Familiar Hires To Ownership / Team President (40 hires / 56% of the 71 searches in the dataset)
- Internal Promotion/Past Employee (31 / 44%)
This category covers hires like Dave Gettleman returning to the New York Giants after spending the bulk of his NFL tenure working for them, as well as those like Brett Veach, Eric Decosta, or Chris Grier who were promoted internally.
- GM “re-installed” (3)
3 such situations took place, where someone who once held the title (and full authority) of GM for a team, then did not, but then was ‘re-installed’ to the top post: Howie Roseman, Marty Hurney, and Dave Caldwell.
- Non GM/GM (6)
This category is for searches that may not have led to a GM being hired, times when the HC clearly had final control, or any other ambiguous situation for who held the cards.
For example; Mike Mayock, who holds the title and runs the scouting department, but the final decision lands with Jon Gruden
Then there are executives like Kyle Smith (WAS) and Patrick Stewart (CAR) who may not have final decision currently, but there is an expectation that they can earn that authority sooner rather than later.
Outside Hire for GM (31 / 44%)
- Outside Hire for GM Paired With Coach (12 / 17%)
This category does have situations where the GM had worked with the HC previously and the HC was key in that GM’s selection. For example, Brandon Beane’s connection to Sean McDermott while in Carolina orJoe Douglas’ time spent with Adam Gase in Chicago.
- Search That Lead To a GM Hire From Outside (19 / 27%)
Just as the title suggests, these are situations where the person hired as GM came from outside the team, without having worked for that team previously.
So, what does all this mean?
It seems very clear that comfort drives many of these decisions. Of the 71 GM searches studied since 2007, only 19 led to a new decision maker that did not have clear ties to the Owner/Search Committee/Head Coach. So turning that into a percentage, only 27% of GM searches resulted in Ownership actually changing course and installing new systems in their personnel department.
The hypothesis here is that the nature of the scouting process and the secrecy teams have regarding the information and grades they collect, lead to almost no public data for study. Therefore, it is functionally impossible to look at the Win/Loss record of a team and draw objective connections from those results to the contributions of each member of the scouting staff. Outside of the cultivated war room videos or the rare teams like the Indianapolis Colts whose GM, Chris Ballard, will make his scouting staff available for press conferences post draft, we have no idea which staffers were on-board with a decision and which were not. Ultimately, the lack of information Ownership can obtain on candidates who have not passed through their buildings is limited in scope.
So if the owners and search committees who do actually want to bring about outside change, cannot study results to determine who was the engine that drives success, where can they go? The answer is their rolodex, agents, media insiders, and those whose tenure would suggest they may have a pulse on what is really going on. It’s not hard to find those who will tell you they have the answers, but the concern among the scouting community is that no outsiders are auditing all 32 teams and none are working to understand each staffer in the NFL.
Search committees study the interview behaviors of their competitors and even share notes on the quality of interviews from candidates. This alone is the reason this research has been so effective at highlighting those most likely to be hired in a GM search. Those who interview for GM jobs get on the radar of every other team and therefore are more likely to be asked to interview down the road.
*One caveat here; there does seem to be a mechanism that candidates with leverage can consider, which is: declining interviews. Candidates like Nick Caserio, Eric Decosta, Ed Dodds, Will McClay, George Paton, and Duke Tobin have declined interviews and it only seems to make interest in them skyrocket even more.
What is relied on then, is the assumption that how teams promote internally should provide a signal on who others should care about. Earning a big title in one organization generates a mark of candidacy to the league. Therefore, one recommendation to candidates is to build a coalition in your current organization, so they will back your candidacy. If your current team is not shining a spotlight on you, the optics seem like a large hurdle to overcome.
To further illustrate this point, the most common titles in 2 positions prior to GM are:
- Director of Player Personnel/Director of Football Operations (Green Bay uses the Director of Football Operations title for personnel rather than traditional operations)
- Director of College Scouting
- Director of Pro Personnel
- Vice President of Player Personnel
- General Manager
Another concerning element to the small funnel that has been erected for candidates is that one of the gatekeeper mechanisms is agent support. Most scouts do not have an agent, in fact, most scouts live under the impression that if they hired an agent to represent their interests that they may not be employed very long.
What ends up happening is that until the powers that be at the top of the organization essentially tap you on the shoulder and announce your candidacy, it is frowned upon to be a ‘self-promoter’. In this environment, most that ascend to such candidacy are introduced to the agent that represents their GM and the funnel tightens, leaving a very small group of agents as the representation for executives. So when search committees and owners want to engage with a candidate, they may end up with a whole list from that agent who now has leverage in the process, especially in light of the fact that many of those agents also represent the Head Coaching candidates a team will want to interview in the process.
Finally, the last consistent mechanism that has appeared in candidate searches and interview lists of outside candidates has been the current Win/Loss record of their current employer. To say it another way: If your team is good right now, you have a shot. If not….better luck next year.
The GM landscape is a stock market (trademark pending) and is more about being at the right place at the right time, which is a constant source of frustration for candidates. Joe Douglas is a massively respected scout and now the GM of the New York Jets after a Super Bowl run as an executive for the Philadelphia Eagles, but if he had not taken the Jets job and was still with Philly now, would he be as hot of a candidate as he was in the Summer of 2019? Probably not.
So, without further ado, I present a list of General Manager candidates, clustered by background, and ordered alphabetically. I am not in a place to deem a candidate “worthy” or “unworthy” for consideration as a General Manager. This is NOT “my list.” This is the outcome of years of studying which candidates have actually interviewed for the position and my attempt to highlight what I have learned in that process. I have dear friends that I believe should be in consideration for GM opportunities that will be on the list below, and others that will not. This is because this study is not about who I believe in, but who seems to have the attention of ownership groups. Their names are links to their bios. You can find a master list of NFL media guides here, to learn more about any name on the list.
Those who most commonly decline interviews
- Nick Caserio – director of player personnel – New England Patriots
- Will McClay – vice president, player personnel – Dallas Cowboys
- Duke Tobin – director of player personnel – Cincinnati Bengals
Those with at least one 2019 or 2020 interview
- Ray Farmer – scouting consultant – Los Angeles Rams
- Scott Fitterer – co-director of player personnel – Seattle Seahawks
- Terry Fontenot – vice president/assistant GM – pro personnel – New Orleans Saints
- Champ Kelly – assistant director of player personnel – Chicago Bears
- Martin Mayhew – vice president, player personnel – San Francisco 49ers
- Monti Ossenfort – director of player personnel – Tennessee Titans
- George Paton – vice president of player personnel/assistant GM – Minnesota Vikings
Those who interviewed most recently in 2017 or 2018
- Kevin Abrams – vice president of football ops/assistant GM – New York Giants
- Trey Brown – director of player personnel – XFL
- Lake Dawson – assistant director of college scouting – Buffalo Bills
- Brian Gaine – senior personnel advisor – Buffalo Bills
- Terry McDonough – senior personnel executive – Arizona Cardinals
- Jimmy Raye III – senior personnel executive – Detroit Lions
- Louis Riddick – analyst – ESPN Monday Night Football
- Marc Ross – analyst – NFL Network
- Doug Whaley – senior vice president, football operations – XFL
- Eliot Wolf – scouting consultant – New England Patriots
Oft-mentioned candidates from teams currently sitting in playoff spots
- Ray Agnew – director of pro scouting – Los Angeles Rams
- Mike Borgonzi – director of football operations – Kansas City Chiefs
- Ryan Cowden – vice president of player personnel – Tennessee Titans
- Ed Dodds – assistant general manager – Indianapolis Colts
- Quentin Harris – director of player personnel – Arizona Cardinals
- Brad Holmes – director of college scouting – Los Angeles Rams
- Brandon Hunt – pro scouting coordinator – Pittsburgh Steelers
- Omar Khan – vice president of football and business administration – Pittsburgh Steelers
- Trent Kirchner – co-director of player personnel – Seattle Seahawks
- Dan Morgan – director of player personnel – Buffalo Bills
- Joe Schoen – assistant general manager – Buffalo Bills
- John Spytek – director of player personnel – Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- Jon-Eric Sullivan – co-director of player personnel – Green Bay Packers
Former General Managers who have been most discussed publicly
- John Dorsey – unknown
- Jeff Ireland – vice president/assistant GM – college personnel – New Orleans Saints
- Ryan Grigson – senior football advisor – Cleveland Browns
- Reggie McKenzie – senior personnel executive – Miami Dolphins
- Scott Pioli – analyst – NFL Network
- Jerry Reese – unknown
- Rick Smith – unknown
- Brian Xanders – senior personnel executive – Los Angeles Rams
Oft-mentioned candidates whose teams made the playoffs last year
- Joe Hortiz – director of college scouting – Baltimore Ravens
- James Liipfert – director of college scouting – Houston Texans
- Adam Peters – vice president of player personnel – San Francisco 49ers
Those six categories alone bring up 44 names that have been circulated publicly for candidacy for the 4 current GM openings (at publication time) in Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, and Jacksonville. Then odds are, only one search will produce a GM that is an outside change agent, as opposed to someone versed in the current culture/systems. If we are looking at another cycle of the same search processes following the same procedures as we have the last decade, doesn’t it stand to reason that we would also be looking at the same results?
What is to follow is my research on candidates that may seem unconventional, but a closer look suggests that their experiences and skill set may present a tool box that could help them execute the ever-growing duties and responsibilities of General Manager in a league that is getting more heavily reliant on technology and data science.
In order to generate this list a survey question was sent to over 100 NFL staffers, all of whom have over 5 years of NFL service and the majority have over 10 years of NFL service. The question was:
Can you name 1 or 2 people in football that you’ve met or worked with that you think have a unique background/skill set/thought process about team building? Someone, who even if they are not ready for GM today, shows signs of being the type of person you would follow moving forward.
Six candidates rose from the ranks who were specifically nominated based on their success in evaluation, but also for additional skill sets or experiences that should serve them well moving forward. Sample quotes from those that recommended them are shared along with a breakdown of their backgrounds. They are listed in alphabetical order: