Curious as to people's takes on this question. 

 

For me, I started having serious doubts/ seeing red flags with Gene Smith with the handling/ selecting of Alualu. Not necessarily the "choice" of Alualu because I did think he was going to be a good player - but more specifically the value assessed to Alualu by Gene. It showed me that Gene had no concept on "value" / or working the draft and commits the cardinal sin of falling in love with "his" players and will overdraft them regardless, hence "leaving points on the field" to use a football analogy. 

 

It has been reported many times that the SF 49ers had a trade on the board of a 4th rounder to the Jags for swapping picks 11 & 14 in that 2010 draft, but Gene was too afraid of the Dolphins maybe selecting Alualu at 12 to make the deal. 

 

That also showed me that Gene was too rigid. As a GM, you always should have a fall back plan ready to go at a moments notice. So had the Jags done the smart thing and taken the Niner deal and the Dolphins did select Alualu, there should have been either a trade down plan (again) or simply another player that Gene had similarly valued to the draft slot that we could have instead selected. It was hardly as if Alualu was the only pick in the first round that would have been any good, - as it turned out, he wasn't really that good at all. 

 

After that gaffe, more and more mistakes kept turning up by Gene, culminating in the big one, the trade up for Gabbert.....and the rest was history....

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