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Every year the Sporting News polls more than 800 NFL players, coaches and executives for the NFL Executive award. Everyone votes for offensive and defensive player of the year, rookie of the year and comeback player of the year. But, only coaches and executives vote for coach of the year, coordinator of the year, executive of the year and SN’s All-Pro team.
GENERAL MANAGERS DUTIES:
The general manager's duties are not and should not be "talent evaluator", but for some reason it is perceived that way. The general manager is the person who usually is responsible for hiring the head coach, the scouting director, the director of player personnel, coordinating the logistics for scouting, assembling a team's roster and then getting them all on the same page.
The media and fans always focus on the general managers and coaches when it comes to assessing an NFL team's ability to evaluate talent. While those heads of the organization make the final decisions, they base that off of the work of their scouting staffs. Coaches don't watch college players during the season and many general managers are only loosely watching college football as they focus on their teams during the week.
It only makes sense that the true talent evaluators are the guys that watch the players as their full-time job and a general manager has way more going on, as one of the more respected general managers Scott Pioli said in this Monday Morning Quarterback article.
"I learned that the title "general manager" is actually a very accurate name for the role because of the wide variety of tasks you do every day."
Normally the better general managers are responsible for gaining consensus in order to get everyone on the same page, and this concept of gaining consensus is beginning to be recognized as one of the most important traits of a good general manager.
As Albert Breer said:
With solid early returns on young GMs like Thomas Dimitroff (Atlanta Falcons), John Schneider (Seattle Seahawks), Ryan Grigson (Indianapolis Colts), Rick Smith (Houston Texans, Trent Baalke (San Francisco 49ers), and Les Snead (St. Louis Rams), a pattern has become clear and a mold has been cast for owners: Find the consensus-builder, the unifier, the personality manager. That gives you the best chance to build what Reese and the Giants have, which is a healthy work environment for everyone.
"You have to be able to manage people, to trust people, and to trust the relationships you've built," said one NFC GM. "If you make everyone feel like they have a legitimate voice, you've got the best shot to make it work. If you start locking people out of the room, you make it difficult for them to buy in."