Bengals GM

[Whatever]

(11-29-2018, 01:57 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: And, just how have those "cheapest available" options panned out, so far?  Cordy Glenn is not looking like a franchise LT, but merely somewhere between average and slightly above.  Preston Brown?  We couldn't even get a solid half a season out of the guy, and he's IR'ed.  

You can try to cherry pick examples like that all day, but why were those moves so noteworthy to begin with?  Because they appeared to be moves out of the Bengals ordinary.  It likely took a group effort of convincing, to even get the big boss to even go along with either of those moves.  In hindsight, it's looking more and more like the Bills got a pair over on us.  At least the Bills were smart enough to let go of dead weight and admit that they were going to rebuild.  Instead of doing like the Bengals, picking up some bargain-basement, washed-up talent, and trying to sell it like they were putting a contender together.

All that I'm saying is that a real GM, with a vision and a plan, doesn't try to always grab at the cheapest available option, when putting a competitive team together.  

In fairness, Cordy Glenn is far from the "cheapest available" option.  He's tied for the 8th biggest LT contract in the league.  The only starting caliber LT available in FA was Nate Solder, who has also had his share of injury issues.  The Glenn move hasn't worked out as well as any of us expected, but he has upgraded the position and I personally don't fear for the QB's life every time he takes a 7 step drop.

I think you could bag on the Brown signing more if he had an injury history, but he never missed a game with the Bills.  He looked like a good pick up when he was healthy and there really wasn't any indication that he was going to get hurt.

For whatever reason, this team has struggled mightily in the deep end of FA, particularly during the Marvin era.  Really, the only position group where this team has consistently done a good job of bringing in productive veteran talent has been the secondary.  You've had the Tory Smith, Nate Clements, Terrance Newman, Chris Crocker, and Pacman FA signings to go with the Deltha O'Neal and Reggie Nelson trades.  However, the one position group that they can actually be successful with in FA makes no sense to build that way with the ridiculous amount of early draft picks they dump into it.  WR has been a disaster.  LB has been a couple of surprise hits with a ton of big misses.

Mikey will never hire a GM, but whether the problem is Marvin, Duke, or the Blackburn's, this team needs to get better at evaluating FA targets.  I think it would help if they moved Duke into just a College Scouting Director role and brought in a DPP and support staff to evaluate FA's.  However, I have the sneaking suspicion that Marvin is a big part of the problem.  I think Marvin pushed for guys like Thornton and MJ to get those big $ deals and continued to play them despite their mediocrity because he would look dumb if he benched them after pushing for them to get all that money.  You kind of see it with his approach to discipline and accountability.  There are certain players that you can tell are "his boys" who are going to continue to play no matter what(because he pushed to get them in the first place) and there are guys like Ross who was supposedly a Tobin guy that he's going crack down hard on.