To put this in proper context, consider the case of Kevin O’Connell. Guy was a third-round choice only a year ago. QBs are banged up all over the league, and yet the Pats couldn’t swing a trade for him. I’m not saying O’Connell is any good, but he’s certainly more valuable than a punting castoff.

Just wait until Friday, when McXanders cuts a few fan sleepers/favorites…

“Why on earth did they cut Player X?!?! They couldn’t even get a draft pick for him?” To anyone who cares to read this, take a deep breath, realize that McXanders surely tried their best to get compensation for a guy they didn’t deem good enough for the Broncos, found no takers and then released him/them.

But if you are a team like Indy and you need a punter, a team with a higher waiver claim will get a much better shot at at Colquitt than you will.

It’s not big deal, just punters, but teams that finished with a good record in 2008 can’t just expect to sign the best prospects cut by other teams.

Heck, we didn’t even have sloppy 2nds on O’Connell.

But please stop this nonsense that McD “initiated” the trade talks. All the evidence points to that not being true.

(Quoting Bowlen… or Colinski at least.)

Frankly the only NE player transaction I have not yet understood was the pickup of Paxton.

All the other players are good players and, from an efficiency perspective, already know a lot about McD’s style. Makes a lot of sense to me at this stage of the rebuilding process.

• McDaniels did not say he was “responsible” for the LeKevin Smith trade. He said “we”, meaning the Broncos, decided to get him. Is it a bad thing that McD has knowledge of Le Kevin Smith?
• McD did not say he was the one “responsible and conducting” the Cassell trade talks. He said “we”, meaning the Broncos, received a phone call offer and turned down the offer.
• McD has never said he was “going to make the call on draft picks.”

I have never said that Xanders is “running the show.” Pat Bowlen announced that Xanders and McD would work together. So obviously and correctly McD has input on player personnel issues. But these kind of stories imply that Xanders is just a clerk, Ellis is just a waterboy, and Bowlen is a fool. Nothing could be more libelous and further from the truth! Tell you what. I’ll take your wager!

You have only the barest notion of how these people conduct their jobs. And this is why you emphasize control.

Saying that “[if you think that] McDaniels has little or no input” is a straw man argument. Nobody has claimed that.

People often have highly caricatured beliefs which stem from their lack of understanding about how another person conducts his or her job. This caricature can become apparent (it’s a situation that I’ve analyzed) when intra-organizational complaints are made. Complaints often reveal that the complainant has strange expectations and beliefs when probed regarding their complaint.

A likely scenario for the recent Hochstein and Smith trades involves McDaniels. This is to be expected since he has superior knowledge of New England’s personnel. However, many of the decisions during the offseason were the product of the Pro Personnel department, which is under Xanders. The decision to not retain various Bronco veteran free agents and the decision to acquire FAs would have been initiated by Pro Personnel. This is not to say that McDaniels didn’t have input, and we would expect him to have input since it’s ultimately his decision who will be retained on the final roster.

Here’s a reasonably good article by a former Pro Personnel executive:

Now is the time when teams are going to look very closely at every NFL depth chart, posted on the walls of pro personnel offices around the league. Every player who competed in 2007 will get a spring film grade to update the team data base. That means around 1,700 players should get at least a two-game film grade. As daunting as that project can be, there’s still much more work to be done.

Heading into the draft, a lot of people felt they had an idea of what each of the 32 teams needed. Now, after the draft and without some of the needs being addressed, they look at the rosters with some concern.

Based on depth charts across the league, teams will make some calculated estimates about where the surplus of talent exists. It pays off when teams need to make a trade, pick up a free agent, or simply be prepared when the head coach walks into your office and asks for help at a position.

It’s not a question of control but of who has the time and responsibility for grading and keeping track of all the NFL’s players. McDaniels doesn’t have time to do all this because he’s busy coaching. Strangely, McGeorge, you’ve given McDaniels far too much credit for the actions of the Bronco organization in your attempt to blame him. And this is because you don’t understand his time limitations and the size of the task.

McDaniels is an ‘end user’ of the information that Scouting and Pro Personnel produce and then monitor & update. Again, see Kirwan’s comments:

The direction a team takes in the draft, especially in the first four rounds, and the areas where they add players during free agency often create a surplus. With that in mind, here are a few situations where a good player who might come free …

When I was [in] player personnel and would leave for my summer break in July, there was a report on file for close to 100 players who might become available and a log of any and all conversations with GMs around the league. We also prepared a report from every spring OTA to break down our own talent, and I attended at least 10 preseason games for a live look at players we might have interest in.

Just to give you an idea of how this works — the fact that N.E. drafted 3 DLs would have been monitored and evaluated by Xanders’ staff. The likelihood that N.E. would have to cut some of their DLs would have been stated in a report by Xanders, which would have been reported to Bowlen and Ellis (perhaps, as Bowlen’s aid, in essence) and it would also have been made available to McDaniels. The LK Smith trade would have started as analysis under Xanders, since we would have been looking at N.E. for DL prospects because we knew that they had to cut somebody, but McDaniels would have joined in along the way and may have even been instrumental in persuading N.E. to part with LK Smith.

From what I’ve heard of Shanahan’s decision making process, which Fatsis wrote about, many decisions were his alone. There’s little point in preparing evaluations on college and NFL personnel if the HC is simply going to override that analysis based on his gut feeling. It’s not that everything done under Shanahan was done poorly, since the Goodman’s did an excellent job on the 2008 draft, but there are many other indications that the organization was dysfunctional in some respects.

An efficiently run organization should appear to have a quality of unanimity, which is a sign that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. What’s been improperly framed as a sign of McDaniels’ despotism is the obvious efficiency of the collaboration between Xanders and McDaniels. No single individual could possibly keep track of all the NFL’s players (both vets and rookies) so the level of player movement on the Bronco roster lately couldn’t be solely attributable to McDaniels.

doesn’t mean it’s a recorded fact.

I just wrote this above but here you go McG:

Tampa Bay admitted to initiating the trade talks. Interestingly enough, they initiated these talks after a deal in principal was already in place with KC to trade for Cassel. If McD wanted to trade Cutler for Cassel so bad, don’t you think he would have took action, you know, when Cassel was still available? Like that whole week before KC agreed to trade for him?

All the evidence points to the Broncos answering a phone call and listening to an offered deal. The fact that TB waited until the Pats & KC had a deal in place for Cassel suggests to me that perhaps Bus Cook called in a favor and had TB initiate that trade call, thus setting his entire plan to jettison Cutler in motion.

haven’t you heard, McDaniel’s tried to trade Cutler away for Cassell…