El Duderino wrote:Plus, the flaw in an award like this is often that players in a draft class take a 2nd-3rd year before showing their full potential.
Look at Raji. He was mediocre as a rookie and blew up this year. Sitton played well last year, but this season become a Pro Bowl caliber guard. Tramon Williams didn't become a great player until this year. Finley did nothing as a rookie. Rodgers sat on the bench for three years, but in retrospect, no GM in football had a better offseason than Ted in 2005 by him simply picking Rodgers.
My guess is the same with Tampa. Players drafted by them over the last 2-3 years got some experience and combined with the additions in the draft last year helped turn around the franchise to where they could win 10 games.
It's a tough award to judge, which is why I'm not going to argue it much.
I just thought it was hilarious to try and say Tampa's GM didn't do a great job. That guy had an excellent year as a GM I thought. There were about 3-4 guys I knew about that I thought could become studs and apparently they got an even bigger haul than I thought now that DB chimed in.
I certainly see why people would get upset when their guy loses because of sustained excellence as opposed to improving from being bad to good.
Overall though, I don't really get bent out of shape about the awards. If you want to vote on who the best executives in the NFL are? Then I'd say BB and TT. But that isn't what they vote on... It's a year by year thing.