Tom Telesco lands at 11th in NFL.com’s GM Power Rankings

Championship-caliber teams must have all the right pieces to truly assert themselves among the best of the best in their respective sports. That means, from top-to-bottom, they have some of the best people in the building. For NFL teams, that goes for the general manager and all the way down to the guy kicking field goals.

The Chargers are lucky enough to have themselves front office that — for the most part — makes good decisions more often than not. Over the past few seasons, those moves have been called into question, however.

Tom Telesco has garnered most of his respect from around the league from making such draft picks as Joey Bosa, Derwin James, and Justin Herbert. All play pivotal positions for a football team and the Bolts landed three cornerstone players in that trio of picks. TT has also been known for finding impact players in the middle rounds, as well, which is something great teams do that put distance between them and just “good” teams.

Also, let me be clear, just because players are starting and playing significant snaps doesn’t mean it was a good pick. Bad teams play bad players because that’s the best they have. So starts and snaps don’t mean much of anything in the wrong context.

Despite losing a ton of players that were drafted and developed in-house, the Chargers are actually in a better place without them. On most other teams, they wouldn’t have been starting at all, so it’s actually GOOD that the Bolts finally chose to part ways.

I buried the crap out of this lede, but like the article title suggests, we’re here to discuss TT’s placement on a recent set of power rankings for NFL general managers from NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal. Despite not truly hitting on many picks outside of first-rounds (sans Hunter Henry/Keenan Allen), Rosenthal still ranks TT as the 11th-best GM in the league.

For each general manager, Rosenthal also includes his personal “best” and “worst” picks. To no one’s surprise, Justin Herbert was selected as the best pick of his tenure while Forrest Lamp was deemed his worst.

Here’s what Rosenthal had to say about his placement in his rankings:

“Justin Herbert. Derwin James. Joey Bosa. Hunter Henry. Keenan Allen. While Allen doesn’t count for this exercise, the span of these prime-time players drafted to wear Chargers blue is a credit to Telesco and the reason why he’s quietly the ninth-longest tenured GM in football, depending how you count Jerry Jones in Dallas and Mike Brown in Cincinnati. Telesco’s biggest shortcoming — hiring coaches — is not a factor here and his struggles to construct an offensive line is only partly about his draft mistakes. If there is criticism, it’s that the Bolts have often struggled to build out the depth of their roster to support the surfeit of stars.”

I’ve already spent too much time on my soap box for this, so now I want to hear all of your thoughts on TT’s ranking. Is this too high? Do you think his recent hits should keep him in the top half of GMs? Why or why not?