether you expect them or not. You can't fire a GM 2 years into a rebuild, sorry. I see no justification for it at all, everybody's got an axe to grind, but I feel this is the wrong battle.
Good point. What made me move past that and ready to fire Mac is that I think he should have been able to convince Woody and Chris of Bowles incompetence and cluelessness. He should have taught them how Bowles scheme is backwards and how finding players to fit that scheme was so impossible difficult, and that in the process, the offense was being totally ignored. He obviously didn't do that. Similarly, if Bowles and Mac have been at odds for a couple of seasons (which they supposedly have been), with Bowles not giving some of the players Mac picked an opportunity and not helping them develop, and if Mac was picking some players that Bowles didn't want because he knew that they were good players and could help the team, why didn't he pick any OL higher and why didn't he take more offensive players higher? For that matter, why did he go cheap in FA on the OL last season when there were better, more expensive options available, especially when he knew that he was going to try to sign Cousins or draft a QB or possibly start Teddy? He should have known that the OL wasn't good enough and that whomever the QB was, he would need more talent around him? I defended Mac for a long time, and looked for justifications and excuses for his missteps, but sooner or later, one has to look at the bottom line, the results, regardless of motivations, and the bottom line is that the roster isn't good enough. Overall, he has pretty much generally ignored the offense, and specifically ignored the OL. In his defense, the last two drafts do look better, but I also can't forgive him for not taking either Mahomes or Watson in 2017 where he didn't have to trade up. I can understand why he didn't, but his love for Hack was a disaster, and regardless if that's what caused him to eschew taking Mahomes or Watson, or if he didn't think they were good enough, then he needs to go, because his talent evaluation "eye" or skills are lacking.
While you are making some pretty good points, I will say look at the back end of that 1st round that Lee was taken. He has been probably the "best" pick in that range so far (one could make the argument for Will Fuller but the rest are pretty bad.
That's pure speculation, though. They might not start on TOP teams with great players already in those spots, but I'm confident most of them would start on more than half of the teams in the league. There is no metric to even determine such a thing, this is basically people grasping at straws to promote the "Macc sucks" narrative and avoid the reasonable explanation given by @Cidusii with excuses. The following would start on virtually every team in the NFL: Leonard Williams, Robby Anderson, Jamal Adams, Lac Edwards. Shell and Maye would start on most teams. Sam Darnold would probably start on any team that doesn't already have a good QB there (too early to judge Sam, however). To just dismiss everything as "Bowles is an idiot, therefor Macc's drafts are worse than they are" holds no merit whatsoever, even though Bowles is an idiot, it's not reflective on the GM and there is a rift between them. For all we know there would have been a bunch more starters had CS properly developed some of those picks. It could be Bowles holding back Macc.
That's an excellent point. Some drafts are poorer and the talent pool is more shallow than other drafts. In any one draft, all any GM can do is take the best player available, either in general or at a position of need, from the remaining players. While Lee may not be that good, if he's better than anyone else that was rated that high, then it's hard to fault Mac for that. Perhaps Mac could have traded down and taken another player who was rated lower who has proven to be a better player than Lee, but most of us would be looking and judging that in hindsight. IMO the only ones who could fairly criticize Mac for the Lee pick are those who wanted Mac to take another player at that point, and that player has proven to be a better player. I think we'd also have to see how the Jets' draft board had players ranked. I just took a look at the players taken after Lee. Perhaps Kenny Clark would have been a better pick, but that is totally in hindsight. He has 10.5 sacks in the last two seasons and is pretty good. I recognize other names, but have no idea how good they have been in the NFL. The only two players whose names really jump out at me, that I would have loved to see the Jets draft, but both were coming off of injuries were Jaylon Smith and Myles Jack and they went 15 and 17 picks, respectively, after Lee. Smith has become the heart and soul of Dallas' D, and Jack has become a very good player as well. Neither could have been drafted in the 1st round, however. Mac would have had to trade down to take one of them, and there was risk involved in taking them.
The problem with numbers and statistics is they often don't show a true picture. In fact, more often they're used to prop up an inaccurate, biased one.As Twain said: "There are three kinds of lies - lies; damnable lies; and statistics". Of course I'm guilty of using them like everyone else. I do my best to remain objective, but obviously I have a vested interest in proving my point, so I'm apt to cherry pick statistics, or simply stop digging when I've gotten enough to support my claim. All that said, the numbers that Cidusil produced - and kudos for doing that work! - don't tell the real picture. It's all well and good to show that Macc has performed at about an average, or even slightly above average, level with some of the more successful GMs, but there remains a key distinction: they WON, while he has not. Why is that? Can we really find the answer in knowing how many guys drafted have stuck on the roster? I don't think so. I think it's not so much how many have stuck, but what their contribution to winning is. And in the end, the measurement that best indicates what contribution a player is making is the winning pct. of the team, W/L record. It still boils down to what Parcells said: "You are what your record says you are". Macc simply has not produced players via the draft. FA, or trades that have done enough to make the Jets winners. Has Bowles had an impact on that? Absolutely! Which is why BOTH need to go. And beyond the picks and signings, Macc has another flaw: he has no plan or blueprint for this team. According to recent reports, he went against his own judgment and acceded to Bowles's demands for certain players. If Macc indeed had a blueprint he would've stuck to it and told Bowles to pound sand (and he would've sold the Johnson Boys on his blueprint's soundness to ensure they would back him). Failing that, he would've threatened to resign - after all, if a GM isn't allowed to implement his own vision, why is he the GM? No, Macc has simply been floundering, trying to please his bosses and Bowles, without sticking to his own vision, and a GM without a plan, is like a ship without a rudder. Bottom line: He hasn't won.
I'm for Mac getting a little more time, but if they hire a new head coach and they want Mac gone, I won't shed any tears.
The question is do you trust Macc to finish the rebuild before Darnold's rookie contract ends. These next 4 years is when it's the easiest to put a great team around him as he's making peanuts. Right now, this team has big needs at OL, Edge, and skill position talent on offense. I'm just not totally confident that Macc is the guy who can make us a Super Bowl contender. His latest draft haul might be his best, but even then, I felt he should've gone OL or Edge in the 3rd instead of a DL player from a D-II program. You can say that Bowles influenced Macc's picks, but when you have 2nd-4th round picks like Stewart, Hansen, Mauldin, Smith, and Hack cut and not contributing to other teams, the GM can't be absolved from those misses.
For players listed as Starters, I'd argue that they'd start on several other teams in the NFL. Depth players are a bit more iffy, though I think the only one who might not find another team at this stage if cut is Jordan Leggett. In terms of value of a player based on draft position, that's a different beast to what I was looking at. This was more of a holistic view of the draft, rather than relative player value. If there was a draft where we seriously whiffed on Round 1 and 2, but got 4 good starters in Rounds 3-7, I'd consider that a really successful draft since it would still be putting the team ahead overall. Conversely, if we hit an All Pro on our Round 1 pick but whiffed in the rest of the draft, that'd still be a bad draft for the team. For example, even if Leonard Williams elevated his play to J.J. Watt level, 2015 would still be a bad year.
Everything you said is dead on, but you also have to credit Macc for the UDFAs that worked out as well as the late round picks. I honestly don't understand why Hansen and Stewart failed so badly that they were cut after just 1 season. I get the off field stuff, but I thought that was a bit harsh to not give them a second season. I think this team badly needs offensive coaching staff that can develop players better. I do trust Macc to finish the rebuild. I feel you have to at least give him that, when he might have pulled off the move of the century by moving up in the draft, not losing a future 1st, and still getting the best rated QB in the draft by most. I don't agree with canning him the year after that when he hasn't even finished rebuilding. If he fails with another head coach, I'll understand getting rid of him, but he never had a choice with Bowles and they didn't see eye to eye.
I went into the analysis thinking Mac's seriously weakness in drafting might be depth because of the misses in the middle rounds, and thinking the average number of starters teams were getting was closer to 3. It's definitely given me a greater appreciation for how often other teams miss and what a crapshoot the draft really is, as I think we typically compare to the best drafts of other teams. There are of course other factors to consider in the end, such as draft pick accumulation / depletion (the latter being the Tannenbaum approach), and also the quality of the starters you're getting. The AV approach you mentioned previously might help determine overall draft quality, perhaps the AV per draft over the first four years (rookie contract) of each player. I'll give it a go once I understand how it's all calculated better, as I'm a bit reluctant to use something I don't understand fundamentally, and also find a site that provides historical data for that for free haha. It'd be another piece of the puzzle, but may start bringing up questions of AV concentrated in 1 or 2 players vs. spread over 3-4. In the end I think one of the following three things have to happen draft-wise to make you a contender, given you have a Franchise-quality QB: 1. Consistently above average drafting (Ted Thompson) - This approach will make you a perennial contender, but may be hard to get over the Superbowl hump. 2. One or two amazing drafts (Seahawks) - You'll probably have a good chance at the Superbowl over a short period, but probably not sustainable if they're outlier drafts. 3. Load up on several picks and make a run (Rams) - Having a lot of picks has the potential to overcome mediocre drafting, and would probably result in contention if it aligns with getting a Franchise QB.
I must say, your statistical posts give me some hope if Macc is retained. But I still have doubts about him. I appreciate the work you put into your analysis.
I already knew Mac was piss poor but just more reinforcement from this article. Wow, just wow. Macc Must Go! "Poor drafting: Three GMs -- Mike Tannenbaum, Idzik and Maccagnan -- have contributed to the malaise. Since the Darrelle Revis draft in 2007, only one Jets draft pick has made the Pro Bowl: defensive end Muhammad Wilkerson. (Sheldon Richardson and Leonard Williamsmade it as injury replacements.) Only three players from the 2012, 2014 and 2015 drafts are starting in the league: Demario Davis (New Orleans Saints), Enunwa and Williams. The heart of the team at this point should be players from the 2013-15 drafts, but only three of the 25 picks are contributing to the Jets: Williams, Enunwa and Brian Winters. To compensate for the draft misses, the Jets have had to overpay in free agency, often reaching for players who turned into one-and-done situations. It's a vicious cycle that won't stop until they start drafting better."
Wow, I just looked back on those late Tanny drafts and they were abysmal, definitely on par with Idzik. After 2007, almost pure dogshit. So many 1st round busts with Tanny. Macc's drafts seem quite a bit better in comparison. It could be the bar is just too low.
If Darnold becomes who we hope he can become and Herndon develops, this year's draft will easily be the best since 2007. Cannon, Shepherd, and Nickerson becoming solid contributors will make it a grand slam draft. We need more drafts like this.
Grand slam draft? Pump the brakes. Those are all huge ifs at this point as none of those 3 have shown enough yet.
After Tanny's first year in 2006, I don't think he had any good drafts. Maybe 2011. He really wrecked the drafted depth in the team, probably why we were always up against the cap having to overpay in FA. His biggest issue seems to be trading up and always having a deficit in picks. In the 7 years he was GM, the Jets may have had 9 1st rounders (+2), but only 4 2nd rounders (-3), 5 3rd rounders (-2), 5 4th rounders (-2), and 4 5th rounders (-3). Those lost middle round picks really start to effect the team over time.
