Buck Compton said:
JCA1 said:
The early returns on Caserio are middling at best. Other than (maybe) Mills, he hasn't done anything to set this team up for long term success. I don't need to go over the coaching hires again. As for players, all he has done is shed terrible deals that literally any GM would have ditched and brought in a bunch of 1 year contracts who no one expects to play a meaningful role in the team's longterm plans.
The best thing you can say in his favor to date is that the rebuild is going to take several years and treating last year like a stopgap year was the best approach. And I may even agree with that to some degree. But at some point, he needs to actually do something that will pay actual dividends for the team in the future. After a year on the job, there's really nothing to point to.
When you go into the draft with no first or second round pick, what are you expecting? But Mills was better than just okay for a third round rookie QB. Add in Collins, who was a great third round pick, and that's a good start. The icing on the cake was someone like Lopez in the 6th round who is a fantastic run stopper and one of the higher-graded rookie DTs. The TE Jordan is a JAG, but that's how you build a team - finding contributors in the middle to late rounds.
The draft that I would have rated like a D-/F when it was done now looks much closer to a B+ when you look at the fact that we had no picks in the top 60. Drafts like that will have this team being a solid team in only a few years of returns.
What did you expect him to do in year 1 besides dumping contracts? Sign a bunch of expensive free agents? With no draft picks, it was literally a stop-gap year. And clearly not every GM would do it, because BOB wouldn't have... One year does not a great GM make, but there's also no reason to say "middling at best" about his approach to personnel. Say what you want to about coaching situation, but his first draft seems light years ahead of BOB or Rick Smith.
As for the Culley hire, I think they literally wanted the equivalent to Bo Porter to lose for a few years but to play hard and he turned out to be even worse than they imagined at every aspect of head coaching and leadership. Abject failure. I think they had their eyes on Flores and he became available sooner than they thought. But Flores wanted the Giants job a lot more. Then he went off like a loose cannon and sued the entire league over some pretty (on the surface) bull**** claims. Blame him for the first, but not sure you blame him for the second one yet. Hard to judge overall.
First, I acknowledged much of that by admitting last year may have been just a stopgap year and he did the best he could under the circumstances. But if the best you can say about someone is they didn't screw up, that's not the highest of praise.
I previously indicated that I didn't like the Mills pick but I may be proven wrong on that. I hope I am. But I still think the better odds are we use a high draft pick on a QB either this year or next and the Mills experiment is over. It was a boom/bust pick because QB is the one position where you're either the starter or never see the field. Considering the extremely low odds of finding a starting QB in the 3rd round, I would have preferred someone you are confident will, at worst, be a rotation guy at whatever position he plays. Collins looked OK and there's some potential upside there. But I think he had around 400 yards receiving for the year on a team playing from behind all the time. I can't get too jazzed up just yet. But maybe he'll prove to be a great pick.
As for free agents, of course big dollar free agents make no sense right now. But I would like them to scout some affordable guys that they see upside with and have the courage of their convictions to sign them to more than 1 year.
Regardless of the reasons, there's just nothing good to be said about any of the coaching searches under Caserio.
Maybe I'm a little hard on him and "incomplete" would be a better grade. But right now, IMO, it's more hope than a plan. No big deal if you're more optimistic.
