DougDew

That's fine. I'm not disputing to what level a coach may or may not have in an organization. What I'm asking is does the level of input change in peoples minds when the team fails vs when it succeeds.

It seems like you are saying that the players that don't make much of a difference are the ones that the HC influences. But the good players, like AR, are the ones Ballard picked without the same influence from the HC?

I get that. but its a far thing to imply that Ballard led the charge to fire Frank at that time, especially when it was Irsay or Saturday who admitted that Irsay called Jeff to nearly hire him before Frank was told he was fired. I think its safe to say that Irsay drove the bus to fire Frank more than Ballard did. Ok 3-5-1 isn't 500. Frank had lost the team by then, but it still didn't seem like Ballard was wanting to fire Frank right then and then finding an interim, especially since the OC was fired a bit before.

That if previous failures could be blamed on Frank's influence with Ballard deserving little blame in a defense of Ballard, then future successes would be based upon Shane's influence, with Ballard deserving little praise for the turnaround. I'm not asking you what you are going to say in the future. I'm asking if you understand the logic of the point I just made.

Then a reset. You believe there is a dynamic between the GM, HC, and Owner when it comes to personnel decisions....specific players....not just general philosophies. Do you think that dynamic changes when a new HC is hired in a way that he has more or less influence than the previous HC?

Funny how you're avoiding the question and now trying to make the question the issue. So, did Frank and Ballard collaborate on personnel decisions to the same level as SS and Ballard do now? Or does one HC have more influence over Ballard...in this dynamic that you describe?

So did Frank have bout 70% of the control over offensive personnel? And does SS now have about 70% control over offensive personnel, or less?

The presser where Irsay said Frank was fired and Saturday was hired. Speculation was that Ballard didn't lead the firing of Frank. And who knows how the rest of the season would have gone. I think we wer about .500 at the time of the firing.

Its a simple concept: What percentage influence of the total personnel acquisition process...specific players acquired....do you think Frank had? 70%, 50%, 30%...something else? And what do you think SS has in the same process. 70%, 50%, 30% something else? Garrapolo, 2nd round, Purdy, 7th round, Hurts, 2nd round, Dak, 3rd round, Goff (well, whatever you think he was worth when LAR was trying to move him). ETC. We were talking about what would happen to HOU in the next 6 years if Stroud retired. It seems like they could build a roster to support a nonelite QB who was found by giving non-top 15 picks. That was your question.

Since they are so hard to find, do you think they might successfully build a roster to support a QB that wasn't elite, like SF, Philly, Dallas, DET, etc?

Okay, just making sure that when you start praising SS for the turn around, that you're not going to say that Chris hired the good coach, but Irsay hired the bad one...especially when it seems that Chris didn't want to fire Frank. I just don't see the logic in commenting about Ballard at all if you think the HC is heavily responsible for the specific players who are drafted, signed, or retained. The GM would seem fairly irrelevant to the "Frank-blamers", JMO.

Will you give Steichen credit for the turn around? What I don't understand about the Frank blamers, is that you'll now have to turn it around and become Steichen praisers, or else it looks a bit hypocritical. Why defend a GM who you must think is pretty irrelevant? And BTW, Irsay has a hand in who the HC is...so its not like Ballard hired the good HC but Irsay hired the bad HC.

Are you asking where would HOU be 6 years later? Where ever they would be then, would have nothing to do with Stroud retiring next year.

I don't disagree much. The problem I have with CB1 is, I don't know what that looks like under Gus or Flus. I know what it looked like with Vontae in press, but zone?.....is there even a real CB1? FS1? Not sure I need pick 46 for that. RG: I'm fine with French, or rotating FAs, or developing a mid round player. WR1, I would not rely on pick 46 for that. Its a prospect you think will be better than Pittman. That prospect is probably ranked in round 1. JMO.

Yeah, I think the pieces shuffle around a bit and aren't set in stone everywhere. NE had Gronk for a long time...dominant........and KC has Kelce. You mentioned Jones as a dominant force, and I think BB always found a way to have a pass rush at critical moments. I think having elite performance from passing game assets is critical, and it can be dispersed differently from team to team.

Oh yes, I'd add the EDGE and the #1WR. Keep them when you find them. Some positions can be churned easier with no detrimental drop off in talent or impact, IMO.

I think the NFL as a whole has more of a win now mindset than back in 2013. I also think that the idea of winning while the QB is under the rookie contract is overstated. GB, NE, and other teams built contending teams after paying veteran QBs. KC now too. IMO, a team has to have elite Position Players under rookie contracts to win SBs...not the QB. And draft them frequently, and churn them, while you pay the vet to be your franchise face for 12 years.

Nearly all of them top 10 picks. Do you realize that you are putting almost the entire key to winning a SB on the concept of having a near top 10 pick during the time a great college QB prospect is declaring for the draft? Two things almost totally out of the GMs control. (Unless the GM recognizes the key and trades up). And too bad for Pittsburgh when Kenny Picket was the best prospect. Its rendering the job of GM to administrator of the cap, because the key is such a simple formula a "caveman" could do it...if he gets lucky with the timing of the top 15 pick aligning with the timing of the college graduate pool.

If that's the case, would Irsay back off the pressure once he's paying a QB $125M? I'd think there would be more pressure to win once the QB is getting paid for what he's supposed to do, but that's my take. With Polian and PM's early days, and now Ballard, Irsay doesn't strike me as a win now kind of owner like some others.

Why did he have pressure from Irsay to win right away with a long term franchise Qb at the time? The spending on high priced FA has been a Red Herring argument for 7 years. Despite the spending, it was well managed, evidenced by the cap being in good shape when Ballard took over. If you want to talk about the talent, fine, but the spending itself strategy was not an issue. Also, if you want to excuse Ballard's first 3 or 4 years due to Luck's retirement, then you should probably also acknowledge that Polian's horrendous cap situation that Grigsy inherited hindered his team building for probably 2 of his 4 years...or half his tenure. Which I'm sure Irsay took into consideration when he put "pressure" on Grigsy to win right away. A sincere comment from Grigson's son. LOL.

Huh? What pressure? It was 4 years. Great Qbs tend to have longevity. Rivers played for San Diego for like 3 decades. How long did it take PM to win a SB under Polian? He went 6-10 like in year 4 and PM wasn't even injured. Grigsy took some shots at finding olinemen, failed, and got fired after 4 years. How many shots does Ballard get to find an EDGE and a #1WR. It's taken him three shots to find a LT.

Okay, I don't want to go into history here...or trigger others hopefully not...but when you have Luck, TY, AC, and Mathis playing the 4 most important positions in professional football, there really isn't a whole bunch else you need to hit on right away. Yet Grigs was fired after 4 years. His problem was not hitting on his EDGE and his second fast guy, Werner and Dorset as 1st round picks, while Ballard has gotten a pass for hardly even trying to find those guys until about year 6 of his employment.

The QB position is important, but its a tad bit overrated, because its starting to sound like you need a Michael Jordan at QB to win the SB. You could say that Mahomes is MJ, but SFs defense took a turn when Greenlaw went down. If we had a better defense and offensive weapons around a limited Philip Rivers, we probably would have gone deeper into the playoffs. Not affixing blame for failure, just illustrating an example where you don't need an MJ.

Your pick 15 player won't be returning kicks. Sorry.

I missed this before. Do you see what some of us have been saying for a few years? THESE are the positions that you want to hit on, and retain as one of your own. Put RDE in there too, and IMO, the #1 WR we don't yet have. Ballard came into this team 8 years ago having Luck...but also having an aging AC, TY, and no replacement for Mathis on the roster. Instead of being more urgent and focusing capital to hit on those spots, he's hit on the easier spots to find like Gs, ILBs,, RBs, ...contracts that are NOT relatively expensive or that hard to find in FA or the mid rounds. Just not that impressive thus far if you pull back out of the weeds of individual players and look at where we stand in the broad NFL landscape.