Again.....let's say you're the GM of a team, and you get three resumes from Doug Berry, Kent Austin, and John Doe (with Popp's resume). Who would you interview? Correct answer would be Berry and Austin; you wouldn't bother with John Doe unless you happened to BE John Doe, which is exactly what happened here.
Now if you were right that Popp is building on his experience I might not have as a big a problem as I do, but I don't think you're right, because I don't see him building or growing in the role.
I still think he's an excellent GM.....he found us Bratton, Imoh, Dree, Ferri and Hill this year alone. He saw that Truluck wasn't performing so he replaced him with Bowman. His GM moves have been, as usual, excellent.
But his coaching moves? Sorry don't see it. We seem to make NO halftime adjustments and as a result we are horrid after halftime because the other team does make adjustments. He keeps MB as O/C, and we all know what this offence looks like (dreadful; if we weren't as talented as we are we'd be winless. I think we're 3-3 IN SPITE of the offensive scheme, as opposed to because of it).
And his in-game decisions? Remember when we were down 1 point to Winnipeg and went for it on third on goal, after having come up empty on 1st and 2nd downs? Come on, it's a no-brainer to take the field goal and have the lead....had we done that we wouldn't have had to worry later in the same game about having to try a 2 point convert (which failed). In my books that's poor coaching. In that situation even a riverboat gambler like the Don would have taken the field goal.
And, finally, any head coach worth his salt would see that our offensive scheme is inadequate. The only running play is up the middle; no pitchouts, no draws, no traps, no sweeps. Our passing game is built around 3 yard passes when we need 5 yards, 7 yard curls when we need 9 yards, and so on. Sure all that should be laid at the feet of the offensive coordinator, but he's head coach so the buck stops there.
And on second thought, I'll downgrade his GM performance to good from excellent. Bad move hiring (and continuing to stand by) Bellefeuille when it's obvious to all but a blind man that the offensive scheme isn't working. Bad move to have a dreadful offensive line and doing nothing (so far) to remedy it. The only major O-line move he made this year was to 'retire' Okeke and move Mudge over to left tackle, and we've all seen how that's turned out (atrocious)....not saying we should have kept Okeke, but Mudge has been like a fish out of water there and should either be sent back to right tackle or benched.