want Jason Garrett to have final say over personnel. He's the headcoach of the Dallas Cowboys, he's also the offensive coordinator. That's MORE than enough work for Jason. He doesn't need anymore responsabilities.
Should he have a say ? Absolutely. He should be consulted and his opinion should be just as important as anyone, but NOT more than any of the top guys. He knows what the team's biggest weaknesses are and he should be listened in that regard, but the scouting department, like it's been for the past few years, should be in charge of the personnel. They're the ones who know the prospects better than anybody else in the organization.
The problem, if anything, is the direction of the draft, not necessarily the players that have been picked. That's always been my main complaint with Jerry. If Jerry tells the scouting dpt: " hey, we need to concentrate on special teams in this draft ", then that's what the scouting department is going to give him. If he tell them " we need to find an explosive back who won't complain about touches ", then that's what scouting dpt is going to give him.
There is no sure fire way to conduct a draft that's deemed to be successful 2 or 3 years down the road. Best player available is probably the better way to go most of the time, but not necessarily in the 1st or 2nd round. There are times when it's better to move up or move down, depending on the circumstances.
Knowing that then, the best thing to do is as follow:
1) have the scouting Dpt provide a list of the top players according to their opinions, including the top 64 ( or even 96 ) players in a seperate column.
2) Along with the pro-scouts, the coaches and pro-personnel manager, evaluate the current roster, and identify the biggest weaknesses.
3) Decide which weaknesses are going to be addresssed through the draft and which ones through free agency.
4) After identifying which weaknesses are going to be addressed through the draft, determined which players of the top 64 ( or even 96 ) column could potentially strengthen those weakness, and put them in a separate column. This is the point in time where the headcoach and scouting dpt will need to co-operate with each other the most. The headcoach must accept the fact that just because a player is needed due to weaknesses in a certain position(s), does NOT necessarily mean that player should be selected in any particular round. At the same time, it is the scouting dpt job to try to get the best evaluation possible on a player that fits the system the head-coach is implementing and not fall in love with any " pet cats ".
5) Once those players have been indentified, compare and contrast them to the rest of the top players that are left and where they're ranked according to the scouting department. Usually teams know each others' interests ( that's a big part of how players' agents make their living ) so using that information to manuever in the draft is also important.
6) Have a forward plan and a back up plan. What do I mean by " forward plan " ? Well, last year was the perfect " forward plan ". We never really seriously thought that Dez Bryant was going to fall to around our pick, but he did. When that happens, the front office needs to have a contingency plan that could be put into effect right away because whatever game plan they had going into that moment, will all of the sudden change. A decision to pass on a talent like Dez needs to be SERIOUSLY considered and that's not something that it's done in 15 minutes. Make a plan where certain top 10 players ( in the case this year, top 5 players ) fall to our spot in mock drafts ( for whatever reason ), and make a case to take him AND a case to pass on him, with the " take him " option given more weight. Make sure that everybody is on board with this decisions BEFORE the draft starts. None of this " well, we want to give the headcoach his say so he can establish himself " ( see Randy Moss, Chan Gailey, 1998 ).
The " back up plan " is obvious. If a player that's targeted is gone, then have a plan ahead of time what the next steps are going to be, wether trade down ( have preliminary talks with teams who might be looking to move into your spot ) or select the next guy in line.
7) THE most important thing out all of this is to have a plan that's agreed by everyone ( by that I mean every top decision maker in the franchise who's job is to have a say ) ahead of time. When that happens, usually mistakes are not as common and drafts are more successful.
