The San Francisco 49ers 2015 season is rapidly coming to a close, and it was not a good season. The 49ers can finish no better than 6-10, and there will be plenty to evaluate in the offseason. We'll be analyzing plenty of the bad and good to come from this season, from top-to-bottom.
Jim Tomsula will require plenty of analysis, but Trent Baalke is going to be an even bigger project. Looking just at what Trent Baalke has done with the 49ers is of some use, but being able to compare him to the rest of the league would be of significantly more value. We can make all kinds of positive and negative arguments about Baalke if we just look at what he has done. But comparing him with other GMs at least moves us in a more interesting direction.
With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to put together a qualitative analysis of all 32 NFL teams. By that, I mean looking at each GM and their work in the draft, free agency, and trades. A GM's body of work requires input from numerous individuals, but for purposes of this discussion, we will be using GM as a sort of cover for the team as a whole.
Additionally, GMs come and go. Considering some GMs have been with their team since before Trent Baalke, and some since after, we have to make some adjustments. And so, for any GM with more tenure than Baalke, we only go back to 2011. For any GM after Baalke, we look at the length of their tenure with their team. Baalke was technically running the draft room in 2010, but it's hard to fully assess what was his work, and what was Scot McCloughan's draft board.
I bring all this up because I thought why not turn this into a community project? There is a whole lot of information to gather for the other 31 NFL teams. I wanted to see how many people would be interested in helping out, with one (or two) people handling each team. If you are interested in helping out, let me know in the comments, and list out a handful of teams (other than the 49ers) for which you would be interested in doing some research.
I have some resources that will be helpful for figuring this out, but the more that can help the better. And if you have suggestions on productive ways to approach this project, I'm all ears.