I'm sorry, but this thread is classic. The Chargers kicked Brees to the curb, the Dolphins turned him away, all he has done since then is play brilliantly and win a Superbowl, and people are still claiming they made the right call. Serious question: is this some new doctrine they preach in business school or something - that results are irrelevant to evaluating decision making? That it is all about the process and not about the outcome? I'm not being sarcastic here....I really don't get this argument.
Only if you think that GMs have a perfect understanding of who in the draft will become stars and who won't. If you feel very strongly that Rivers has star talent, but don't have a good sense of some of the other prospects available at that slot, do you avoid the guy you believe will pan out simply because he's not a big need? It's cliche, but that's what leads to Bowie-over-Jordan decisions. Also, at the time that Rivers was drafted, Brees was merely a solid young quarterback...not a star. Quarterback wasn't a need, but it's not like they drafted a quarterback with a clear franchise quarterback in place.
I've never been to business school, but to me, the logical position is this: when evaluating a lot of decisions over time, the actual results are the only bottom-line measurements that matter. When evaluating one single decision, the process based on the information at the time is what matters. Again, going back to the blackjack analogy...if a player has a 20 and asks for a hit, do you wait to see what card he gets before deciding if he made a good decision? If he gets an ace, do you say, "Wow, what a great decision. You, sir, are a genius!" In any single decision, luck plays a massive role. You can't control that. You can only stack the odds in your favour as much as possible by good process. Over the course of many decisions, luck evens out...decision-makers who tend to stack the odds in their favour tend to have better bottom-line results over time. But on any one decision, even the right call (based on what was known at the time) can backfire. That's because everything is probabilistic and not purely deterministic (as far as the limits of human understanding goes, anyway).
It's no secret that San Diego's struggles to get far into the playoffs have been more associated with the decline of LT than anything else. When you have no running game, it puts a lot more pressure on your QB.
What do Oden/Bowie have anything to do with this? So Philip Rivers has been a huge failure? Yeah? Not even 1/2 into his career and you're already classifying him as a failure? How is it making the wrong call? Brees wouldn't have won a ring here in SD either. We've got absolutely no running game because LT's career is over. Brees has had a miracle come back that nobody expected. New Orleans was willing to gamble on him and it paid off. Good for them, I still dont' see how you can fault them because they've still got an elite QB and need to make a few minor adjustments and they'll be right there in the mix of things to win it all. They don't need an all-pro RB, they just need one who can run between the tackles. So if Oden tore his knee up again and had to have multiple, major knee surgeries, you would re-sign him long term when you know you've got a gem waiting in the wings to explode onto the scene? Maybe you're the one who doesn't know how to make smart business decisions. Thank you. You get it. Can you please try to get that through to OMG.
I know we are still speaking in hindsight, but the Chargers WR's prior to that draft were AWFUL. I'm not sure if they dealt David Boston yet, but he was a bust anyways. Who didn't think Larry Fitzgerald wasn't a sure thing?
They were bad, but the team then was built around LT, not the receiving core. You have to remember that Schotty was the coach and ran a RB-oriented offense.
He wasn't a sure thing, anymore than Braylon Edwards was a sure thing. Both were among the best wide receiving prospects of the decade (along with Calvin Johnson, Andre Johnson and Michael Crabtree).
