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spagsbacker
I believe McVay had his eye on Woods and Whitworth all along, and was part of his sales pitch/plan when interviewing for coaching job. Snead is good at bold trades, but i do not trust his player evaluation, never will.
They didn't hire a 31 year old first time head coach and expect him to be a personnel guru. That would be foolish on the Rams part.
And it's not speculation---these guys are endlessly transparent about their personnel processes. This comes through in all sorts of detail in all sorts of sources, friom articles to interviews and press conferences with all the major people (Demoff, Snead, McVay). The paper trail on Rams personnel processes is long, deep, rich, and detailed.
Given all that info, no, the head coach is not walking around being the team personnel guru. Either way he had enough to do as it is being a first time head coach preparing for a draft and installing a new offensive system, something he didn't even assign to a coordinator.
McVay relies heavily on Snead for personnel input. Beyond that, what kind of GM WOULDN'T know about Woods and Whitworth?
This is the Rams process, and it's not speculation to say this, it's just knowing the abundant info that is out there. Snead consults closely to see what his coaches like and need to fit their systems. Coaches of course know what they like and need, but as Snead once said, coaches scout one month a year and personnel people scout 12 months a year. If coaches in a system like that don't listen to their personnel guys they are just being negligent. So McVay says, we need this and the player should have these specs, and Snead goes well we have info on hundreds of guys and here are some choices that fit. It's collaborative.
Snead's player evaluation is very good, otherwise they would not have been a winning team last year. If you look around the league over the years, invariably, teams that accomplish 1-year turnarounds do so BOTH because they make a good coaching hire AND because they have a big collection of good inherited talent. You don't have a big collection of good inherited talent if your GM and personnel people are not any good.
