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PFF Says the Bengals Had the Most Productive Draft in 2020


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I thought this was interesting:

 

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-most-productive-2020-rookie-draft-classes

 

Basically they loved what we got from Joe and Tee. When was the last time we heard our Bengals praised for the best draft after seeing them play for a season? I thought we had a pretty good draft but I didn't realize it was tops in the NFL

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27 minutes ago, Sea Ray said:

I thought this was interesting:

 

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-most-productive-2020-rookie-draft-classes

 

Basically they loved what we got from Joe and Tee. When was the last time we heard our Bengals praised for the best draft after seeing them play for a season? I thought we had a pretty good draft but I didn't realize it was tops in the NFL

Did well with Adenijji ans Kareem too..

Im not sold on Wilson at 3 and Gaither looked  meh at 4..

I blame that on Golden though...

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On 1/31/2021 at 6:34 PM, Sea Ray said:

I thought this was interesting:

 

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-most-productive-2020-rookie-draft-classes

 

Basically they loved what we got from Joe and Tee. When was the last time we heard our Bengals praised for the best draft after seeing them play for a season? I thought we had a pretty good draft but I didn't realize it was tops in the NFL

That adds nicely to the past 5 or so drafts which have also been very productive. 

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On 1/31/2021 at 6:34 PM, Sea Ray said:

I thought this was interesting:

 

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-most-productive-2020-rookie-draft-classes

 

Basically they loved what we got from Joe and Tee. When was the last time we heard our Bengals praised for the best draft after seeing them play for a season? I thought we had a pretty good draft but I didn't realize it was tops in the NFL

Did not 5 of the 2020 Bengal picks come from the Senior Bowl? Did the Bengal coaches not have the same opportunity to coach again this year? Seems like a missed opportunity if they turned it down.

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3 hours ago, I_C_Deadpeople said:

Did not 5 of the 2020 Bengal picks come from the Senior Bowl? Did the Bengal coaches not have the same opportunity to coach again this year? Seems like a missed opportunity if they turned it down.

 

It did help and they were there again this year. In fact they were one of only four NFL teams:

 

https://bengalswire.usatoday.com/2021/02/01/bengals-one-of-four-teams-bring-coaches-senior-bowl/

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5 minutes ago, Sea Ray said:

 

It did help and they were there again this year. In fact they were one of only four NFL teams:

 

https://bengalswire.usatoday.com/2021/02/01/bengals-one-of-four-teams-bring-coaches-senior-bowl/

 

It also seems this year there were a few really impressive (and surprising) performances on the OL.  No excuses, make it happen boys.

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1 hour ago, Sea Ray said:

No question our scouting staff is woefully inadequate but in the case of a Senior Bowl, I see a big difference between scouts and coaches. Of the two I much prefer coaches who actually work with the players 

 

& fall in love with some project because of all the potential then reach for him 1-2 rounds early

 

Give me a (qualified - not the nearest unemployed cousin) scout that has no motive other than picking the best football player.  We've made enough draft picks to prove how good a coach is at coaching.

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20 minutes ago, T-Dub said:

 

& fall in love with some project because of all the potential then reach for him 1-2 rounds early

 

Give me a (qualified - not the nearest unemployed cousin) scout that has no motive other than picking the best football player.  We've made enough draft picks to prove how good a coach is at coaching.

I see your point but im not sold on our scouts..

Id go with the coaches in this matter.

 

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6 hours ago, T-Dub said:

 

& fall in love with some project because of all the potential then reach for him 1-2 rounds early

 

Give me a (qualified - not the nearest unemployed cousin) scout that has no motive other than picking the best football player.  We've made enough draft picks to prove how good a coach is at coaching.

It did work out pretty good last year according to PFF

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Interesting article in the Athletic today :

 

Why collaboration is the secret ingredient to Super Bowl success:

 

 

In the months before the draft, Seahawks general manager John Schneider found a quarterback he liked. The guy was tough, had won a bunch of games, elevated his teammates and did so against good competition. He checked all the boxes, and Seattle needed a quarterback after moving on from Matt Hasselbeck, but not everyone in the organization believed in TCU’s Andy Dalton the way Schneider did.

The Seahawks held the 25th pick in the 2011 draft. Dalton would likely be there if they wanted him. But Schneider was in just his second year with coach Pete Carroll, and the coaching staff was not as high on Dalton.

From the beginning, Carroll and Schneider’s partnership was billed as a “fantastic collaboration.” The first time they met, they talked for hours, cracking jokes, playing off each other, connecting on a level that left both giddy. In response, more than one Seattle reporter invoked the term “bromance.” But Dalton was an early test. How would they collaborate when they didn’t see things the same way?

How would they handle conflict?

Much of the research about collaboration in the fields of science, education and business highlights the inevitability of conflict. “The fact is,” stated the Harvard Business Review, “you can’t improve collaboration until you’ve addressed the issue of conflict.” The same is true in sports.

Conflict forces people to defend their position, to think more deeply and consider another perspective. If handled properly, it can lead to greater conviction or brand new ideas. When handled poorly, it can sink an organization, sewing the enemy of all collaborative efforts: distrust. Carroll experienced that firsthand when he coached the Patriots in the late ’90s. Veteran players would head up the backstairs to the office of Bobby Grier, the Pats’ head personnel man, and complain about Carroll behind his back. “It was horrible,” Carroll told the Boston Globe. “That’s not leadership.”

As a direct response to that experience, when Carroll took the Seahawks job, he insisted on having the most power in the organization. But he also wanted a general manager to run the draft and personnel department, so in a somewhat unusual dynamic, Carroll was part of the interview process to hire Schneider. It was a delicate partnership, but one Schneider seemed to understand when it came to Dalton and the 2011 draft.

“I’m going to listen to the coaches on this one,” Schneider said, according to a high-ranking source. “I’m not going to rock the boat here early in this process. We got a long way to go.” The Seahawks passed on Dalton.


The relationship between a general manager and head coach is often compared to a marriage. But Jerry Angelo, the longtime GM of the Chicago Bears, once said it was actually tougher than a marriage. Marriages, he explained, at least have a chance to last. A coach-GM relationship is almost always “destined to fail.”

In many ways, it is a petri dish for dysfunction.

By the end of his tenure, former Kansas City Chiefs coach Todd Haley had become so distrustful of the front office — and general manager Scott Pioli in particular — that he quit talking on his cellphone, believing it was tapped. So great was the demand for secrecy — and so toxic was the environment, according to the Kansas City Star — that Haley believed several rooms in the team’s facility were also bugged. Haley lost his job in December 2011. Pioli was fired a year later.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way

In the months before the 2019 draft, Brett Veach, the current Chiefs GM, raved about a young defensive lineman. Veach tends to wear out people when he locks in on a guy — a certain quarterback out of Texas Tech, for instance — and this time was no different.

He talked about the player constantly with his college scouts. He pulled the Chiefs’ defensive line coach into pre-draft meetings and told him he had to see this guy. In the words of a team source, Veach was flat-out “obsessed.” There was only one problem: Frank Clark, the defensive end Veach loved, played for the Seattle Seahawks. If Veach wanted Clark, he had to go get him.

Veach has final say over the Chiefs’ 53-man roster, but his relationship with Reid is unique among general managers. It was Reid, after all, who gave Veach his first job in the NFL when he hired him as his assistant in Philadelphia in 2007. Reid saw something in Veach and nudged him down the player personnel track. When Reid was hired in Kansas City in 2013, he brought Veach with him. The Chiefs maintain that team owner Clark Hunt promoted Veach to GM four years later, but it’s doubtful that would have happened without Reid’s blessing.

Reid, Veach has said, taught him everything he knows, his football Yoda.

Before the 2019 draft, Veach watched film of college defensive ends such as TCU’s L.J. Collier, whom Veach liked. But he loved Clark. There was no one in the draft as good as him, at least no one the Chiefs might get with pick No. 29. So Veach went to Reid with an idea, and because Reid trusts Veach — because they have a deep history and, as Veach says, “speak the same language” — Reid hardly blinked. “He was like, ‘I trust you. Just go do it. I believe in you. I believe in your staff,'” Veach recalled.

Veach pulled off a trade, Clark helped the Chiefs win their first Super Bowl in 50 years, and Reid’s faith in his young GM was rewarded.


In San Francisco, Jim Harbaugh and Trent Baalke went to three NFC championship games and one Super Bowl in their first three years together. By Year 4, however, their relationship had dissolved to the point that they reportedly communicated only through email. Another story said they didn’t even look at each other while riding an elevator at the NFL combine.

During their final season, when a new leak seemed to sprout from inside the organization every other week, Harbaugh ran up to Raiders owner Mark Davis before a game and clapped him on the shoulders. “You stole our dysfunction!” Davis told him. “That’s supposed to be our thing!”

Conflict is inevitable. Dysfunction is not. The partnerships that last, the ones that hold strong, are the ones that solve conflict before it becomes toxic. It might be the single-most-important ingredient in any collaboration, but there is no formula to create that trust and respect.

In the world of business, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield built an ice cream empire on the back of their friendship. “We chose to make our friendship the most important thing,” Cohen once said. Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller, meanwhile, built a magic empire even though they were never friends. “It turns out that respect lasts longer than affection,” Jillette once said. John Lennon and Paul McCartney created beautiful, lasting music not in spite of their differences in temperament and philosophy but because of them. “John needed Paul’s attention to detail and persistence,” Cynthia Lennon once said. “Paul needed John’s anarchic, lateral thinking.”

The question then is not whether a head coach and general manager can get along or if they think alike, the values often preached at honeymoon news conferences. The question is whether they can coexist.

Take the case of Tex Schramm and Tom Landry. One day in 1981, a reporter asked Schramm, the Dallas Cowboys’ general manager, if he was friends with Landry, the team’s head coach. It was a strange question on the surface. Schramm and Landry had worked together for more than 20 years, forming one of the most successful tandems in the history of the NFL. How could they not be friends?

But when the question was put to Schramm, he hesitated, thought about it, then finally said, “I don’t really know.”

Schramm and Landry were a study in contrasts. Schramm loved J&B scotch and lunchtime drinks. He was loud, profane, vain and, by his own admission, cocky. A natural showman, he perked up whenever cameras or reporters were around; they brought out the best in him.

Landry did not drink. He did not cuss. He found one of Schramm’s prized creations, the Cowboys’ cheerleaders, distasteful. Critics complained he was cold, distant and intensely private — the exact opposite of Schramm.

“They do not think alike, feel alike and do not socialize, meeting only under the auspices of the football team,” former Dallas columnist Bob St. John wrote in his book.” And yet for 29 years Schramm and Landry were the gold standard. Together they won two Super Bowls, played in five other championship games and made the playoffs 17 times over an 18-year stretch. Off the field, they were never close — Schramm called theirs a “business relationship” — but it worked for two reasons.

First, they understood each other’s strengths. “Tom has amazing self-control,” Schramm said. “But it’s also one of the elements which leads people to believe he’s cold and distant. He has a philosophy, which is very sound. He believes for one game an emotional coach can accomplish certain things. But when you’re like we are, when you’re trying to be successful over a long period of time, you have to present something much more solid to your team than pure emotion.” Landry, in turn, considered Schramm a “tremendous organizer” and valued Schramm’s ideas and innovations.

Second, they understood each other’s roles. Landry controlled everything on the field; Schramm set the franchise’s course through the draft and trades. “We both had respect for the other’s capabilities,” Schramm said. “It all came down to being able to describe the job description of each person,” Landry said.

In 1977, Schramm knew the Cowboys lacked firepower in the backfield. Their longest run the year before had gone for just 24 yards. Fortunately, the 1977 draft featured two game-breaking running backs: Ricky Bell from USC and Tony Dorsett out of Pitt. Unfortunately, the Cowboys had the 14th pick, and neither player would last that long.

Schramm asked Landry if he thought Dorsett, generally rated as the second-best player behind Bell, would make a difference. If he would be worth it, considering the assets the Cowboys would have to surrender. Landry told Schramm absolutely. With Landry’s blessing, Schramm struck up trade talks with John Thompson, the general manager of the expansion Seattle Seahawks, who held the No. 2 pick. It turned out to be one of the great draft-day heists of all time. The Seahawks got the 14th pick and three second-rounders; the Cowboys got a Hall of Famer.

So, no, Schramm didn’t know if he and Landry were friends, but in the end, that didn’t matter. “All I know is we had a very special relationship,” he said. “We were a team if there ever was one.”

 

In fall 2011, after the Seahawks had passed on Dalton, Schneider fell in love with another quarterback. He called Carroll after watching a game and told him, “The field just tilted in this guy’s direction.” Schneider couldn’t keep his eyes off the quarterback, as if a spotlight had settled over him and everyone else on the field went dark.

The Seahawks’ coaching staff, once again, was not initially as sold. Russell Wilson made big plays, put up big numbers, won a bunch of games — but he was short. “We were just trying to understand what he could see in a guy who was undersized at that position,” former Seahawks offensive line coach Tom Cable recalled several years ago.

This time, Carroll sided with Schneider. He admitted later that Schneider “convinced” him of Wilson’s value throughout the draft process. “Pete came to (decide), ‘Listen, I’m going with John this year. I went with the (coaches) last year and it kind of fucked us. I’m going with John this year,'” a team source said.

In fact, Schneider loved Wilson so much he wanted to pick him in the second round. “He was willing to do it and take him right there,” Carroll said years ago. “We had had a plan to wait until the third round. But as the first round came and then the second, John was starting to get antsy.”

Schneider landed Wilson in the third round, Carroll started him as a rookie, and the Seahawks have won at least nine games every season since.

As much as anything, the Dalton-Wilson drafts crack a window into why Schneider and Carroll have lasted for 11 years — and why they will stay together for at least a few more after both recently signed extensions. Schneider believed it was important early on that he didn’t force a player on the coaching staff, that he listened to others. A year later, Carroll believed it was important to trust and back his general manager when he showed such conviction, then has repeatedly let everyone know the Wilson pick was all Schneider.

It happened again this season. The Seahawks received unexpected contributions at outside cornerback from D.J. Reed. Schneider had picked up Reed before the season after the 49ers waived him with an injury. At the time, Carroll didn’t think Reed had the tools or attributes to be an outside corner for the Seahawks.

“I didn’t,” Carroll said. “John did. We work together and he helps me out sometimes when I make mistakes. … There was no question he could factor in. The only problems were my shortcomings.”

Carroll is the face of the franchise, the one always in front of the cameras, which suits Schneider’s laid-back personality fine. So it is important, and revealing, that Carroll makes an effort to give Schneider his public due even at his own expense.

“Pete really trusts John and his process,” another front-office source said. “Pete likes guys and he gets on the table for some guys, and because John and his group respect Pete as a coach, they’re going to listen to him on that.”

Despite their 20-year age gap, Carroll and Schneider connect on several levels. They are both optimists. They are both positive. They both like to joke and have fun, and they both want an environment that reflects those values, which bleeds over into how they talk football. “So many times I’ve been in John’s office and Pete will just walk in there and plop down,” the source went on. “It’s very informal. They just start rapping. They’re both in it. Their sleeves are rolled up, and they’re both in it. There are no walls up. You never feel like there’s any tension.”

But that’s the thing. There is tension; it’s not only inevitable in that environment but healthy. The trick is that so far Schneider and Carroll have embraced it, discussed it and solved it before it became a problem.

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