What's the best model for a successful NFL front office? How does it best work for a head coach and front office and ownership structure best fit together to build a competitive successful football team? With Josh Harris' first big decisions of hiring Adam Peters and Dan Quinn as GM and head coach, the answer appears to be a collaboration between the front office and coaches.
"The setup that they have [in Washington], to me, is always challenging because the NFL has never been about the general manager picking the players and running the team and the coach, coaching a team, that dynamic really is hard. Usually, you wanna have a coach kind of running the organization from a how we're developing and building," Michael Lombardi, NFL Analyst and former NFL executive, told Craig Hoffman.
"Collaborations a really good word, and it sounds really good and the idea is we're gonna get a lot of smart people in a room, and we're gonna make smart decisions, the problem is, not all the smart people in the room are equally informed," Lombardi continued. "For me, I've been from the model of a pyramid, where information flows upward and somebody who has the highest level of intellect makes the decision. Now, maybe that might be Peters, I don't know. But this idea that everybody's gonna be a collaborative effort. You're in Washington, right, when you walk around the city of Washington have you ever seen a monument dedicated to a committee?"
Does Lombardi think the Commanders' structure can succeed? Well, time will tell, but looking around the NFL, there are numerous successful teams – including the two in Super Bowl LVII, one of which was Peters' old employer – that do not follow Washington's structure.
Hoffman and Lombardi then shift gears to explore Commanders' offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury's skill and if his offense can be adaptable to each of the top quarterbacks in the NFL Draft.
"He'll get the quarterback to play at a higher level," Lombardi said, adding his system will fit whoever the organization selects. "Plus he understands what you have to do to win."
Lombardi contrasts Kingsbury with Washington's former offensive coordinator Eric Bieneimy, who he said did "one of the worst attention to detail jobs you'll ever see in the league" last season by not recognizing Washington "had a really bad offensive line and a very young quarterback" and called "nothing but passes."
"Eric didn't care about protecting the quarterback, he cared about calling pass plays," Lombardi told Team 980.
Listen to the full conversation – including what Lombardi expects to see from Kingsbury's offense – from the Hoffman Show on the audio player!
