I began to wonder during the 2010 draft. His first three selections--Alualu, D. Smith and Hart--were all reaches to fill needs on the defensive line. More importantly, they were all reaches after Gene had repeatedly positioned himself as a "base hit" best-player-available type of drafter, and done a pretty good job of selling that role in the 2009 draft. When someone insists that they draft the best available player then reaches for need three times right out of the gate, one has to hope that that person just isn't staying true to their stated identity. The only alternative to that, and what seems to have ended up being the case, is that the person in question is terrible at grading out players.

 

The 2011 draft looked good enough on paper when it was done. Let's not pretend that 99.5% of this board wasn't thrilled with the Gabbert pick. Prosinski was a bit of a weird selection, but given the success the Jags were having with Derek Cox, I gave him the benefit of the doubt until the first time he set foot on an NFL field and looked completely lost.

 

The 2011 free agent signings, though, were a huge red flag for me. I was not a fan of the Landry, Session, Spitz, Coleman or Turk (especially Turk) signings, which means that Poz is really the only one I liked, and even he was overpaid. Did Spitz even play a game for us? At all? It's not like his injury history wasn't blatantly there. Landry was average while here, Coleman was way, way overpaid for a nickel corner, and Session spent most of his time here injured. And Turk, well, let's just say I'm not a fan of handing a seven-figure salary to a 43-year-old player at any position, least of all punter.

 

The 2012 offseason is when whatever remaining trust I had in Gene evaporated. Hiring Mile Mularkey, who was an abject failure before quitting as the head coach in Buffalo--that's right, he quit one of the 32 most coveted jobs in pro sports--and was on track to be fired as the OC in Atlanta was a move that seemed destined for failure from the second it was announced. Trading up for Justin Blackmon was out of character for Smith, who preferred choir boys to repeat offenders, and stank of desperation. The part of that 2012 draft that really killed me was Anger. Smith was burned by bad punters the previous year, including Turk and Nick Harris, so he vastly overreacted and grabbed a punter in the third round, despite having holes everywhere else. Even worse, he tried to justify it by saying that he drafted Anger because he didn't believe he'd be able to draft an immediate starter at that spot.

 

Five picks later, Russell Wilson, but yeah, no one knew that at the time so it's not exactly fair to rub his face in it now.

 

So when exactly? I think the hiring of Mike Mularkey was, for me, the point at which I finally accepted that Gene Smith was a terrible GM. Judging by the way he stacked his draft boards in 2010 and 2012, one could argue that maybe he wasn't even that great of a scout. It's too bad, really. His tenure got off to such a promising start with that 2009 draft, but looking back, it was all downhill from that very first draft.

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