Polian

Hurney joined the Panther's in 2002. If you evaluate the Panthers success since that time and compare that to the same time frame starting with Polian's 1997 Colt's season you will find Hurney's teams have had more success. Colt's had Manning, E. James and Harrison for all those years and yet Polian could not put the rest of the puzzle together. Until last season the Colt's have been one of if not the most underachieving teams in terms of Post Season in the NFL. They finally got the ring and Polian deserves some credit, but take the time to go back and compare Hurney's 1st 5 years versus Polian's 1st 5 years and tell me who had more success.

 

Polian

The guy took James ahead of Ricky Williams for heaven's sake. that was brilliant.

Besides Hurney already had a solid foundation LAID BY POLIAN

 

he was with the team before that

 

Fred's secret fantasy

 

You're right, he's not awful, just overrated.

In Buffalo, the Bills already had Bruce Smith, Jim Kelly, Andre Reed, and many of the other stars that would lead them to AFC Championships, although he did draft Thurman Thomas. And here in Carolina he did make some good veteran pick-ups that got us competitive immediately, although one could argue that it sacrificed our future. Ultimately I think you have to consider that Polian left both places in disarray, like he was abandoning ship as soon as he saw it was in trouble.

It's clear that he's a better personnel guy than Hurney, but as bad as Hurney is with contracts, Polian is worse. He left Buffalo and Carolina in salary cap hell, and he's doing the same with Indianapolis.

Seifert, if anyone. But Hurney doesn't pick players, really. He lets Fox pick which guys he wants and then figures out the contracts.

 

I thought he talked Kelly out of the USFL? And he dealt for Bennett.

(I love Wiki)

I think salary cap hell is a cycle every team that is competitive has to go through to make a run. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't.

 

Yeah, I saw the same thing, but I imagine that you were able to sense how obviously biased that write-up was. That's the fundamental weakness of Wikipedia. For example, Polian did not talk Jim Kelly out of the USFL because the USFL no longer existed at that point. It folded after the '85 season, which is why Kelly finally joined the Bills after being drafted by them in 1983.

To an extent, sure. The better you are, the more your players get paid either by you or someone else. But my issue with Polian is that he has continuously overpaid for free agents and allowed his own players to reach the end of their contracts, resulting in much higher cost extensions than if he had acted earlier. The Freeney and Harrison deals are perfect illustrations of that. Polian's decisions are why the Colts have lost a multitude of defensive starters in recent seasons.

 

Since 86 polian GM'd teams have appeared in over 25% of Super Bowls spread over 3 different teams.

You can't attribute that to luck.

 

no

not only do i hate him, but i love hurney

 

polian didn't do so bad while in Buffalo. (he was fired after the third SB loss, but a lot of the 94 team had players he had a hand in getting)

Buffalo drafted some pretty good players third round and lower: Jeff Wright and Marvcus Patton were eighth rounders; Keith McKellar was ninth; Howard Ballard 11th; Glenn Parker and Don Beebe third. He did OK with first and second round picks some years (Wohlford, Conlon, Odomes, Thomas, Henry Jones, Phil Hansen) some years; not so good other years (Ronnie Fucking Harmon, james williams, carwell gardner, john fina and james patton). Plus he picked Steve Tasker up off waivers from the oilers his first year as GM. Hardly qualifies as awful.

I'd rather have a GM do not so well with the cap and win a bowl than have one excel at cap management and simply make the playoffs every year (which the colts do anyway).