The fact Seahawks general manager John Schneider has never won the NFL’s Executive of the Year award reinforces how dubious the honor has been in recent seasons.
The complete and utter disaster that are the New York Jets — forced this week to go back to Geno Smith at quarterback to replace interception-prone Ryan Fitzpatrick — also reinforces the farce that is the fact that Seattle’s John Schneider has yet to win the NFL’s Executive of the Year award.
Recall that the winner of that award a year ago — which is voted on by members of the Pro Football Writers Association (I’m not one, by the way) — was the man who put together the reeling Jets, Mike Maccagnan.
Maccagnan got credit for New York going from 4-12 in 2014 to 10-6 last season, but did so largely through trading for or signing expensive big-name vets (such as receiver Brandon Marshall and cornerback Darrelle Revis). It was a plan that inevitably seemed short term, at best, and has turned out to be even shorter term than anyone could have predicted.
With his team at 1-5, Jets owner Woody Johnson was forced to give the dreaded vote of confidence to both Maccagnan and coach Todd Bowles.
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But such occurrences have been pretty much par for the course for winners of the Executive of the Year award since 2010, when Schneider arrived in Seattle.
During the time Schneider has worked with Pete Carroll to build the Seahawks into a franchise that has become one of the best in the NFL — Seattle is 57-22 since the start of the 2012 season with one Super Bowl title and another appearance — six others have won the Executive of the Year award.
One already has been fired, two might soon be, another is a man who wanted to take Johnny Manziel with his team’s first-round draft choice but was talked out of it the year he was honored, and another is Maccagnan.
Here’s the list of the men judged to have done the best job putting together an NFL team each season since 2010:
2010 — Scott Pioli, Kansas City. Pioli won the award in his second year in Kansas City when the Chiefs went 10-6, but was fired two years later when Kansas City fell to 2-14.
2011 — Trent Baalke, San Francisco 49ers. With every day it becomes more apparent the real genius behind the rise of the 49ers was Jim Harbaugh (who deservedly also was honored as Coach of the Year in 2011). With the 49ers now looking like one of the worst teams in the NFL (in a huge shift from the personality of the Harbaugh era, the 49ers are on pace to be one of the worst run-defense teams in NFL history), Baalke might not be much longer for the job.
2012 — Ryan Grigson, Indianapolis. Grigson seemed an obvious choice when the Colts went from 2-14 in 2011 — which allowed them to, well, luck into taking Andrew Luck with the first choice in the draft — to 11-5 in 2012. But the inability to build anything around Luck now has Grigson as another who this week received a vote of confidence with the Colts flailing at 2-4 and looking like they are about to waste another of Luck’s prime career years.
2013 — John Dorsey, Chiefs. In the year the Seahawks won their first Super Bowl, Dorsey got the nod for rebuilding Kansas City from the 2-14 disaster in 2012 that got Pioli fired. Dorsey’s selection is the only one on this list that doesn’t seem dubious at the moment.
2014 — Jerry Jones, Dallas. The Cowboys’ ultra-hands-on owner won in the wake of Dallas’ “ascension” from an 8-8 mark in 2013 to 12-4 in 2014. But given much of the credit for that revival was an offensive line solidified by the addition of guard Nick Martin — a first-round draft choice the team made only after others in the war room reportedly talked Jones out of taking Manziel.
2015 — Mike Maccagnan, Jets.
True, maybe there was no obvious year for Schneider to get the award, other than 2012 when the Seahawks went from 7-9 to 11-5 and the divisional round of the playoffs.
That, of course, speaks to the fatal flaw of awards like these, that they inevitably focus on rewarding extreme, but often temporary, success while overlooking those who simply get it done year after year (Carroll, likewise, also has never come close to winning coach of the year while with the Seahawks).
Given the season for the likes of Minnesota and Oakland, Schneider probably isn’t going to win it in 2016, either. A fifth consecutive 10-plus-win season will do as a consolation prize.