Mothman wrote:None of the examples you mentioned are examples of his drafting ability.
I read your comment as evaluating him based on more than his drafting ability. Apologies if I got that wrong.
I can't say Spielman had final say with roster decisions but I can say he had final say with draft decisions because it was widely and repeatedly reported that when it was time to make the actual picks, the final call was his choice.
I don't care what was reported. Has this been confirmed? I'd also question how much his draft decisions were influenced by one or other members of the TOA. If Childress really wanted a guy that Rick may not have been sold on -- "pounded the table" as it were, it's different if he has equal control than if there's a clear distribution of power. We don't know if any picks were overruled by Childress (or Wilf in the case of such differentiating opinions).
or when could infer that he found himself in different circumstances that more or less necessitated a youth movement.
Chicken or the egg argument. And, again, we don't know who all influenced the strategy that led them to that point.
i think we can evaluate based on his role. He was, at a minimum, one third of the TOA.
That's cool if you want to do that. I'm not comfortable with it. I wouldn't like it if I was the boss of an organization and people outside the building were evaluating me based on the decisions of others that I may or may not have agreed with. They'd be evaluating my performance based on what they think they know of 1/3 of my "say" on decisions they don't a thing about how they were made or who, in fact, made them.
There's no way for us to know how often he and Childress (or Frazier in 2011) disagreed or how to specifically attribute each draft choice, pick by pick, to a specific decision-maker.
Precisely! And you're still comfortable?
In many (perhaps most) cases, they may have been on the same page.
Again, you don't take issue with using words like "many", "probably" and "may?"
We can consider him at least 33% responsible for all draft decisions prior to 2012 and considering all of the above, including reports that he had final say, probably much more responsible than that.
There's more of that 33.3% and "probably" stuff.
The bottom line is he was heavily involved, involved enough to remain with the team after Childress was fired, involved enough to be promoted to GM, presumably based on his prior performance. If he was just getting out of the way of the head coaches all along, that promotion seems pretty unlikely. The promotion suggests his role was significant and then expanded.
So the Wilfs saw fit to fire one of the 33.3% and promote the other. That seems to be a vote in favor of Rick's performance.
Spielman's essentially been calling the shots in the draft for a decade and he's certainly been running the scouting/evaluation aspect of the Vikes draft for that long. Good and bad, he's easily been the biggest, most consistent voice in that process for the Vikes since 2006.
Sure, but he hasn't been the
only one. Not until 2012 anyway. Again, I'm cool with you starting your evaluation prior to 2012. I'm just not comfortable with that approach.