That's irrelevant. Use your brain for a sec. His job is to acquire and keep talent, and he does well at it. GM's don't have control of who gets injured, or who is making a stupid split second decision that costs the team a game.
Whaley consistently hits on his draft picks through the middle rounds, and doesn't seem to have any issues re-signing valuable players. Besides a little more tact in dealing with media, what exactly is he missing?
His job is to build a winning football team. Evaluating him by any other metric is short-sighted.
It's like when Darcy Regier would garner praise for "winning" every trade he made, despite the fact that his team was nonetheless getting worse and worse.
Sometimes I swear that people can't see the forest for the trees. The forest is the playoffs.
A GM's primary job is not simply to draft good players or to win trades. His job is to build a winning team. A playoff team. That is how they should be evaluated.
And if Whaley can't get this team to the playoffs in a reasonable time-frame, then he's a failure who should be fired. No matter how many good players he drafted or free agents he re=signed.
