DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum RE: The Front Office....continued...

I have brought that point up several times. But, I get "yeah, tell me somethin' I don't know that football is not baseball."

I don't think it is the only issue w/the plan, but it is an issue.

Anyone care to know how the Browns missed Dak Prescott and drafted Kessler over him?

Remember when it was posted that the Browns and two other teams were granted time with Prescott the night before his pro-day... the other two teams were the Steelers and last was the Panthers.

...the Browns did not do a sit down interview with Prescott or have him throw passes or review video with him...the Browns gave Prescott 5 tests, each test with a time limit of 7 minutes, then they took their results without grading them left ...

below, from the article...




This is an example of how the Browns front office was using analytics.

Umm.....Hue Jackson?

Who was driving force that brought Dak Prescott to Cowboys and why did it take so long?

Seven months later, there is still some dispute about why so many NFL teams missed on Dak Prescott. Surveying general managers, coaches and personnel evaluators delivers a wide swath of answers. From the obvious – like Prescott’s DUI charge before the draft – to the less discernable, like teams overestimating the Mississippi State talent surrounding Prescott.

Even with the Dallas Cowboys – who took four rounds and a scuttled trade effort to make the right call – there is a lack of clarity concerning where exactly Prescott fit into the draft plans. One team source told Yahoo Sports four quarterbacks drew a better collective grade from the organization – Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Paxton Lynch and Connor Cook. But another says that six quarterbacks were higher than Prescott on the Dallas draft board – the aforementioned quartet, plus Jacoby Brissett and Jeff Driskel.

So before team owner Jerry Jones can deliver a wink and tell it differently, it’s worth shining a light on how everyone else got this wrong before Dallas finally got it right.

“It was a coaching staff pick,” one Cowboys source said. “[The personnel staff] can be honest about that. If anyone is most responsible for him being taken, the coaches liked him maybe a little more than the scouts did. [The scouts] thought they already had a Dak on the roster in Jameill Showers.”

It turns out, much to the Cowboys’ delight and surprise, they didn’t have a Dak on the roster. And that they do now has been a well-chronicled bit of good fortune. But it wasn’t all luck. It turns out Dallas did far more homework on Prescott than any other team in the NFL draft. And that’s ultimately why the Cowboys eventually made the selection that everyone else missed.

“Of all the players I’ve coached in my entire career, the Cowboys inquired with me personally more about Dak than any team – and more than any player ever,” Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen said. “I talked to the position coach. I talked to the coordinator. I talked to the head coach.”

So how did Dak Prescott end up falling to the fourth round, and how exactly did Dallas end up making the pick that others didn’t? After talking to Mullen and more than a dozen coaching, scouting and executive sources, here were the most interesting tidbits involving the many ups and downs of Dak …

Prescott on the field

The overriding thread about Prescott that might have hurt him most was the Mississippi State offense. Unless a quarterback is elite in several areas, the spread offense and lack of huddle time becomes an instant downward pressure on prospects. Conversely, proficient pro-style quarterbacks get lifted in evaluations. Prescott versus Cook of Michigan State was a prime example of this.

Just from the translation of tape standpoint, it was universal that Cook’s evaluation became what he likely could do on the field in the NFL vs. what Prescott might not be able to do. One scout even related a story about sitting in a press box watching Prescott in college and having a Tim Tebow debate with another evaluator – despite Prescott’s game being tangibly different than Tebow’s.

“It’s really on the top shelf of every report,” an evaluator said of Prescott running a no-huddle spread offense. “For us, the way we break guys down, you get past the measurable things – does he have the size for we’re looking for and things like that – and it’s right into, ‘What offense is he running and what can we translate easily?’ If the answer is, ‘It looks nothing like what we do,’ then that is a project player and the conversation goes into that direction, which at quarterback is not a good direction.”

A number of evaluators provided a wide array of things they might have underestimated about Prescott. Three reasons resonated:

• Several scouts said that it wasn’t until they viewed this year’s Mississippi State draft class (which is very shallow) that they realized Prescott likely wasn’t given enough credit for elevating parts of the program. Some scouts didn’t realize there was far less NFL talent surrounding Prescott than they initially believed. And knowing that last year might have raised his profile.

• Several evaluators said Prescott’s ability to retain new information and adapt himself to an NFL system is hard to accurately measure based on a handful of workouts. Basically, a player can display this kind of thing on a whiteboard or in classroom sessions, but a team may never fully know the depth of this until a player is in its system. Mullen said the Cowboys likely had a better handle on this than most, but even Dallas couldn’t have known that Prescott would translate so well, and so quickly, to a full-fledged pro-style offense.

• Across the board, sources who saw Prescott said he had solid workouts but didn’t blow away onlookers. Interestingly, this appeared to be something that carried over after the draft. As one Cowboys source noted, Prescott had bright moments in offseason camps and the OTAs, but it wasn’t until he started playing in games that he began to take large strides. Even Mullen admitted that workouts weren’t Prescott’s strengths. The same Mullen who went as far as to tell a Dallas scout that Prescott was worthy of being the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.

“He’s never going to have the strongest arm,” Mullen said. “As I’ve told people when he went to the draft, I’m sure if you go to a pro workout, there are guys that are going to look better within that workout. I don’t know if you put 10 other guys on offense and 11 out there on defense against him, there’s going to be anybody better. But there [are] guys if you go put them in shorts and have them throw routes, their release might look prettier. Their arm might look stronger. But as far as managing the game and doing what you need to do to win games as a quarterback, I don’t know if you’ll find somebody better.

“He won at Mississippi State. He led us to No. 1 and that’s never happened in 118 years before. He knows how to win.”

Prescott off the field

A handful of personnel evaluators said they were aware of the video that came out when Prescott was jumped while on spring break in March of 2015. In it, Prescott appears to stumble to his feet in a parking lot after a group of men kicked him in the head and hit him in the face with a bottle. While Prescott and his teammates appeared to be the victims in the attack, it was the kind of thing that raised concerns and made its way into the character portions of scouting reports.

That video also caused at least some teams to do more advanced homework on Prescott’s social life at Mississippi State, including how often he was in campus bars, whether he was typically a handful when he was out at night and whether there were other fights or incidents in Starkville that never made it into the public eye. At the end of their work, some teams walked away believing Prescott’s social life was lively enough that his spring break run-in, even if it wasn’t his fault, was an example of him occasionally opening himself up to problems. That evaluation was further accentuated when Prescott was arrested for DUI and speeding in March, less than two months before the draft. Prescott was ultimately found not guilty in the case, but in some minds, the incidents cemented negative outlooks. One NFC executive joked that if a college quarterback is on TMZ more than once for something negative, he gets moved to an ancillary “high risk” draft board – and Prescott was on there twice.

“It was a little bit like, OK, is this a Johnny Manziel thing again?” the executive said. “A lot of people at [Mississippi State] came to his defense, but for me the off-field concern was a solid part of [Dak’s] evaluation. There were other guys who looked a little better in that respect and some who probably looked a lot worse. But it was there. I’ll just leave it at that.”

Why Dallas took him

The Cowboys’ selection of Prescott has a lot of layers. Yes, they attempted to trade up in the draft for Lynch. And yes, by all accounts they would have taken Cook (and maybe Brissett) instead of Prescott if either had still been on the draft board in the fourth round. In that context, they got lucky.

That said, Dallas didn’t just grab Prescott because he was the only guy available. Again, a source said that Louisiana Tech’s Jeff Driskel was ahead of Prescott on the board, but that it ultimately came down to what player the coaching staff wanted as a quarterback project. And the staff overwhelmingly agreed that Prescott was that guy. While the scouts saw him as another iteration of Showers, the coaches thought he had some hybrid qualities that placed him somewhere on the continuum between Showers and Tony Romo. And thus far, that assessment appears to be dead-on.

So who was most responsible on the Dallas coaching staff? There are varying opinions. What’s clear is that head coach Jason Garrett, offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and quarterbacks coach Wade Wilson all liked Prescott and thought he was a worthwhile project. But Garrett had some concerns about Prescott’s off-field incidents and made a point to drill into him about it in their personal meetings. And Linehan? He remained a big Kellen Moore backer behind Romo, but believed Prescott had the skills to develop down the line.

Ultimately, the driving force that tipped the scales seems to have been Wilson, who went all over the map looking at Prescott. In terms of overall assessment and scouting, Wilson’s work on Prescott’s on-field abilities might have had the most depth. So there is merit in saying that Wilson may have planted the seed that was ultimately fed and cultivated by Garrett and Linehan.

If not Dallas, where?

The “where else?” question is interesting because nobody really knows. In the personnel world, everyone is guessing everyone else’s poker hand when it comes to the NFL draft. But a number of evaluators believe if they were reading the landscape correctly that the Denver Broncos ultimately would have taken Prescott if they hadn’t pulled off the trade to land Lynch in the first round. Prescott spent time with the Broncos, who also did a fair amount of work on him at Mississippi State. All of which is an amazing twist in hindsight since it was Denver’s trade with the Seattle Seahawks (and the Cowboys refusing to pull trigger on it first) that ultimately began a chain of events that delivered Lynch to the Broncos and then ultimately finished with Prescott landing in Dallas.

In essence, the two quarterback situations could easily be reversed right now, with Lynch starting in Dallas and Prescott on the bench (or even starting) with the Broncos.

“I know [Broncos head coach] Gary Kubiak liked Dak,” one personnel evaluator said. “I know [Broncos general manager] John Elway also liked Dak. … He fit right into what they were looking for. Maybe they don’t take him until later [in the draft], but I don’t think Dak Prescott would have ever made it to the fourth round if Denver didn’t get Paxton first. … I’m convinced he was somewhere in [Denver’s] backup plan.”

Alas, it didn’t work out that way. Much to the delight of the Cowboys and their faithful, circumstance (and some homework) gifted Dak Prescott to Dallas. But it took everyone missing – even Dallas a few times – to make that happen.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/who-was-dri...-013907957.html

They aren't even 12 full months in the implementation of the plan. I have to believe that whatever plan you install, it can't be done finished in one year.

I said all along that the lack of experience would make it almost impossible to win more than a few games this year.

I want to give an example of how youth just does nto win int he NFL until they gain experience.

The 1998 Colts drafted Peyton Manning. They had Marshall Faulk as a young but established RB. Jerome Pethon was a rookie. Steve McKinney was a rookie. Marvin Harrison was in his 3rd season. Their OL featured a rookie and 2 2nd year Tackles. They also had experienced players at many other positions.

They won 3 games in this 1st year of Manning, the same as they won the year before. They won 13 games in Manning's 2nd season, after also adding Edge to the mix.

The Colts "base" was fer better than ours, and had far more experience, and they added a Hall of Fame QB, and a darn good OL, yet they still only won 3 games.

It is hard to win with youth in the NFL, Players have to gain experience before they are ready to win.

Using the Colts example, we were a step behind them at the beginning of this season. I don't think that we added a Hall of Fame QB this year. This is going to take time. the team needs time to learn the schemes, to learn how to work together, and for the coaches to understand what each player can, and cannot do.

Anyway, even if we grab a Hall if Fame caliber QB in the 2017 draft, I would be surprised to see us win more than 6 or 7 games. It takes time to build a team, and especially to build a team from the floor up.

Wonder why people are ignoring this? Especially the part in green font.

So, the Browns are streamlining their scouting department and giving their prospects comics, pictures, patterns, and numbers.

Awesome!!!

I don't think it's being ignored. We've seen this article hundreds of times already from mac. My assumption is that these type of psych tests are administered by all NFL teams. This one might be a TAT test.

Oh. My bad. It's the first time I saw that one.

*LOL* ... I don't read mac much .. learned that lesson MANY MANY MOONS ago ...

Plus now .. sumptin''s up with my ipad or the site and my colors are black font on white background so i can't read mac's posts ... i'd look into to it but no need to .. *L* ... for some reason (must be tabber uses a different shade of yellow) as i can read his ... its hard .. but worth it ...

VERS - comic books, pictures .. I wonder if we sponsor any colleges "safe spaces" and provided them with play-doh and crayons ... *L* ..

I've never seen the article either .. in one of the draft threads in the tailgate they were talking about the combine ... and your buddy ED was saying that interviews and stuff were HUGE and u could gather so much info from them ... my reply ...

These kids go through 1,000 mock interviews and have all the canned answers u could want for any question ... alot of value in that ... .... i said i would take them out to lunch or dinner cause you'll learn alot more about the kid ... its no wonder the Squeelers do just that ...

I thought the differences between how Dak was interviewed by the Browns and Steelers was telling.

I don't know.........I hate being negative about this team all the time. You met me. You know that isn't my style. Heck, one just needs to read my takes on Ohio State to realize I can be a homer, but man, this team frustrates me to no end.

It's like we always make the dumbest decisions. It's uncanny.

Just how many times are you going to keep eating your own shoe leather in the forum? You ignored my last few posts because you were 110 percent wrong and didn't have a leg to stand on. look bro I love ya, But give it up. When your wrong and screw something up just admit it.

Do YOU realize that 30 other teams missed out as well, YET it's all about Cleveland. You do realize NE could have drafted him as well but according to you they are to stupid to get out of their own way. Your posts are about as bright as a 5 watt bulb on the moon

The operative word being "eventually".

Not going to happen, but it is his thread he has bumped 3-4 times, so it is what it is.

Y'all make fun of mac constantly. I mean.............constantly.

Yet........

--tab says that the Browns will make the playoffs next year if they win the first game and not one of you challenge that.

--Vambo and 101 say that the Browns should not have re-signed our free agents because we were not going to make the playoffs this year and not one of you challenged that.

Come on, man!!!!

Mac makes some wild statements, but they are not as wild as many other statements made by homers. You guys pick on him unmercifully but ignore the guys who make more ludicrous statements.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...............bring it!

Tab said if we win the 2017 opener we'll go to the playoffs?
LOL!

I'm not trying to make fun of him. That wasn't my intent.

I am just sick of people bullying mac. I don't agree w/most of mac's takes, but I have always stood up for those who were bullied.

People single him out and pick on every statement, but let other statements that are far more ridiculous slide. I mean..........can you fathom not signing good players because you aren't going to the playoffs the next year? What kind of crap is that?????????????

Since the return, have we won the season opener and not gone to the playoffs that year?

Sooo...I am a homer and a "STATBOY". and a loser...nice I have three titles on this board...I am moving up in this world.

...Didn't the Cowboys coaching staff have Dak at the Senior Bowl? I think that would have been more valuable than the short period of time granted for interviews at the combine.

While we have plenty of work to do this offseason already as far as self-evaluating and getting the team better, I think we could really benefit from getting a close look at some players down in Mobile. The DBs that have signed on so far look pretty good.

http://www.seniorbowl.com/accepted-invites.php

Ezra Robinson
Tennessee St. DC 6-1 180 FCS

Know anything about this kid Grimm? I like that he is 6'1"

Nope, hadn't heard of him.

yea me either...was hoping he was a stud in college...don't watch a lot of college ball.

Sure I read it. That's when I had to scratch my head and wonder if you really think any of us should buy into crap written by Joel W. Cade



A wanna be writer who doesn't even have a real job writing. He is nothing more than a regular fan. Welcome to Dawg Pound Daily , the Cleveland Browns news and opinions site brought to you by the FanSided Network. GMAFB

As for your other comments, Depodesta, Jimmy, and Dee had zero, zilch, nothing at all to do with who was being drafted this year. Sashi was more or less just a tie breaker in the draft. Those most involved in the draft were

Hue Jackson, (and some of his coaches) Andrew Berry, Ken Kovash, Chisom Opara, Kevin Meers, Bobby Vega, Mike Cetta, Dan Saganey, Glenn Cook, and 10 to 12 other scouts.

Picks were made by consensus NOBODY sat there like a dictator and said we are drafting THIS guy and ignored all the work and prep that went into the draft. NOBODY let any gut feeling disrupt the system that they have in place.

As for the Browns being 0-12 yep it sucks. But so would being 2-10, or 4-8 at this point. Our front office went into this season knowing we were going to suck, and that this rebuild would take 3 to 5 years. So if 2 to 4 years now we still suck then I will be more than happy bash our front office and our coaching staff. You know the same ones you want to burn at the stake like a witch in Salem Mass in the 1690's

I bet Joel has a profile on here and you just ruined his day!

Hey at least I didn't post the photo from his twitter page of him and a Minion

If a poster has faith in gm's knowledge of the situation, that post certainly answers a couple questions.

GM knows a lot of people up there. I have faith that if he types it, it's real.

LOL reminds me of the time we had a coach say to us, "if not for 4 or 5 plays, we'd have won" LOL

But I get your point Eo.. Good teams can overcome some of those things. Bad teams can't. Just the way it is I guess.

How to hire an NFL coach or GM: A view from the inside


By Conor Orr Around The NFL Writer

he literature is typically sent out around this time of year, when frustrated NFL owners realize their team is not making the playoffs and they've exhausted enough resources behind their current head coach, general manager or both.

The 18-page booklet, from executive search firm Korn Ferry, is called "The First Year Challenge: A Game Plan for General Managers and New Head Coaches," and it lays out solutions for teams in the market for new talent. It features quotes from Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri and Toronto Blue Jays CEO Mark Shapiro -- leaders of the big-thinking alternative movement that has become en vogue across major sports for the last decade. It talks about communication strategies and culture-building, talent assessment and why you need to make impactful decisions from Day 1.

It is unabashedly aimed at the top, written in a buzzword-heavy language meant to appeal to the Paul Allens or Jimmy Haslams of the world, which is why the firm has had its stamp on some of the most significant coaching and general managers of late, including Chiefs coach Andy Reid and Seahawks GM John Schneider. Of course, there were also some missteps, like former Jets GM John Idzik. Korn Ferry was most recently involved in installing the new Browns front-office troika of Sashi Brown, Paul DePodesta and Andrew Berry.

"What we try to do is, we try to get alignment around the stakeholders," Jed Hughes, the head of Korn Ferry's sports division, told me last week. "They key is alignment. Making sure the owner, general manager and head coach agree on what the plan is and how it will be executed."

Hughes, a former coaching assistant for Bud Grant, Chuck Noll and Bo Schembechler, has dabbled across the sports and executive landscape for the last 30 years. Before Korn Ferry, he helped develop "psychological testing, competency development and structural behavioral interviewing" for the Packers and 49ers; he also played a role in the hirings of Packers CEO Mark Murphy and former Michigan coach Brady Hoke. And he's likely discussed the future of your favorite team's franchise with the man or woman in charge personally.

"Part of what has helped us is that I spent 13 years at [global executive search firm] Spencer Stuart doing board work. In terms of dealing with, like, the CEO of U.S. Steel or PNC Bank or H.J. Heinz or something like that, there's a certain level of sophistication you have to bring in terms of what they expect and how we deliver it."

According to Hughes, an owner might fill out a profile with 107 different kinds of adjectives and 50 different kinds of behavioral traits that he or she is looking for, which will then be measured up to the profiles assembled on available candidates by a team of industrial psychologists employed by Korn Ferry.

Welcome to the NFL's version of eHarmony -- a process that promises to match powerful, intelligent adults on a scientific and practical basis. Like the league as a whole, the coaching and GM hiring process that is about to dominate the news cycle is more complicated and dense than one could imagine. It also features an intriguing tug-of-war between successful firms like Hughes', NFL lifers who still believe in the value of sage, gut-check wisdom and former league power-brokers who float in and out of the process, serially recommending or panning potential candidates on a whim.

"So many owners don't know what they're looking for," former Colts and Bucs head coach Tony Dungy, who has done extensive legwork in promoting the hiring of minority coaching candidates in recent years, told me recently at a luncheon promoting NBC Sports' takeover of "Thursday Night Football." "I've talked to people who have said, 'Recommend a coach to me.' And when I say, 'Well what are you looking for?' they say, 'Well, I don't know. Recommend someone who is good.' "

So how does anyone thrive and survive? Let us count the ways, from top to bottom, with the aid of several decision makers, former general managers and NFL coaches.
Hiring a general manager

Because GMs are typically the liaisons between coaching, personnel and ownership, the hiring process involves a few more steps. Most notably, the interview process is about hammering down an avenue of communication that will work for all major players without undermining power or over-burdening the owner.

It also involves communication strategy. How involved does Falcons owner Arthur Blank want to be in day-to-day operations? Does he want to meet with the head coach independently? Does he want daily briefings?

For example, as I reported back in January when the Browns aligned their new front office, the Browns had to hammer out a plan that involved executive vice president Sashi Brown, chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta and head coach Hue Jackson all reporting individually to Haslam. Andrew Berry would report directly to Brown, with Brown taking on an arbitration role in deadlocked decisions regarding the 53-man roster.

Hughes said that the power aspect of the interview -- as in, how much will the GM have? -- has become drastically more important over the years.

"I think what has happened is the really powerful general managers have retired, and you have a younger group coming up. Add in head coaches with more experience, and the head coaches are wanting -- and getting -- more control," he said. "Whether that be a Pete Carroll or Andy Reid, who are basically running the whole thing with a good general manager. They're in sync, which is where the alignment comes in."

But how is a pool of candidates cultivated in the first place?

Aside from search firms, which were given mixed reviews from several sources, including executives who have gone through the process and owners who have opted for a more traditional avenue of finding potential GMs, owners can lean on their presidents and CEOs or bring in a consultant who has recently left the business.

NFL Network's Charley Casserly -- a former GM with the Redskins and Texans -- assisted Jets owner Woody Johnson in his last search for a general manager, which produced Mike Maccagnan in 2015. Former Giants GM Ernie Accorsi, who built the foundation of that franchise's last two Super Bowl squads, was brought in to help the Panthers install Dave Gettleman in 2013 and, more recently, to help the Lions install general manager Bob Quinn and VP of football administration Matt Harriss earlier this year.

"You have to evaluate your evaluator," Casserly said. "You gotta know who you're talking to. There are some people, big-name guys, all they do is recommend people, and they'll never say anything negative about a guy. You have to understand that when he calls. You have to know if what they said makes sense."

Essentially, it comes down to pedigree, temperament and leadership skills. Consultants have, for years, been tapping the wells of talent coming from Green Bay, Seattle and New England. The Patriots' tree alone placed two GMs -- former director of college scouting Jon Robinson, who landed with the Titans, and Quinn, the team's former director of pro scouting -- in the last cycle. The Packers (current Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie and Chiefs GM John Dorsey) have also been frequent receptors of interview requests.

In preliminary interviews, candidates have to survive the filtration process, which strains out the basic characteristics -- for example, eliminating candidates with more administrative and salary-cap experience than scouting, or vice-versa -- that fit what the owner decides he or she is looking for.

From there, it's about a series of rapid-fire questions that have already been determined in the owner's mind. Would you fire the head coach? Who would you hire? What do you think about our roster? Who is our best player? Who would you trade?

An example: According to two different candidates who went through the process with the Jets when they were hiring a GM in 2013, the interview centered around navigating the pending Darrelle Revis situation (Idzik, who ended up getting the job, wound up trading Revis to the Buccaneers for a first-round pick) and ushering in a more salary cap-conscious approach after the hefty spending by previous GM Mike Tannenbaum. The candidates fell in order after that.

"If I'm asking the questions, there will be no presentation [from the interviewee]," Casserly said. "It's going to be a fast-paced presentation. We'll never get caught up in a guy who filibusters. I'll have a clock and cut him off. You get out of them what you want -- at your pace."
Hiring a coach

While hiring a coach is an inexact science, every expert interviewed for this story pointed to one person who has an infallible track record: Dan Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

"He's hired three coaches in 40 years," Dungy said. "He's never had to fire a coach, and they've all gone to Super Bowls, because he has a formula that works for him. He hires young defensive coordinators in the Pittsburgh mentality."

While Dungy painted the Steelers' hires as the actions of a football lifer with extreme conviction, one can also see evident the workings of an executive who takes the Rooney Rule (the NFL's rule, named after Dan, that mandates teams interview at least one minority candidate for GM and head-coaching positions) seriously. As Dungy notes, current Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was an afterthought after his predecessor in Pittsburgh, Bill Cowher, stepped down in 2007 (Tomlin was the defensive coordinator in Minnesota at the time). Dungy feels more owners should allow the Rooney Rule to take its intended course, slowing them down and opening their minds.

Pittsburgh had two great candidates on staff; everyone said, 'Hire one of these guys and get on with it,' " Dungy said. "Rooney said 'Let me do some exploring.' He didn't know Mike Tomlin at all."

Casserly, who also sits on the NFL's Career Development Advisory Panel, finds names by first looking at candidates who have interviewed the year before. He talks with representatives of all 32 teams and holds a sweet spot of his own: successful college head coaches who have also had NFL experience (Pete Carroll, Tom Coughlin, Bill Walsh, Bill O'Brien, etc.).

After the candidates start coming in, Casserly said, it is time to block out the white noise and determine one thing: Who are you going to hire on your staff if we hire you, and can you realistically hire those people?

Looking around the league, it appears Casserly is right to emphasize the quality of a potential hire's prospective staff. The best teams in the NFL right now have at least one or two coaches below the head coach who are either a previously successful NFL head coach or an up-and-coming future head coach. The Lions (with defensive coordinator Teryl Austin and offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter) and Patriots (with offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia) immediately come to mind.

This might be the hardest part of the interview to authenticate, though. Coaches can promise anything, but can they realistically lure a coordinator away from his current job? What happens if he gets cold feet? Are the coaches lying about the depth of their relationships?

"The consensus reason potential head coaches are not hired is the staff," Casserly said. "I always tell candidates -- your staff is going to get you fired! As a general manager doing the interview, you don't only have to know who your candidates are, you have to know every single assistant in the league.

It's a tricky thing. My experience has been they're all going to come in with a staff, and I've seen staffs with coaches on it that I could trust commitments from. I've also seen coaches with commitments that didn't make any sense, so I questioned them on it."

Hearing the perspectives of both the executive search firm operative and the ingrained general manager, it's easy to tell why each side prefers its methods. Ultimately, though, they are both searching for answers to the same impossible riddle we ask ourselves everyday: Who is worthy of my trust, my time, my money, my future?

Maybe it's as simple as a gut decision. Maybe we need to be matched on 90 of 107 adjectives describing an ideal candidate. Everyone's just trying to sleep well at night -- which is not an easy thing to do when hiring the future of your franchise.

"It comes down to character -- however you want to define character," Casserly said. "For me, it's simple: Can I count on you?"