where's th'fish
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I was going to simply reply to the thread about hope, but after writing it I felt it was worth it's own thread to to explain what we do wrong as a franchise, how our entire philosophy is upside down:
Hope, to me, comes from knowing even an incompetent owner can luck out and get it right. And then Ross did. As his last choice he got Hickey, sure. Who cares. And then he quickly unmade it and replaced him with a proven incompetent. What do you do in that situation. It's the utter perfection of incompetence. A true beaut.
See, even if we get the right coach it doesn't matter. Because we're going to do the same thing we've done for years now: get some high-profile FAs to energize the fan base. And they're going to be so highly paid that because of that alone we will all soon be convinced they are THE guys. These two or three guys are going to solve all our problems single-handedly. Our new coach probably won't even want them if he's a good one, but it doesn't matter because he won't be a good one. The good ones know how you build a winner and they know it's just not the way we operate. They know we wouldn't know a proper way to operate even if it fell right in our laps (which it did and we didn't). They know we simply can't stand operating in an efficient way. Won't stand for it.
The thing is it doesn't work that way. It never has. The better franchises out there don't even do a heck of a lot in FA: you know who they are. They build a core through the draft and then add a few valuable pieces to it. These pieces operate at 100% because they're in the right framework. We, on the other hand, always aim to find our core players and try to fill every other hole through FA. We aim to be the offseason Super Bowl winners. Heck, we win it nearly every year. And we will again this year, I've no doubt about it. But our pieces never operate at 100%. They operate at 0-50% because we don't have the right framework for them. We are simply not prepared to put them in the best possible situation to take advantage of their talent. To make it even worse, they probably knew that themselves from the beginning but they don't care because they're getting the money! And that's even before you get to the fact that some of them simply stink, like Wheeler and Ellerbe. And yet even they were very productive in their original teams.
That's how we find ourselves squandering an enormous amount of resources every year in FA. Suh? Has maybe 50% of the impact he used to. Ellerbe? 5%. Wallace? 35%. Cameron Jordan? 20%. Yet we pay them way more than their original teams did. You know, back when they actually had full impact. Do you see the flaw in the plan yet? We get half the production at twice the price! And that's not coaching, folks. It's NOT coaching. It's not coaching because you need the right scheme, and even if the coaches are willing to accommodate our newest acquisition, to play the right scheme you need the right players. Eleven of them. And you can't just make them appear out of the blue. Part of that is your GM of the week just went and spent all his cash on the central piece without bothering with the supporting cast first.
Nothing wrong with many of those players. Nothing wrong with Suh or Wallace. But you have to build the right framework first. The hard way. Through the draft. Slowly and painfully. Which is what Hickey got and the very reason he's gone. And part of that is that fans don't want to hear it. And yet there they'll be the very next year threatening to set the building on fire. So sad.
And that is why it's the least hopeful I've ever been at the end of a season as a fan. I just don't see how we can even luck into fixing it. We're hell-bent on failing with flair.
Hope, to me, comes from knowing even an incompetent owner can luck out and get it right. And then Ross did. As his last choice he got Hickey, sure. Who cares. And then he quickly unmade it and replaced him with a proven incompetent. What do you do in that situation. It's the utter perfection of incompetence. A true beaut.
See, even if we get the right coach it doesn't matter. Because we're going to do the same thing we've done for years now: get some high-profile FAs to energize the fan base. And they're going to be so highly paid that because of that alone we will all soon be convinced they are THE guys. These two or three guys are going to solve all our problems single-handedly. Our new coach probably won't even want them if he's a good one, but it doesn't matter because he won't be a good one. The good ones know how you build a winner and they know it's just not the way we operate. They know we wouldn't know a proper way to operate even if it fell right in our laps (which it did and we didn't). They know we simply can't stand operating in an efficient way. Won't stand for it.
The thing is it doesn't work that way. It never has. The better franchises out there don't even do a heck of a lot in FA: you know who they are. They build a core through the draft and then add a few valuable pieces to it. These pieces operate at 100% because they're in the right framework. We, on the other hand, always aim to find our core players and try to fill every other hole through FA. We aim to be the offseason Super Bowl winners. Heck, we win it nearly every year. And we will again this year, I've no doubt about it. But our pieces never operate at 100%. They operate at 0-50% because we don't have the right framework for them. We are simply not prepared to put them in the best possible situation to take advantage of their talent. To make it even worse, they probably knew that themselves from the beginning but they don't care because they're getting the money! And that's even before you get to the fact that some of them simply stink, like Wheeler and Ellerbe. And yet even they were very productive in their original teams.
That's how we find ourselves squandering an enormous amount of resources every year in FA. Suh? Has maybe 50% of the impact he used to. Ellerbe? 5%. Wallace? 35%. Cameron Jordan? 20%. Yet we pay them way more than their original teams did. You know, back when they actually had full impact. Do you see the flaw in the plan yet? We get half the production at twice the price! And that's not coaching, folks. It's NOT coaching. It's not coaching because you need the right scheme, and even if the coaches are willing to accommodate our newest acquisition, to play the right scheme you need the right players. Eleven of them. And you can't just make them appear out of the blue. Part of that is your GM of the week just went and spent all his cash on the central piece without bothering with the supporting cast first.
Nothing wrong with many of those players. Nothing wrong with Suh or Wallace. But you have to build the right framework first. The hard way. Through the draft. Slowly and painfully. Which is what Hickey got and the very reason he's gone. And part of that is that fans don't want to hear it. And yet there they'll be the very next year threatening to set the building on fire. So sad.
And that is why it's the least hopeful I've ever been at the end of a season as a fan. I just don't see how we can even luck into fixing it. We're hell-bent on failing with flair.
