speaking for myself

Quote
RockRam
I want in on your surveillance techniques.
Because publicly, and without equivocation, both McVay and Snead say that Snead makes the final decision, but you and ZN speak about "consensus". How do you know its a consensus? I haven't heard that word used by either one in this context.

ANYTHING done by committee or majority rules means nobody has accountability. IMO that's why Fisher constantly talked as though everything with personnel was a committee or "consensus" decision because it shielded him from accountability. But clearly Fisher was in charge; he even hired Snead. This time around, Snead hired McVay (so to speak). And Snead acts like, and says, he's in charge of personnel acquisition, and McVay backs it up.

It is any GMs job to find the players that fit with the system the HC has implemented or he's a poor GM. Priority, need, exactly which college prospects project to that system, prospect value, etc., is certainly something not done in a vacuum by the GM, but unless McVay and Snead are two bodies sharing one mind, consensus has to be pretty hard to reach very often. Agreement yes; consensus no.

If this is at all like running a decent sized business (I suspect, but don't know, that it is), then Snead weighs out 3 basic streams of info: his scouts, his coaches regarding need and fit, and his own observation and evaluation of the pool of players and the current roster. I would imagine it is infrequent that a GM would force a player upon an HC unless it was more about off field issues. In other words, that they couldn't come to an agreement.

You;re not responding to me directly, but I am in on this obviously. What's a bit confusing is that one person here criticized me for not recognizing that you already endorse the "they work by consensus" position. Now, turns out, you personally actually actually don;t endorse that position. Goes to show...something. Let people speak for themselves. So I am just speaking for me.

You make some interesting points and there's a lot to respond to. Let me start by saying that everything all of us say about them, you and me both, is based on a combination of what they say about themselves, and the occasional tidbits we get from outsiders who have some info. That stuff accumulates. In other words, you and I both have access to the exact same info. Where people get into differences is how we interpret all that evidence. Sometimes there's not agreement on how to interpret it.

So everything I say is based on how I interpret all the evidence out there.

1. As far as I know (without looking right now), no one with the Rams said "Snead makes the final decision." My memory of it is that they said he has "final say" which means something somewhat different. Snead himself had directly addressed this. He said yes I have final say but my goal (and I am paraphrasing) is to get the coaches the kinds of players they want. In short, he is not imposing things--he's not going into draft rooms and saying things like (and this is a made-up for instance) "well you guys are looking at receiver for the top pick but we're going to take a CB, which in my view is the greater need."

2. No, not everything done by a committee means no one has accountibility, so that generalization doesn't hold. Also, no one said this is done by committee ANYWAY. But it's not either/or. It's not "committee work" v. "personnel overlord" with nothing in between. Snead has the years of scouting experience and has been in on Rams drafts for 5 previous years, so he is the leader of the process and a chief resource, BUT he is not DICTATING THINGS. That's apparent if you just listen to him (and McVay). Leadership does not always mean dictating. And, the "accountibility" issue is overblown by fans. The front office knows full well that if they're drafts are not panning out, it ultimately goes to the GM...how could they not know that??! They don't sit around wrangling over mysterious accountibility issues. That's a given. So with that in mind, yeah, leadership can take many forms, and one form leadership takes is to foster collaboration and consensus. Snead says he spends time finding out what these coaches want in players, and the coaches are involved in the process. Doesn't mean they don't listen to him. It just means it's more flexible then a strict "I am the boss and we do it this way" approaches.

3. A lot of it has to do with how the Rams stack their board. The scouts, led by Snead, do not simply do that on their own and then hand the results to the coaches. It is collaborative. The coaches are part of the process of ranking. I suppose crudely speaking it gets down to this---the scouts scout for 12 months and so know more about the draft candidates, but the coaches know more about the kinds of players they need and like. You cannot balance that with one conversation, it;s a process, and takes work and time. Plus the coaches are in on interviews and draw on their own experience in the league to determine what those interviews tell them. So setting up a ranked board is absolutely a collaborative process. Unless the GM just wants to dictate to the coach (and clearly Snead doesn't) it has to be a collaborative process. Any debate or give and take has to take place at the point--setting up the board.

(No consensus is not hard to reach if you commit to a process you believe in and which works. I don't even know why you say what you say with these generalizations about how things work, when my own experience shows me different. Where I work we actually use a consensus model and the unit I work in is known for its excellence, which no one makes any secret about. It's known, it's said, upper management is very clear about how well we do. We don't have an overlord leader, though we do have leadership, and it's part of our strength. So the life experience you generalize about is kind of foreign to me. Things like that do not, IMO, and it's an informed O, reduce to simple either/or--you're led or it's chaos. There's lots of very different successful ways to do things.)

4. Once the board is done it sets up everything. (Not saying the board is set in stone at that point, it can be jiggled a bit, but mostly it is set.) The Rams as a group then have a sense of what the value is at any given pick, according to their own views of the players. They stick to the board though that's not a narrow, restrictive thing. The way the the Rams have talked about it before, when it's their turn they have a short list of players who are worthy of that spot. It's not strict need drafting and it's not strict BPA drafting, it's a combination of value and fit---who's a fit, where's the value. They can then be flexible to an extent when it's time to pick. Sometimes they have a particular guy in mind (in 2014, they had in place a trade to move up for Martin, but then Dallas took him ahead of Baltimore's pick so the trade didn't go through). Sometimes they have to weigh a couple of options.

5. The coaches tend to have more direct say and input when it's a higher pick. They don't scout enough to have the same firm sense of things when it's round 5. Then they need to defer more to scouts and the GM who just plain know more. As someone once said, coaches scout for a month out of the year, scouts scout for 12 months.

6. I PARTLY agree with this: I would imagine it is infrequent that a GM would force a player upon an HC unless it was more about off field issues. In other words, that they couldn't come to an agreement.. What putting it that way doesn't account for, though, is that that kind of wrangling does not take place on draft day---it's built into the process of stacking the board. They arrive at decisions then and there, by voting or agreeing or whatever method. Remember stacking the board is absolutely a shared process and no the Rams GM--based on what we have heard anyway--does not simply dictate.

Well there's more cause it's a big issue but that will do for now.



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Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2017 06:02AM by zn.