Be Careful What You Wish For: A Marty Hurney Story

… one of the most underappreciated and rarely heard gms in the league, and I think he and the Big Cat likes it that way. Hurney strength is in keeping the team flexible in the salary cap meaning he does not over extend the organization. Yes, as in all men, he has made mistakes, however he has kept the team as balanced as he could with what was demanded of him of the coaches. All he has to do is stay away from USC wrs and he is fairly golden. I rather have a guy that can keep the ship steady than one that runs after every big name out there and begins to take on water.

The Bottom line was a decent show when Gantt was still on.

And so is his son. I’m not saying get rid of Hurney, but maybe get those two to come back in a consultant type role. That way the team can let Hurney get the top round talent, and let the Polian’s mine us up some good later round gems.

However, when I’m home visiting family I keep my radio dial there. I’ve heard “the Drive” a few times, and while I’m sure the Charlotte market likes to have a sports show dedicated to Carolina-based sports teams, it seems to me most of the talk from that show is negative. If I remember correctly, the host is a Baltimore Ravens fan and the co-host is a Dallas Cowboys fan. (I could be wrong about that).

Anyways, I think the hosts are negative on purpose to create a buzz in the Charlotte market. Some fans will call in and agree with the hosts negative rants, and others will try (unsuccessfully most of the time( to defend the teams and coaches. It’s just an extension of the Charlotte Observer comments section…

It really is a bag of mixed fruit, and some of the fruit may be past the expiration date. I think Hurney has done a good-to-fair job as GM. He has made some really bad decisions, but to his credit he’s made some really good ones, too. I could rattle off a few examples of each, but we all know them well.

The question is, has his good moves out-weighed his bad moves? I think so. I think he is a bit too loose with trading in the draft, and he loses more than he wins when he does. However, most of his draft picks work out fairly well (minus 2nd Rounders). I can’t recall him ever blowing a 1st rounder, and we have hit on some 3rd and below picks, so overall, I think he’s doing at least a “good” job.

Some of his personnel moves need to be questioned for sure. The Delhomme extension in my mind was the worst. However, resigning DeAngelo Williams was not a bad move. He did overpay him, but that might have been JR rewartding him for having such a big impact on the organization.

Would I fire Hurney? No. I think he’s done a good enough job for the Panthers to justify his position. However, if he messes this draft up, I won’t cry if he’s let go. Another draft pick like Armanti Edwards or another trade up in the draft that costs us a future 1st or 2nd rounder, and I’ll get my torch and pitchfork out of the barn…

I like some shows on there but a lot of them bash more often then praise. I really only listen to player interviews…if i listen to too much of them bickering back and forth on why we suck and what we should be doing i lose it.

If Hurney makes a good pick, everybody is like “wow Chud did an awesome job developing Cam”. If a player plays poorly or gets hurt its the GMs fault for acquiring him. Not to mention he isn’t the only voice making the decisions. I wouldn’t want that job…

Are there better GMs out there? probably, Ted Thompson comes to mind. But are there worse GMs out there? absolutely. So while we may not have the best GM in the league and there is theoretically room for improvement, I think we could definitely do a lot worse than Hurney.

He’s missed on a few picks and made 2 poor draft day trades, but what GM hasn’t. He hits in the first round most every time, and I think that’s the most important aspect of drafting. Our second round selections leave something to be desired, but we’ve hit on some later round guys as well. We’ve also added two new members to our scouting department, so just maybe we can hit in the 1st and 2nd rounds this year.

I listened to the Mac Attack yesterday while Hurney was on and afterwards some of the callers were bashing on him as well and I don’t really get it. Some people just won’t be happy with anything less than perfection, which is impossible in evaluating talent.

And as much as I would like to see a big FA splash every now and then, I do agree with Hurney’s philosophy of “supplementing” through free agency and saving the money to retain core players. It’s not as flashy and I’m sure many would like to see us “dream team” it up, but it is not how perennial contenders are built.

the Panthers make decisions using a team of people so when they miss on a guy, they all missed. I don;t see him as the authoritarian type of GM at all. You can see that on draft day

They hire host’s that re fans of other teams and what I’ve noticed is they will make sideways comments about the Panthers that aren’t direct insults but focus attention on the negatives of the team rather than the positives.

I’ve also seen them take calls from fans of other teams who dog out players/staff/FO and then piggyback off of that. For example: Guy calls in and says Steve Smith is too old and needs to be traded. Hosts will say “So Panther fans are saying Steve Smith can’t hack it, he’s too old. Is it time to trade him?” C’mon.

Hell, the QCB is an admitted Cowboy fan who openly insults the team.

I find it hard to listen to them.

If people were as good at playing GM from their recliner as they think they are then good GM’s wouldn’t be in such high demand.

He’s made a few questionable decisions on draft day. That’s really all you can really hold against him. The Everette Brown trade, the Sherrod Martin pick and Armanti trade are skeletons in his closet. But some GMs have multiple failed top 5 picks in theirs.

He’s capable. We can win a super bowl with Hurney as the GM. I think he’s earned that. So no, I don’t think replacing him is in our best interest—not until a clear-cut better option is asking for the job.

I give Hurney a pass on Peppers and Delhomme. time will tell when it comes to DeAngelo and Godfrey (as it stands now D.Will is probably getting too much money for the workload and Godfrey has been a little uninspiring lately).

However there are plenty of other missteps in the past that really make me quesftion bhis crede tials. First of all, there’s the worst stretch of draft deals in our history that lead to us giving up 2 first round picks in a row for players who simply aren’t making an impact. Otah is often injured and Brown isn’t even with the team now.

Also while we like to say he finds gold in the first, what about his other rounds. The 2009 draft is looking like a major bust, almost as bad as the 05 one. Simply put that can’t happen on top of the other miscues we’ve had.

I don’t particularly think Hurney is a great drafter. His best quality isn’t his drafts but his cap-space management. And that’s fine if you have the scouting department to back you up but I find that questionable too.

When it comes down to it… Hurney is a great accountant. In every other aspect he’s aveage to below average at best.

I love the organization and their philosophy and the team they put on the field most of the time but it is hard to get over the trading of future top picks. Everette Brown and Armanti Edwards obviously and I’m starting to regret getting Otah.

I also think sometimes people go out of their way to defend him a little too much.

I would rate him as a middle-of-the-road GM.

The Jake extension, the 2009 draft, and drafting Clausen are really the only things that he has done that I really hated. Even letting Pep made since at the time due to the price tag.

He isn’t the greatest, but he certainly deserves to keep his job

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Even though it looks pretty much the same to me.

The Patriots had the worst defense in the league…

Some guy they didn’t want (Darius Butler) ended up as our #2/3 CB. What does that say about our talent level?

I’m happy with the job that Hurney has done. Has he hit on all of his draft picks? Hell no, and neither have the other 31 GM’s out there. But the fact of the matter is the guy does great in the first round and does pretty well getting late round talent. Now with RR and Company who knows what we will do better.

I don’t know where all this light vitriol is coming from, but I have no reason to complain about Hurney right now. Yeah, I get he had a poor 2010 draft, but c’mon people, the guy has done pretty well in almost every other draft.

On second though, lets get Jerry Angelo... I heard he is a master at being a GM!

A year where we aren’t plugging the “who’s that?” of defensive players into our lineups year after year. Constantly picking up players from the trash heap and making them into #2/3 on the roster is extremely frustrating to me. It shows a lack of foresight and depth and I can only place that blame on one person.

jimmy clausen

There are a few missteps (Everette Brown, Clausen, Jarrett, etc.) the guy has never completely wiffed on a first round pick. How many GM’s can say that? Oh, and he had the stones to draft Cam when everyone was saying otherwise. That’s enough for me.

The fact that we’re even having this conversation is confirmation that we believe there might be something to desire that Hurney isn’t giving us. Ultimately, we’re talking about it, because there is indeed a segment in each of our minds that thinks that we coulid have a GM that could do better.

Yes, you can ID things that Hurney has done well. 1st round picks, for the most part (except for Ev. Brown). However, you can also name the royal screwups. Jake Delhomme’s idiotic contract extension. Some of our draft picks. In my opinion, the 2011 draft irks me, because outside of Cam, I don’t think any of the players will become anything more than backups. So, theres a dichotomy of both good and bad.

However, I think the bad is starting to outweigh the good. Which is ultimately why we’re having this conversation. Cause Hurney is coming closer and closer to the edge. Closer and closer to his end. I think we’ll probably give him one more go. I think he’ll have one more chance at the draft, and one more offseason, and then he’ll likely be gone. If he drafts like last year, only nabbing 1 good guy, then I think he’s assuredly gone. He’s so close to the edge if you ask me…

A lot of fans have unrealistic expectations and desires for this team. It is not realistic to want the absolute best individual at every position from the front office down to the players. I’ve seen this in a couple places.

Captain Munnerlyn was a bad pick? How many 7th rounders even make the team, not to mention play well enough to start in spot duty. On other threads I’ve seen people come out and bash Greg Olsen and say it wasn’t worth the trade. He had 45 catches for 540 yards and 5 TDs. Is that fantastic? No, but he split TE duty almost 50/50 with Shockey and their presence as safety blankets for Cam can not be quantified. And good luck finding a player in the 3rd that will have more of an impact than Olsen has had.

Now, to get back to the subject at hand. I think this is another case of “so-and-so [Hurney] isn’t perfect, so he must go.” Hurney isn’t the best GM in the NFL, but he’s a good one. There is no reason for him to go and it’s not like good GMs grow on trees, so he won’t be easily replaced. He’s had bad draft picks and bust FA pickups, but so does every GM. We can’t expect him to be flawless, even though he has arguably been just that in the first round of drafts. The only season this team wasn’t competitive was 2010 when JR wanted to purge the team with the lockout looming combined with Fox’s lame-duckiness.

It’s easy to write this off as “The grass is always greener on the other side” sort of thing. We only see other GMs good pickups in the later rounds, and their failures go unnoticed by other fanbases because most of us don’t pay attention to other teams’ picks outside of the first round or two. The busts other GMs draft are largely unnoticed by our fanbase, unless it’s bigtime like a top 10-15 pick.

TL; DR:
Hurney isn’t perfect, but he’s good enough and he’s probably better than anyone we could realistically replace him with. I think his failures are magnified, while his successes are just chalked him to him doing what he’s supposed to do.

Keep in mind what an “average” draft looks like:
-8 players will be selected
-Just more than 5 of the 8 players will play at least 3 years in the NFL
-4 of the 8 players will play at least 5 years in the NFL
-2.5 players will start for at least 3 years
-1.8 players will start for at least 5 years
-1.25 players will become starters in their rookie season
Source http://draftmetrics.com/files/draft101.pdf

So you are looking for 2-3 starters every draft to put you average/above average (and consider 12 teams make the playoffs every year so an “average” drafter should put you ~16 talent wise which should be enough to be firmly in playoff contention with good coaching)

2007 and 2008 drafts were great drafts by that measure: Jon Beason, Ryan Kalil, Charles Johnson, Jonathan Stewart, Jeff Otah, Charles Godfrey, Geoff Schwartz (not to mention role players/depth like Dante Rosario, C.J. Wilson, Dan Connor, Gary Barnidge, Nick Hayden, and Mackenzy Bernadeau).

2009 and 2010 drafts don’t look nearly as good but are still close to the “average” (and of course, heaven forbid we give young players a few years to grow, they must perform now!) I could theoretically see Sherrod Martin (I know, I know), Captain Munnerlyn (as many 3 wide sets you see now a days, I would call him a “starter” even if he ends up moving back to the third CB spot), Brandon LaFell and/or David Gettis, Greg Hardy all ending up being starters/starter quality. As for this year, Cam Newton, and at least one of the two DTs should be starter quality.

So in the past five years, Hurney has two good/great drafts and three average/above average drafts. I’ll take a guy who’s floor is “average” and ceiling is “great.”

getting rid of almost all of his veterans so he could take care of the organization during the lockout that he knew was coming.