I think the better drafting in recent year is the result of 1) the addition of McClay, 2) more Stephen and less Jerry, and 3) Garrett. The Garrett haters may not like this, but I think there drafting will get worse if he is ever fired unless the next coach is very strong in evaluating personnel.
Garrett pushed to have a defined process and to follow the process. I think he and Stephen worked together to get McClay promoted over Ciskowski.
I don't know if Garrett is good at evaluating players. I get the feeling he isn't. It's OK because they have other people to evaluate players.
A lack of process is what caused many of the problems in the draft between the time Jimmy departed and McClay was promoted.
Everything was a seat-of-the-pants decision in drafts for many years. Larry Lacewell and Jerry would draft based on random reasons.
Parcells came along a fired Lacewell but then Parcells made more seat-of-the-pants decisions like drafting Barbie Carpenter and Jacob Rogers because their Dad's were coaches and/or played in the NFL.
When Parcells departed, Ciscowski was in charge of the draft. He was probably a good scout but was in over his head trying to manage the draft process.
Eventually Stephen, Garrett and McClay were able to implement a process for improvement. They reviewed the reasons for past failure and established processes to improve.
- Involve the coaches in the eval process but don't let them just over-ride the scouts.
- Narrow down the draft board for a better focus. Went from about 240 players to 120 players.
- Lean towards drafting players they had spent time with in person. The 30 draft visits, etc...
Summary: They didn't replace the scouts evaluating the players. They implemented processes to better utilize the scouting resources they as already had.
