Marcus Hayes Thinks Number Crunching Little Lawyer Howie Roseman Should Be Fired
It’s idiot day at the Daily News.
First we had John Smallwood, who has the argumentative skills of a third grader without a tongue (he just shakes his head a lot and makes hissing noises at anyone who disagrees with him), with his flaming hot take of the Sixers’ inability to draft. No, you read that right– draft. Smallwood pointed out the Sixers’ problem with drafting people. We’ll get to that in a little bit, because there may be some deep psychological underpinning fueling that one. But first, it’s Marcus Hayes, who argues that Howie Roseman should be FIRED just 13 games into his tenure at GM:
He needed to find a No. 1 wide receiver, rebuild the defensive backfield, rearrange the running backs, decide a strategy for the future of the quarterback position and determine which young players deserved contract extensions.
He was the wrong man for the job.
Yes, Roseman extended Sam Bradford’s contract, but then he traded an enormous amount of assets to draft Carson Wentz with the No. 2 overall pick, which, in turn, enraged Bradford. Luckily, Roseman was able to recoup some of those lost picks by trading Bradford to the Vikings, who were desperate.
Really, though, quarterback was never the big issue. Bradford was always going to stay. Roseman had plenty other problems to fix. And …
There is still no No. 1 receiver or No. 1 running back. The defensive backfield remains putrid. Roseman failed to add sufficient depth to the offensive line, even as top lineman Lane Johnson faced a 10-game suspension. Roseman extended specialty defensive end Vinny Curry to a 5-year, $47.25 million extension; Curry promptly went AWOL, with 1½ sacks. Roseman retained $6.75 million outside linebacker Connor Barwin and played him at defensive end; Barwin has been demoted.
Roseman extended tight end Zach Ertz to a 5-year, $42.5 million extension; Ertz is now a pariah because he refused to block a Bengal. Second-year receiver Nelson Agholor, who admitted that he couldn’t handle the strain of being a starting NFL receiver who will make more than $9 million by the age of 25, essentially benched himself for that game. Johnson got a 5-year, $56 million extension, then tested positive for PEDs for the second time in three seasons.
Lurie gave Roseman a mandate to build a team that could win, immediately. Roseman failed, spectacularly.
Look, I’m no Howie Roseman fan, and I think he’ll ultimately fail, spectacularly, but how on Earth could anyone expect him to “rebuild the defensive backfield, rearrange the running backs” find a number one receiver, a number one running back, and add depth to the offensive line in one offseason? It’s like no one who writes for the Daily News grasps the concept that there are a continuum of seasons in sports and that judgement doesn’t need to be cast every game and year. No one in their right mind thought the Eagles would be very good this year. They had way too many holes. No team can rebuild that quickly. It’s not like they were coming from a place of strength – like the Patriots on a down year – rather, Chip Kelly decimated their talent pool and it’s up to Roseman to restock it one player at a time. And let’s not forget, though he may have stumbled into it, he did turn Sam Bradford into Carson Wentz and get back a first round pick in the process.
Worse than his unreasonable troll bait, Hayes comes dangerously close to some stereotypes in these needlessly disparaging comments about Lurie and Roseman:
Then again, Lurie should have fired Roseman when Kelly became the GM. It would have been the decent thing to do. A replacement wouldn’t have been hard to find; these days, Stanford and MIT spit out number-crunching salary-cap jockeys like they’re Pez candy.
Instead, Lurie moved his favorite little lawyer from the football wing back to the financial wing for a few months of well-recompensed exile, unwilling to end his sociological experiment. Professor Jeff has a PhD in social policy; it’s as though Lurie sees Roseman as his personal digitus impudicus aimed at an NFL establishment that never fully accepted the silver-spoon Boston liberal.
If Roseman is dismissed, it won’t be for lack of effort. He broke into the NFL as Banner’s 24-year-old salary-cap apprentice. He somehow clawed his way into a player evaluation role just three years later. He got the GM title in 2010, but with Andy Reid coaching and with Banner in charge, no one believed Roseman had much of a voice. His voice rose in 2012, when Banner left and Reid was neutered; and, again, when Kelly was axed last winter.
Number crunching salary cap jockey little lawyer silver spoon Boston liberal. Is that a dog whistle I hear? Me thinks Hayes would never write so despairingly about someone if they were black. Because, let’s see, Hayes has been most critical of Chase Utley, Sam Hinkie, Chip Kelly, Claude Giroux and Howie Roseman, all shining beacons of whiteness, while, curiously, writing a defense of Thad Young and glowing pieces about DeSean Jaccson, who is the exact sort of knucklehead Hayes would lambaste if he were beloved by white people, for doing the exact same thing Hayes skewered Giroux for.
I don’t think everything is about race, but Hayes’ opinions sure seem to fall along racial lines.