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Talent Assessment

spiketex

spiketex

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All teams make some mistakes re keeping the wrong guys. However, one of Miami's recurring issues is repeatedly letting players go onto fruitful careers elsewhere. One of Adam Gase and Chris Grier's biggest challenges will be making the correct talent assessments in the next few weeks. I understand that some players cannot be resigned because of budget constraints in the salary cap era (cough Olivier Vernon, Lamar Miller, Richard Matthews, cough cough), but I was interested to note that former Dolphins, Nolan Carroll now at the Eagles and Anthony Johnston now at the Patriots, both had big games last night. Bill Belichick likes nothing more than perusing the scrapheap and turning other teams' rejects into productive contributors at New England, eg ex Dolphin Rob Ninkovitch and ex Eagle/Brown/Colt Dion Lewis. It happens too frequently to just be luck.
I don't know how good Gase and his coaching team are at talent assessment but good coaches are not always the best and most objective evaluators - their skill is in coaching. Mike Tannenbaum clearly enjoys the negotiating side of his role but his strength in that capacity is dependent on the quality of the player assessment provided by others.
Here on FH, I notice that guys like our own Hoops, CK Parrothead, FeartheBeard up in Canada, Hayden Fox and others have natural observation skills and make a helluva lot of good calls re player assessment. Maybe their input should be sought and considered in a professional capacity as consultants to the team. Just a thought...
 
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The best teams all have a system they draft for rather than draft and force a player in.Look at the Cardinals under Bruce Arians, MMQB pointed out that in his first 3 drafts they got a steal in the 3rd round (Honeybadger, Justin Brown, and David Johnson) and their 3rd rounder this year Brandon Williams is poised to start and is getting compared to Richard Sherman

My approach to the draft has always been that it needs to be a team effort between the GM and his crew and the coach and his staff. My understanding is that Philbin was pretty hands off in the draft process overall except when Ross asked who he and Ireland wanted the one year (Ireland and Philbin both thought Dion Jordan was the top player while Ross wanted Tavon Austin).

Gase and his staff at least have made it crystal clear what they expect out of a couple positions.
 
It's not as black and white as letting a guy go and he's fruitful somewhere else. A lot of times those guys are better scheme fits for other teams. It's been an issue here where we draft players (Dion Jordan a prime example) that don't fit the scheme and never fit in.

A lot of coaches will say "we'll run the offense/defense to fit the players" but the truth is you just can't fit a mish-mash of players into one offense/defense if they're all different scheme fits. It's just not possible. You can't scheme a man-to-man defense when you have mostly zone type CBs. You can't run 4-3 effectively if you're linebackers are all 3-4 type LBs. You can't run power scheme with a bunch of ZBS lineman and finesse TEs.

There are cases where we develop players and instead of paying them we let them walk to save money. Nolan Carroll is a good example. Or we let players walk because they don't fit the prototypical player we want at a certain position...Wes Welker comes to mind for that one. All of that falls on the front office and coaches. No organization is perfect but the Dolphins seem to have a knack for doing it often. It's not been easy for the organization to get impact players (again, front office mainly at fault here) so when they do have them, and develop them, they should be making every effort to keep them but instead the Dolphins rather be big players in free agency (which has never worked out for us) and spend their money getting someone else's player. They have yet to realize the grasses isn't greener on the other side of the fence.
 
datruth55 said:
It's not as black and white as letting a guy go and he's fruitful somewhere else. A lot of times those guys are better scheme fits for other teams. It's been an issue here where we draft players (Dion Jordan a prime example) that don't fit the scheme and never fit in.

A lot of coaches will say "we'll run the offense/defense to fit the players" but the truth is you just can't fit a mish-mash of players into one offense/defense if they're all different scheme fits. It's just not possible. You can't scheme a man-to-man defense when you have mostly zone type CBs. You can't run 4-3 effectively if you're linebackers are all 3-4 type LBs. You can't run power scheme with a bunch of ZBS lineman and finesse TEs.

There are cases where we develop players and instead of paying them we let them walk to save money. Nolan Carroll is a good example. Or we let players walk because they don't fit the prototypical player we want at a certain position...Wes Welker comes to mind for that one. All of that falls on the front office and coaches. No organization is perfect but the Dolphins seem to have a knack for doing it often. It's not been easy for the organization to get impact players (again, front office mainly at fault here) so when they do have them, and develop them, they should be making every effort to keep them but instead the Dolphins rather be big players in free agency (which has never worked out for us) and spend their money getting someone else's player. They have yet to realize the grasses isn't greener on the other side of the fence.
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That's not why we lost Welker.

Belichick added the poison pill to his contract offer that there was no way in hell we could match, remember?
 
Bumpus said:
That's not why we lost Welker.

Belichick added the poison pill to his contract offer that there was no way in hell we could match, remember?
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If we had re-signed him instead of tendering him would Belichick have been able to put the poison pill in his contract? Let's face it, Wannstedt didn't think all that highly of him despite how productive he was when he got on the field and Cam Cameron cut him from San Diego when he was there and when Cameron got hired here his opinion of him hadn't changed. The guy was our most productive WR and Wannstedt rarely played him. That was on the coaches.
 
Notable players the Pats let walk one way or another:

Willie McGinest
Mike Vrabel
Asante Samuel
Richard Seymour
Adam Vinatieri
Ty Law
Deion Branch
Drew Bledsoe
Lawyer Milloy
Wes Welker
Chandler Jones

I don't want to hear about the Pats not getting rid of talent because it is total bull****.
 
NY8123 said:
Notable players the Pats let walk one way or another:

Willie McGinest
Mike Vrabel
Asante Samuel
Richard Seymour
Adam Vinatieri
Ty Law
Deion Branch
Drew Bledsoe
Lawyer Milloy
Wes Welker
Chandler Jones

I don't want to hear about the Pats not getting rid of talent because it is total bull****.
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All let go in the twilight of their careers. They basically released those players at the right time and Willie McGinest they got a great trade for. I hate the Pats but their personnel evaluation is the best I have ever seen.
 
We don't resign these good players because we need to clear cap room to sign marquee FAs to fill hole that our poor drafting made.

We get rid of Vontae, Smith, Carroll, Jerry, Fasano, Soliai, McDaniel, Langford, Miller, OV, Clay, Matthes, Shelby, Carpenter. ....

We sign Marshall for league high money and then ditch him. We sign Dansby for league high money and ditch him. We sign Bush for big money and ditch him. We replace Dansby with Ellerbe and ditch him. All the while we're losing money, picks and good players.

Hopefully the cycle is over, or at least improved. But I'm not so sure.

We've thrown so much away. We've thrown 8 picks in the top 3 rounds at the oline and 2 more in the 4th since Jake. We are only rebuilding the talent level in the team now and it'll take time to be playoff calibre. At least next draft we'll have extra picks that I hope we'll use better than we did this draft.
 
illscriptures said:
All let go in the twilight of their careers. They basically released those players at the right time and Willie McGinest they got a great trade for. I hate the Pats but their personnel evaluation is the best I have ever seen.
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What the hell are you talking about? Chandler Jones is 26. Branch was the same age I think when they let him walk to Seattle before re-signing him. Seymour was only 31 and is still producing. Samuel left after his 5th season with New England and he was hardly in his twilight at 26 also.

So in summary off my list above New England let three 26 year old prime players walk and one 31 year old who has 7 pro bowls. They totalled 12 pro-bowls between them 5 of which came after they left New England.

That's not even couting Miloy who left at 29 and was a four time pro-bowl when he left.
 
The Pats are the gold standard for coaching in the NFL. They're not the benchmark for roster building, not by a long shot.
 
illscriptures said:
All let go in the twilight of their careers. They basically released those players at the right time and Willie McGinest they got a great trade for. I hate the Pats but their personnel evaluation is the best I have ever seen.
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Jones was in the league for 4 years, Vinatieri was in it for 10 which is not over the hill for an elite K and he's still in it, Branch 4 years, Lawyer Milloy had 7 under his belt and played for another 8 years. Not all of them were in their twilight years.
 
I don't think dolphins letting go good players has been a big problem. We just notice it more since were dolphin fans.

And when you constantly have new coaches your going to have a lot of roster changes.

As for the pats, their entire defense is basically About to hit free agency. And besides Jamie Collins, I doubt very many if them will be back in a pats uniform. And with the way the pats low ball, not even Collins is guaranteed his spot back although it's hard to imagine letting him go.
 
Rishard Matthews and Lamar Miller could have easily been signed and fit within the confines of the salary cap. F'ing IDIOTS running the show!

Not only did Miami let two talented players coming into their prime walk, Miami then spent the following trying to replace them two 3rd round picks (one in 2017), conditional 4th round pick (2017) and a 6th round pick b/c that is what Miami spent on Drake and Carroo trying to replace those guys.

Unfortunately Miami has had this level of incompetency for over a decade now resulting in one winning season during that time.
 
Pats let Jones go, because this was the last year of his contract, and they wanted to get something for him. They knew they weren't going to match what he'd command, and they had T. Flowers ready to start behind him.
 
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