Imagine my surprise when I fired up my computer this morning and saw that Ira Miller had left two comments on the Zohn re: Trent Baalke and his suitability to be the Niners’ next GM. I phoned him and he said people on the Zohn had been asking for his opinion and he thought what the heck. So I copied his comments and now I’ll paste them below. I’m a technical idiot, so keep your fingers crossed this works. Here goes:
I was going to continue to watch this discussion with amusement from a distance but in response to requests from randy ranger and albert park, here’s my opinion.
I think it would be a mistake for the 49ers to promote Trent Baalke to GM. Having said that, I admit I know very little about him; he might be the next Bill Walsh or Jimmy Johnson or Bill Parcells or Ron Wolf. But I do know he has been with the franchise for five years or so now, and that is a major time frame during the team’s eight years of crummy football.
The way to end that cycle is to bring in new eyes from outside, to bring in people who have been with organizations that were successful. That’s how it’s generally done in the NFL. This is a copy-cat league, for better or worse, and the teams that turned around losing programs usually do it by stealing people from winning programs.
Consider some of the teams that have made gains in recent years, and where they got their key people:
Kansas City — A GM and two coordinators from the Patriots and a head coach from Arizona’s Super Bowl team.
St. Louis — A coach who was defensive coordinator of the Giants’ Super Bowl-winning team that upset previously unbeaten New England.
New Orleans — A coach who had worked closely with Parcells and was offensive coordinator of a Super Bowl team.
Atlanta — A GM from the Patriots.
Jets — A head coach from Baltimore’s Super Bowl winner.
Even New England, when the Patriots began their decade of domination … Many of us thought Bill Belichick’s lack of people skills made his hiring a mistake. But Patriots owner Bob Kraft had a long relationship with Belichick from the days Belichick was on Parcells’ New England staff. Further, Parcells never coached a winning playoff game when he did not have Belichick on his staff.
| Now, I know that there has been much made of what appears to me to be a tenuous relationship between Parcells and Baalke. But the two men have not worked together for a decade and Baalke was just beginning his scouting career when he went to work for the Jets while Parcells was the coach. Has Parcells been a career-long mentor? I don’t know that. But even if he had been, I would prefer someone who can bring current knowledge from a successful organization.
Having said all that, I also believe the 49ers’ issues go beyond GM, coach and QB. They also need to re-structure their front office, to bring in a club president with NFL experience and contacts to tie the whole organization together, to make sure it is all working together, and to help the GM and coach where needed through his NFL ties. This is something I have been saying (and writing) for many years, but in the past, John York repeatedly insisted his organizational setup was fine. Here is a link to a column I wrote for the Chronicle nearly six years ago: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/27/SPGQ5BVC6J1.DTL That setup hasn’t changed except for Jed replacing John. Among the benefits of a new club president would be that he could help tutor Jed, who’s still really just a kid, and prepare Jed so that in a few years he could be a seriously functioning club president if he wanted to be. Jed is 29 years old. For comparison’s sake, Dan Rooney was about 40 before his dad turned over control of the Steelers to him. John Mara was about 50 before control of the Giants passed from his dad to him. Ira Miller 0 |
11 # | |
| Ira Miller6.29.11.243 |
