Harlan's regret: Making Sherman GM

So many captions....


“You learn a lot about mistakes you make, too."

Dude must be a genius by now.

You know, I regret Harlan making Sherman the GM too.

And the sky opened wide.

quote:

Shermna's horrible personnel decisions in the draft and free agency wasted Favre's prime years and multiple Super Bowl shots.

This is also the same coach who allowed him to get his own private locker, to skip OTA's, for his ankle to "act up" in training camp therefore he didn't practice, etc.

Favre not having a HC like the other Mike(s) did him no favors.

Favre's terrible decisions also wasted Favre's prime years and multiple Super Bowl shots.

Shermanistas and Pevre hicks are inexorably linked.

Dumb and dumber.

http://oi45.tinypic.com/2viqgzp.jpg

quote:

Originally posted by heyward:
Favre's terrible decisions also wasted Favre's prime years and multiple Super Bowl shots.

This more than anything. Sherman didn't toss those interceptions in big games, Favre did. If Favre had made better decisions, GB would have been in more Super Bowls.

Sherman played a big role in those failures too. McCarthy didn't tolerate Brett having 20+ INT seasons like Sherman did. Even with all of the Brett coddling, I have no doubt the team would have gotten to at least one Super Bowl if a GM like Thompson had been running the personnel side of things back then. Those Packers teams in 2001, 2002 and 2003 had a lot of talent (mostly on offense), and they could have been the best in the league over that span with a couple solid drafts to bolster the defense. The '01, '02, '03 and '04 drafts will probably go down as the least productive stretch of drafts in team history. I don't think even the 70s and 80s had a four year stretch that could match those disasters.

I don't think any coach but Holmgren could have kept him on track. I don't think it's reasonable to blame Favre's insanity on Sherman. The guy would have been the same regardless of the coach, as evidenced that he played that way even for McCarthy.

That was actually a good read. Both men, I thought, were clear, concise, and forthcoming. Not to mention intelligent aand honest.
I have regrets about Sherman the GM, the ramifications to the team, and certainly how it affected him according to Harlan, but that's where it ends. He apparently was (is) a good; maybe a very good, coach and still respects the Packers traditions and history.

I have no doubt Sherman will do well in Miami. He doesn't have a star QB to spoil. Come to think on it, he doesn't even have an NFL QB. Tannehill may be that guy, but it may take a bit.

My summation of Sherman: excellent position coach, good coordinator, decent head coach, and terrible GM.

He should have never been a GM with his limited credentials. I blame Wolf and Harlan for really being naive enough to think a guy with basically 2 years as an NFL coordinator and 1 year as a head coach could actually be qualified to run the entire football side of the Packer organization. HUGE mistake on their parts to give a guy with as little experience as he had the keys to the entire Packer kingdom.

Flightphoe93, excellent summary. What makes Harlan's decision incredibly hard to understand is he was part of the organization in the '70s and '80s, and saw first-hand how coaches with zero GM experience -- Devine, Starr, Gregg -- made one horrible personnel decision after another, leading to 20 years of ineptness. Harlan then, finally, made the right call to hire a real GM in Wolf. Sherman was another Devine/Starr/Gregg. Every fan knew it would be the case the moment he was made GM. Why Harlan couldn't -- and why Wolf supported the decision -- is just incomprehensible.

Sherman watched over and coached very well IMO the OL. Some of the best OL's GB's had were under his watch. Good offense minded coach..but he gave Favre too much power and I think at times was afraid of pissing him off and being seen as ruffling his feathers. It's unfortunately exactly what he needed.

What Sherman should have had was a quality GM and a defensive coordinator like Capers. MM has exactly those 2 things plus he expects a lot of Rodgers and keeps pushing him. As good as Rodgers is, if he decided go on cruise control and do the bare minimum in off season I could see MM telling him to either step it up or someone else is going to pass you and become the starter.

Sherman just didn't have enough confidence to give Favre a boot in his ass.

Seems to me Sherman's problems with a DC were a result of the loss in Philly, after which he canned Donnatell in what looked like a knee-jerk decision. (I always thought Donatell was a pretty decent DC if unspectacular) Then came Slowik then Bates, who was at least an improvement. And didn't he also have the real behind-the-times special teams coach?

Harlan’s biggest mistake was making Sherman Head Coach and GM. The Packers stayed with the model of combining the HC and GM model way too long, throughout the 70’s and most of the 80’s. Then they had success with the two positions separated in the 90’s, why did Harlan go back to combining the two jobs? Sherman physically looked like a wreck by the time Ted fired him. I think one person doing both jobs is a bad idea for a bunch of reasons.

quote:

Originally posted by sschumer:
What makes Harlan's decision incredibly hard to understand is he was part of the organization in the '70s and '80s, and saw first-hand how coaches with zero GM experience -- Devine, Starr, Gregg -- made one horrible personnel decision after another, leading to 20 years of ineptness.

That's always been the most puzzling aspect of the decision to me as well.

Harlan certainly deserves his share of the blame, but Wolf does as well for apparently signing off on the move.

In fairness to Harlan, the absolute failure of Ray Rhodes as a coach and the imminent retirement of Wolf made his decision a very tricky one.

If Harlan decided to go with another GM who wanted his own head coach, that could have potentially made it 4 Head Coaches in 4 or 5 years. It would have been Holmgren, Rhodes, Sherman, and Coach X all between 1998 and 2001. That's about as unstable as it gets and it was wasting the prime years of a Hall of Fame QB. He took the gamble on keeping Sherman for stability sake, and it sort of worked for awhile but they never became elite under his watch.

In the end, it was a failure, but I can see why Harlan made the call on Sherman. The Ray Rhodes failure set the team back a bit and then having Sherman as the GM gradually diminished the talent to the point that in 2005 it looked more like an expansion team in many areas than an established franchise.

I can't be the only one who liked Sherman better than McCarthy. He was a Regular Joe. Didn't he no fancy contract, just give him his container of coffee and a butter roll and he was happy, you know?