This decision will likely come before we learn about the next coach. Critical they get this right given the work that needs to be done this off-season. The rumor mill should be in full force shortly.
The GM Search?
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This is as critical a decision as who the next HC is, at least in the short run. And i have no idea who it should be. As underwhelming and spotty as the roster construction was between 2019 and 2022, BB as GM will be a tough act to follow.
They need to reach out to Adam Peters in San Francisco and the KC and Philadelphia assistants. They need to be open to external guys.
KC has a good track record on defensive side but they might be worse at evaluating talent on offense than Bill's recent track record. Outside of Mahomes they have wasted countless picks recently. Sky Moore, trading for Toney, CEH in the first, Mecole Hardman.
I'd take a close look at the GB FO. They singlehandedly turned over their offense over a couple years and have arguably the youngest and deepest WR corp in the NFL all through the draft and seemed to have nailed their QB in Love. Any one of Reed, Doubs, Watson (if healthy) Muskgrave, Kraft, Wicks would have looked great in NE this past season. Even Bo Melton would have been an upgrade over what NE was trotting out late in the year.
I don't want another Coach/GM. Get an experienced GM in here that has a track record of evaluating talent.
Not saying I would love it, just have a sneaky feeling it’s happening. Wasn’t Vrabel infuriated AJ Brown was traded?
Jon Robinson (former TEN GM)
Thomas Dimitroff (former ATL GM)
Dave Ziegler (former LV GM)
Eliot Wolf (NE Dir of Scouting)
Matt Groh (NE Dir of Player Personnel)
Adam Peters (SF AGM)
Trey Brown (CIN Sr Personnel Executive) - apparently close with Mayo
EDITED, per Cellar Door post.
Thomas Dimitroff (former ATL GM)
Dave Ziegler (former LV GM)
Eliot Wolf (NE Dir of Scouting)
Matt Groh (NE Dir of Player Personnel)
Adam Peters (SF AGM)
Trey Brown (CIN Sr Personnel Executive) - apparently close with Mayo
EDITED, per Cellar Door post.
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Wouldn't you have been infuriated by your GM making one of the dumber trades in recent history? He was directly replaced by a guy who has 665 career yards.
Which tells you very little other than he's a coach. Coaches always hate when star players get traded or let go for cap reasons. It's what made Bill the best of the GM/HC ever was he was willing to move on from top talent if it was too pricy.
Honestly if anything the guy who got fired for that move (Jon Robinson) is the guy I'd be looking at, he did a good job there in the draft:
2016- Conklin, Henry, Byard
2017- Corey Davis, Adoree Jackson, Jonnu
2018- Rashaan Evans, Harold Landry
2019- Jeffery Simmons, AJ Brown, Nate Davis
2020- Kristian Fulton
Got Tannehill on the cheap, built the roster that was good for a while, then it collapsed after he left.
There are far too many things to fix for one person to be in charge of both HC and GM. You are going to need one person to oversee the rebuild of the offense, special teams, the lower-tier staffing of coaching and game-day prep AND one person to oversee the rebuild of the roster and the scouting department. The only thing that is not in need of drastic changes is the defense.
I'd like to see either Adam Peters or Trey Brown (especially if they're going with Mayo) on the list and have fewer BB-era retreads.
Brown started his career in NE as an assistant then an area scout.
I think my list would be:
Jon Robison
Matt Groh
Adam Peters
Joe Horitz (Ravens Player Personnel)
Ed Dodds (Colts Ast. GM)
Trey Brown
Adam Peters definitely intrigues me as well. Nobody has done better roster construction than the Niners over the last several years. Then let him go find the next HC.
Hypothetically maybe, but why would he leave? He's won all the power struggles and has a great foundation in place, just nailed his franchise QB pick, etc.
I don't have any idea what he wants or why, but some possible reasons could be:
1. A bigger job title than "just" GM.
2. A hell of a lot more money (if Kraft is willing to pay it...I'm assuming in this scenario Kraft would pay him huge).
3. A chance to do it with an organization that maybe he loves more and has always wanted to lead.
I mentioned elsewhere that Caserio is likely to be considered for something like VP of Football operations and maybe brings in a GM he chooses or a VP of player personnel type role to help co-GM with him. Have to assume Kraft doesn't want the "Patriot Way" to die and Caserio was here for the best of it as both a scout/GM as well as on the coaching side.
We’d want Caserio because he’s good at this. Why he would want to come back… well… who knows if he would, but just a couple posts above yours I gave several reasons why he might.
We... maybe not, but most of the people on this board aren't 82 year olds obsessed with burnishing their legacy and getting into the hall of fame before they die.
seems like a lot of the bad drafts BB had were under Caserio’s regime - to the extent many Pats fans were happy when he was gone. And he’s the same guy who whiffed terribly on the last 3rd overall pick he had (Stingley)
He obviously nailed the 2023 draft, and Pitre, Collins and a couple other players have worked out from previous drafts but is the thought that he’s a good drafter when freed from the burden of BB’s input?
Houston’s roster last year was horrendous. And a lot of that was due to Caserio’s personnel decisions. Credit him for the 2023 draft and getting a stud QB but the body of work prior to that in Houston is underwhelming.
With the defense, wouldn’t the number of changes be dependent upon who the coach is? Decisions have to be made on a number of key players (Uche, Jennings who had an expanded role this year, Dugger, etc) and there are a bunch of guys who succeeded in Belichick’s scheme (Tavai being the best example but I’d throw Peppers and Wise in there too) who might not work in a different scheme.
Mayo being the coach makes those decisions easier but a different coach/GM combo might need to overhaul that unit.
Caserio didn't have a 1st or 2nd rd pick in his first draft in 2021 due to the Tunsil trade that happened while he was still in NE. He also inherited a poor cap situation and legal mess with his franchise QB. He got a kings ransom for Watson and HOU is now in great cap shape with a lot of core pieces in place. He still drafted Nico Collins in the 3rd in 2021 who looks like a 1st rd talent and obviously crushed the 23 draft. Agree Stingley was a bad miss but when you look at the situation he inherited to where they are today it is nothing short of miraculous how quickly they turned things around.
Yes, but I think the smart move would be to keep the defense as close to what it is as possible. The current defense works and works well. The new regime should be looking to reduce the number of gaps in the talent to scheme ratio, not increase them.
Unless they want to completely demolish the whole thing and rebuild the offense, defense, and special teams at once. Keep as many of the young, cost-controlled guys on D as possible, like Barimore, Gonzales, White, etc. and start over. If they're going to do that do you entertain seeing what you can get for Judon? I hate to see him go, but if the plan is to not be Conference Championship /Super Bowl competitive for 3-5 years, why not see what sort of building block you can get for him?
I suppose my point was that the current defense works well but a lot of that IMO comes down to BB and his ability to find those players and get the most out of them, along with his ability to come up with terrific gameplans
New GM (whoever it is) and Mayo (or whoever) probably won’t be able to get this defense playing to the level we saw this year because a big part of their current state depends on both BB the coach and BB the GM.
it’s the one place where having the HC and GM being the same guy helps. He knew exactly the right types of guys he could bring in to make his defense play better than the sum its parts.
Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be inheriting a player he can trade for a ransom, nor would he be inheriting a high end LT. He had 2 top 15 picks and 4 total top 50 picks in 2022 and Pitre is the only guy who looks like a building block piece. Green was ok in 2022 and hurt this year, but taking him over Tyler Smith was questionable. Metchie had the illness so maybe Caserio gets a pass on that (“maybe” in the sense that Metchie was reportedly healthy this year and didn’t do anything of note, obviously if the illness is still impacting him, I’d give Caserio a full pass). Neither Stingley or Green look to be worth top 15 picks and Stingley over Sauce Gardner was questionable at the time and looks horrendous in retrospect. If BB did that, he’d be raked over the coals.
BB had final say over draft stuff, I get it, but Caserio had a prominent voice during many of the drafts that led to this moment. OTOH, he's in charge of the Texans, one of the great turnaround stories this year, which is impressive...and begs the question WHY WOULD HE LEAVE? That was my point.
Peters is a former Patriots guy (and followed McDaniels to Denver before going to SF), FWIW. Philly I believe also runs the New England scouting system (brought over by Joe Douglas from Baltimore) so either of those would provide some continuity along with outside perspective.
I think this is a distinct advantage of the HC-in-charge model (which is not just a Belichick thing; even in some orgs that have a "GM," the HC has final say over personnel). It's easier to stay aligned.
You can do it the other way, too, with the GM clearly in charge. I think the worst structure is when you get murkiness as to who is running the show and the owner is constantly adjudicating football decisions even though he's not a football guy. But I think the biggest question this offseason is "who takes over football operations?"
Two GMs who have done really well in the last few years in roster construction without coming up from a scouting background are John Lynch and Howie Roseman. They've had some swings and misses like all GMs (Trey Lance most notably) but I wonder if focusing purely on what candidates have done in talent identification might overlook some other valuable GM skills.
I like the checks and balances of a GM and coach working in tandem. I think the last one was a rare case of two GOATs and Brady and BB's skillz kind of offset any personnel blunders/margins for error.
You can run Reche Caldwell out there as your main threat in a game if TB12 is dropping it in his breadbasket. You can give Bill eleven JAGs on D and he will scheme them up just enough to give you a punchers chance.
I could be 100% wrong, I dunno.
But you could also run into a Vrable situation (or Pete Carroll) where there is misalignment and you end up getting rid of a great coach because the GM sucks. Obviously it worked out losing Pete, but the point stands.
I think in football, more than any sport, the coach needs heavy say in personnel.
We need to bring coach's challenges over to the personnel side. The GM runs things, but the coach gets a 4 or 5 veto cards to play each season?
If the Director of Football Operations is going to be a separate position from the GM then I can see Jonathan Kraft assuming that role where he would handle all things financial such as contract negotiations, managing the cap etc and then have a "grocery shopper" GM handle personnel, draft and free agents with input from the HC. I think that with this move away from the BB "all in one" coach / GM / Director of football ops that JK is going to stakeout some territory with this new realignment.
Could Kraft be planning for Mayo to assume one of the front office roles with a different head coach (like Vrabel) being hired?
he's never shown any interest in that, where he has been quite clear he wants to be a head coach.
Mayo is going to be HC or he's most likely gone.
meh.
Mayo is an interesting pick depending what they do at OC. Last draft was I thought excellent which is Groh's main area. Neither he nor Wolff had any real say in the 2021 FA class and we spent basically nothing last year so not much to tell there. Outside locking up Tavai and Wilson.
We could do better, but we could also do worse.
Why can’t we get guys like that?
Seriously, every single one of the tragic decisions (primarily looking at the offense here) had better have been made directly under BBs boot-heel or what are we doing?
edit - @Cellar-Door seems to be better informed here, big surprise, but I still need more convincing.
Unless Kraft had inside knowledge that BB was overruling Wolf and Groh regularly, it’s really hard to see how those two guys would represent an improvement
Either way, if we are just elevating internal people, anonymously-sourced hit pieces on BB are likely to follow.
I don't know that I think it's great, I'd prefer some of the names I listed up thread.
I just note that a lot of the knee jerk anti-Groh stuff doesn't make much sense to me because:
1. Bill had final say.
2. Groh wasn't even the top guy under Bill until 2022.
3. He came up through college scouting, and was not here for some of the worst drafts. His 2 drafts as the top guy are to me... pretty decent. Last year was excellent (when allegedly he had the biggest role), 2022 has the Thornton miss, but otherwise pretty good evals (Bill is gonna be the one who decided to go Strange in rd. 1 but the Strange eval itself was good, he looks like a starting caliber player when healthy maybe more)
Draft wasn't bad in 2020 or 2021 either when he was fairly high up in the college side.
Ziegler was more the guy I would be worried about, because when he was the top guy under Bill is when I feel we were at our worst.