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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/nbaphilly17 on 2025-06-09 17:44:54+00:00.
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It’s the third quarter of a Sunday afternoon slog, your team is down by two scores, and the quarterback you screamed for them not to draft just threw a back-breaking interception. You throw your hands up and say, “I could do a better job than this guy!”
It’s the lament of the modern football fan. And while most of the time it’s just pure, unadulterated frustration, there’s a kernel of truth to the desire. The job of a General Manager in the NFL is one of the most scrutinized, difficult, and utterly fascinating positions in all of sports.
You want the blueprint for building a perennial winner in today’s game? This isn’t your grandfather’s guide. This is the new manual.
Weaponize The Cap
Here is the single most important financial principle for a modern GM: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. The NFL salary cap has been rising nearly 10% per year. You must take advantage of this reality.
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As you can see, provided there’s no global disaster, the cap will rise.
We are also approaching a potential 2029 opt‑out of the NFL’s TV deals — and with commissioner Roger Goodell admitting they’re ripe for renegotiation — any new massive media contract could significantly boost league revenues, which in turn means the salary cap could surge in the following CBA cycle**,** creating a new spending wave for forward-thinking GMs.
The goal is to field the best possible roster given your spending constraints. An oft-repeated belief of fans and executives is that you should not push money into the future unless you’re a contender. This is a fallacy.
You don’t magically become a contender by sitting on cap space; pushing money forward is often the only way to add talent now — and adding talent now is how you become a contender.
Pushing cap hits into future years is viable because you’ll have more cap space to absorb them — and teams are doing it!
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Aggressively using contracts with void years and concurrently-running option bonuses to spread a player’s cap hit thinly over more seasons should be the default — allowing you to fit more good players on your team. The “dead money” that results from this is simply a byproduct; it’s the calculated cost of doing business — the price you pay for maximizing your current roster. Every few years, you’ll have to bite the bullet, letting some veterans go while you draft their replacements before you need them.
Extend Your Stars Early, Period.
This is a non-negotiable pillar of modern team building. The market for franchise players only goes up. Waiting to extend your star QB, left tackle, or pass rusher is a cardinal sin. If you have a 25-year-old cornerstone player heading into his third or fourth year, and you believe in him, you sign him now. You will pay a price that will look like an absolute bargain in two years as the salary cap inflates and the next guy at his position resets the market.
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Every day you wait, the price goes up. Pay them before you have to, not when you have to. There’s a certain man in Dallas who could embrace this idea.
Hire Architects, Not Imitators
One of the most critical parts of the job. Under no circumstances should you hire coordinators who are just running a borrowed system. You need to hire system architects. Think of Ben Johnson in Detroit. He isn’t running “a version” of someone else’s offense; it is his offense. Sure, he has influences and borrows designs he likes (as one should do), but he owns his offense, he can adapt it, and he innovates within it.
The same goes for a defensive mind like Vic Fangio, whose use of static two-high shells that rotate post-snap into varied coverages has been copied — but rarely perfected — across the NFL.
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Contrast that with the imitators like Sean Desai, who tried to install a cheap imitation of Fangio’s system. Matt Canada in Pittsburgh ran a stale, predictable offense that felt like a poor copy of the McVay-Shanahan tree. When you hire an architect, you get the blueprint. When you hire an imitator, you get a guy who just knows where the furniture is supposed to go.
Building Through the Draft
It’s not about nailing every pick — it’s about avoiding the landmines. The line between sustained success and a full-blown rebuild is often drawn by the presence of stable, functional contributors on rookie deals.
If I had to create an NFL Draft axiom, it would be “draft strong athletes who win cleanly against top competition.”
Examples could include WRs who consistently create separation without stacked releases or rubs or DBs who mirror routes and close in-phase, not just make plays on poor or late throws.
At first glance, “draft strong athletes who win cleanly against top competition” sounds trite— of course you want athletic, high-performing players from good programs. But the value lies in what this rule filters out, not just what it selects for.
It forces you to ignore inflated stat lines from lower-tier competition, where winning is often a product of chaos, mismatches, or scheme. It protects you from betting on traits that don’t show up much in NFL reps. It prioritizes players who already thrived in an environment that most resembles the NFL. Less projection is required to evaluate if the player can handle the coaching details, the elevated game speed, and the pressure.
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Drafting requires a dose of humility. You must recognize that the consensus big board — a collective ranking from hundreds of scouts and evaluators — often outperforms the draft board of most individual NFL teams.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have your own flavor or trust your scouts. But if you have a player ranked 15th and the consensus has him at 95th, you had better have an overwhelming, airtight reason for being that much of an outlier. More often than not, hubris in the draft room leads to massive busts. Use the consensus as a guardrail to challenge your assumptions and prevent you from making a catastrophic mistake.
The Art of Course Correction
Pride is the enemy of a great GM. The key to success isn’t never making mistakes; it’s never compounding them. If a player isn’t materializing, cut bait. The same could be said about the coaching staff.
Take, for example, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Their incredible stability under Mike Tomlin is commendable, but that loyalty has arguably allowed things to go stale and has primed them to be a perennial Wild Card Round exit.
As for players, holding onto a bust or a declining veteran hoping for a turnaround is a great way to cripple a roster. Do not fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy. That roster spot and those reps could go to someone who can actually help you win.
Win the Margins with Roster Arbitrage
Championships can be built on the back of market inefficiencies. Your job is to find value where others don’t. This means aggressively pursuing talented players who were poor fits elsewhere. Look at the careers of Geno Smith and Sam Darnold, quarterbacks left for dead who found new life in better systems.
Look at running backs like Saquon Barkley or Raheem Mostert, who exploded once they got into offensive schemes that perfectly matched their skill sets. Your pro scouting department should be obsessed with identifying these undervalued assets.
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A current example is Josh Downs, who is a sudden, space-winning slot receiver with natural separation ability and fluid change-of-direction skills, but the Colts often trap him in low-depth, horizontal concepts that minimize his ability to stress defenders vertically or work option routes — effectively using him like a gadget player instead of the nuanced, twitchy route technician he is.
This strategy not only helps you acquire good players, but also on a potential discount.
Avoid the Bad Apples
This one is simple. Never let a bad apple poison the well. Talent is irrelevant if the player is a drain on your culture. You should build a locker room of players who genuinely love football, are good people, and are obsessively committed to winning.
The minute you compromise on character for talent, you’ve started down a losing path. Look at the downfall of teams that catered to divas. Now look at the sustained success of the Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, or the dynastic Patriots. They were ruthless about avoiding or weeding out players who weren’t fully bought in. Your culture is only as strong as the worst personality you’re willing to tolerate.
Find the Hidden Advantages
The game is alway…
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