NFL Top 10: The Best Personnel Men in Pro Football

10. Mike Reinfelt, Tennessee TitansReinfelt was handed a team in salary cap purgatory, a team who had spent it's last two first round picks on PacMan Jones and Vince Young, and a team that had just released perhaps the greatest player in it's short history since moving to Tennessee (Steve McNair), and hadn't made the playoffs in two seasons. Under Reinfelt, the Titans have pulled all the right strings, moving the team from 8-8 in 2006 to 10-6 in 2007 to a AFC-best 13-3 in 2008.While playoff success has been elusive, and the job has been more about connecting Floyd Reese's dots than rebuilding the entire system, that player development cycle is easy to mess up from the top down. Reinfelt deserves credit for working with Jeff Fisher and the departed Jim Schwartz to get this team to the top of it's conference.9. Scott Pioli, Kansas City ChiefsPioli had been fielding job offers for the last three offseasons, and when Kansas City came calling, he had to take it. There are very few, if any, better small-market sports towns than K.C, and the team was not hamstrung by any cumbersome poor contracts, it was just largely void of talent. In essence, it's precisely the blank slate that Pioli had waited around for, before bolting the culture of success in New England.8. Tim Ruskell, Seattle SeahawksRuskell is one of the more underrated personnel guys in the league, as Mike Holmgren was pretty much a disaster in the same capacity, but in his five year tenure, Ruskell has called the shots for a team that won it's conference, won it's division every year up until 2008, developed one of the league's best quarterbacks, and had a top of the line defense in 2007. Ruskell, like most of this franchise, had a down year in 2008, but he's gone right back to the things that made him successful, patching up the secondary with veteran former-Seahawk Ken Lucas, and drafting the unanimous best player in the draft, LB Aaron Curry.7. Ted Thompson, Green Bay PackersThompson's tenure might be defined by: 1) having the cajones to tell Brett Favre that he wasn't entitled to be the Packers starting quarterback following a retirement bout, and 2) fearing that Favre might end up in his own division one day. Thompson is a good decision maker and historically top drafter who has taken the Packers from an older team built around Brett Favre, to the youngest, arguably most exciting offense in the league. His decision to hire Dom Capers and switch to a 3-4 defense might be his boldest move yet, but there's little reason to think he will loose this gamble in the long run.Of course, this would be a bad year to have a transitional defense if, in fact, Brett Favre will be wearing purple this year.6. A.J. Smith, San Diego Chargers2009 is the year. All the fruits of A.J. Smith's labors, from ripping off the Giants in the Eli trade in 2004,to drafting Shawne Merriman with the Eli pick in 2005, to building the league's best OL in 2006, to watching Philip Rivers overcome all the odds to outperform Drew Brees in the offense Brees created, to finding the best young TE in the league without using any resources...all of it is set to pay off this season. If Smith's team can't win it this year, his days will inevitably be numbered as the team he built ages, and he will be remembered for firing Marty Schottenheimer/hiring Norv Turner, not for building a winner in San Diego.5. Kevin Colbert/Art Rooney Jr., Pittsburgh SteelersThe Steelers are a shrewd personnel organization. Plenty of teams without exorbitant budgets are successful drafters, but the Steelers make their free agent expenditures count too. Just look at S Ryan Clark. Left unwanted by the Redskins after a career year in 2005, the Steelers signed him and three years later, he teamed with Troy Polamalu to be arguably the very best safety tandem in the NFL. Consider that their roster is just as deep as it is top-heavy, and you have a brain trust that consistently puts their team ahead of it's competition.4. Bill Parcells/Jeff Ireland, Miami DolphinsParcells has a reputation that exceeds the effect he has on teams--he's not a miracle worker if he can hand pick the situation he wants to go into--but he's proven himself as a wise grocery-shopper who can at least chance the entire culture of an organization overnight. Picking up a Chad Pennington was a no brainer for the man that drafted him, but it was a move that a lot of others would not have made. When you coach under Parcells, you have a creative license to do WildCatty things that otherwise would be considered NFL coaching heresy.3. Bill Belichick/Kraft Family, New England PatriotsHe's the standard by which all coaches are measured, and he also makes sure he has the newest, most state of the art toys to try and win with. And more importantly, his success rolls over from year to year as he parlays his success into higher and higher draft position yearly, until he has about four picks per year in the range where franchise players can be found at relatively minimal cost. If the Steelers are the organizational standard, the Belichick Patriots are the most easily duplicatible personnel acquisition system: the one where success itself breeds future success.2. Thomas Dimitroff, Atlanta FalconsDimitroff is THE rising star in the front office game. He needed to be right on Matt Ryan, and early returns are about as positive as they can be, but his season and a half of success goes well beyond that. He seems to have an uncanny ability for getting the best possible value out of every draft pick; this is something that neither the Patriots nor the Dolphins nor the Steelers can say. Those organizations are winners because of their understanding of the value of the draft, and their ability to parlay their efforts into extra shots in the NFL Draft. On the contrary, Dimitroff's No. 1 quality is that if he's given two picks in the first two rounds, he finds a way to get three picks worth of talent with those picks, be it with trading, or a calm patience that few other GMs will display in the war room.1. Bill Polian, Indianapolis ColtsThe Colts may not provide an easily duplicatible blue print about how to build a winning team, but this type of longevity in the era of parity just does not seem at all possible. However, blessed with perhaps the greatest quarterback ever, the Colts have managed to surround him with one of the best teams ever, and they keep renewing the talent via the draft every single season. This is an organization that is unafraid to spend high picks on offensive players to help Manning out, in fact, their first pick every year since 2006 has been on offense, and has netted two RBs, a WR, and the teams LT. This wouldn't have worked unless they had: 1) spent all their efforts on defense in the four drafts prior to that, and 2) had actual, objective reason to believe they had a special talent core on defense that would transcend it's defensive minded coach into the next era.Well, it's about time we give Bill Polian credit for a perfectly executed winning business model.