Former San Francisco 49ers general manager Scot McCloughan recently joined Twitter, and he is fast becoming one of my favorite follows. We’ll take a look at a host of his answers, but one of my favorites was about the 2010 NFL Draft.
In mid-March of 2010, McCloughan was fired by the 49ers. Trent Baalke became effectively the acting general manager, and led the draft room that April. The 49ers walked away with Anthony Davis, Mike Iupati, NaVorro Bowman, Anthony Dixon, and Kyle Williams. Davis, Iupati and Bowman were key cogs during the Harbaugh years, Dixon was a big special teams player, and Williams of course made his presence known.
One of the longest running debates has been who deserved credit for the 2010 draft. Baalke was running the room, but McCloughan helped formulate the board before the draft. McCloughan was asked today how closely the 49ers followed his draft board that year. He said it was “set just like with the Skins this year.”
It was set just like with the Skins this year https://t.co/n44ZMsf8pc
— Scot Mccloughan (@MccloughanScot) August 11, 2017
McCloughan was fired by Washington this season in similar timing, coming in mid-March. In May, there were reports about how responsible he was. He offered this up in discussing the board:
“The board was set prior to the medical and the measurements for the underclassmen at the combine, probably 90 percent of it was set,” McCloughan said. “I hate to say that it was me because they have to go back to meetings before the draft and they gotta get the medical stuff out there and all that, but again, it’s not about me. It was about the organization, it was about the people around me. That’s so important, because nobody can do it by themselves. Nobody can.”
Baalke had what looked like a home run draft in 2011, but that fell apart in later years. In 2012, the draft was a complete wipeout, and in 2013 through 2016, there were hits along with too many misses. All of that eventually resulted in his dismissal after this past season. I doubt we get Baalke’s side of the 2010 draft on Twitter anytime soon, but it’s interesting to hear McCloughan offer that up.