Who's the Better General Manger, Howie Roseman or Les Snead?

The best teams in any professional sports are constructed by personnel coordinators and general managers with the same intentions of building the perfect beast. However, as in all occupations, there are professionals who are at the top of their fields. In the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles boast arguably the finest virtuoso in the business in the person of Howie Roseman.

But there are others announcing their presence with authority, making a case to join the Philly thinker at the very top of the game. In a recent episode of the Los Angeles Rams Insider Podcast, host Claudette Montana asked Senior Writer Hondo Carpenter just who he thought was the better GM, Roseman or the Rams' Les Snead.

"Boy, that is a great question," acknowledged Carpenter. "And I'm going to tell you, when you start comparing these two gentlemen, I think you are splitting hairs. So they are each in that elite, what I consider the top three general managers, but I give the edge to Les Snead, and I'm going to tell you why."

"To me, [the reason is] what Snead has done and the way he's done it. Now, when you look at Howie, and I think he's a brilliant General Manager, so if you don't take this as a criticism, I'm explaining to you the criteria of why I pick Les Snead. He [Howie] has almost done it from a throne, and it doesn't matter, 'we'll get rid of that coach, we'll bring this one in, and this is what we're going to do'. Les Snead has done it with allowing other people and empowering other people around him, and so what I think is brilliant is Howie has a brilliant strategy and he sticks to it, and they've won with his strategy."

Hondo continued his comparison, "Les Snead's strategy is, 'Let's win and when times dictate that maybe we don't have the personnel, we're not married to a scheme, we're married to winning'. So I think that in over long periods of time, Les Snead's approach allows the team to be more successful because they're willing to adapt the system to the philosophy of winning, where as Howie Roseman, the way he's built is 'We're committed to schemes, and that this produces winning'. Again, we're splitting hairs."

"If you're sitting here today and you're a Philadelphia Eagle fan, or you're a Los Angeles Rams fan, you're thrilled by who your general manager is, and you can make a legitimate argument one is better than the other. But to me, it's Les Snead, because I think the way he has built allows your team more opportunities. But again, it's no disrespect to Howie, who I think is great. I just literally think, if there's somebody sitting on the throne as the superior GM in the NFL right now, Les Snead's in that conversation."

Not everybody will agree, especially due to the fact that brilliant moves by Roseman is a huge part of the Lombardi residing in the "City of Brotherly Love" as we speak. But the Rams, who also won a Super Bowl with Snead's tinkering in the 2022 season, are a contender to the Eagles for NFC supremacy.

The one fact in this debate that will be hard to contest, however, is that the argument is going to rage on, and there's no denying that it's going to be fun to witness.