I think JS works very hard, and that's paid off for us in every area of team construction. If he's not such a hard worker in FA, we probably don't have Bennett or Avril for example. And as said before, he's the person most responsible for bringing Russell Wilson to Seattle.
That said, I look at the moves that have helped the team the most, and with the exception of Wilson and just a handful of others, all the biggest and best moves to help this team originated from Pete Carroll. The assistant coaching hires, the Pac-12 connections to Browner, Sherman, Lynch, and Harvin (unsuccessfully recruited for USC), drafting for very specific types of players in the draft, etc. We aren't drafting for those ultra specific and unique player types because of JS.
John Schneider is a terrific assistant, you could not ask for a better one, but he's the assistant. Pete's the architect. JS is a hard worker, but he's not a transformative visionary like Pete. I would rather have 10 years of Pete than 20 years of JS, despite the fact that JS is amazing at his job.
You look at SF, and they had a ho-hum front office for ages, then Jim Harbaugh comes in, takes a group of players that had won 5-7 games for most of a decade, and makes them instant SB contenders. Is anyone going to tell me that Baalke and his predecessor had as much to do with that as Harbaugh did? Clearly, without Harbaugh, the 49ers are still a joke of a team.
Further, you look at the top GMs in the league and you pretty much always see top 5 coaches working for them. Ozzie Newsome might be the very best, and he has John Harbaugh. Ted Thompson's in the discussion. He has Mike McCarthy. Mickey Loomis is up there. He's got Sean Payton.
