I do not agree with your bashing of Rogers, nor conversely, the exclusivity of your praise for SOS.
Recruiting should NEVER be about picking the best player available.
It should be about picking the best player to complement the Coach's game plan given the players currently on the list and their expected future development and fitting the player(s) recruited into the salary cap.
Central to the recruiting task is therefore that there be a "game plan", A game plan is a blueprint for the way in which the coach expects the team to win the ball against opposition clubs when the opposition have the ball and when it is in contest, transition the ball into a scoring opportunity, and kick the goals. The coach needs to know what type of player is most critically missing (or likely to become a critical miss in the future because of age, go home, or injury) for his game plan to work most effectively.
But, as I have said repeatedly, a game plan is ONLY good if it maximises (uses) the skills and talents of each individual player in the team and minimises (hides) the absence of skills and talents of each individual player in the team. Go game plans MUST be 2-way creations. A coach needs to imagine what sort of player he wants for his game plan but, when he has them, he needs to adapt the game plan to the players selected.
The above approach is very clearly that of Clarkson from the get go. He cleared the list of players that he didn't want (like Graham) and was prepared to cop beltings whilst he worked out who on the list he had he could use going forward. Then he added players specific to the needs of his game plan (a heap of left footers). You can see the planned purpose for each player recruited by the Hawks. The decisions to rid themselves of Mitchell and Lewis for Mitchell and JOM shows exactly the sort of strategic planning Clarkson constantly engages in. But he leaves it to the recruiters to get the type of player he orders within the confines of the salary cap.
The problem for Rogers, particularly in 2014, was that there was one and only one purpose in the recruiting we engaged in that off-season - MM hoped for a quick injection of talent to make finals and keep his job. As is now generally recognised MM didn't have any real game plan (or at least not one that caused any difficulties for modern coaches). He kept hoping that with good enough players and his undoubted tactical nous we could win enough games to, whatever.
Now sure, DVR didn't work out and some blame for Rogers there, but after Clem Smith and Foster were picked, ignoring Acadaemy and Father/son picks. 11 players were recruited who have played a total of 17 games in 2 yrs (11 games to Logan Austin) with nothing to get excited about with any other pick. So it is not like there were a heap of obvious choices left. And of course our drafting before DVR was about getting a 3 yr tall to make an immediate impact plus a mature aged BB to also have immediate impact. Not sure these were Rogers call exclusively. I certainly see the hand of MM.
