I really wish all this minutia type of stuff didn't fascinate me so much....
Knowing how the 31 other teams in the league are approaching the draft is a critical skill on draft day. Chip doesn't have it, I don't blame him one bit. It's a perfect example of the personnel nuance that I wouldn't expect my head coach to know about, nor do I really want him worrying about. To Chip's credit, it sounds like he listened to Howie multiple times. I hope he continues to let the new guy handle it. I don't want the head coach worrying about 31 other team's draft needs. That's how the on field preparation/product starts to swoon.
A player's relative value in the draft seems like a real skill of Howie's. Reid praised him for it, and Kelly did, too. Hopefully Chip's new guy is pretty good at it and Chip continues to listen.
I've yet to hear something leaked about the draft that reflected poorly on Howie. I know the guy isn't perfect, but man, it really seems like he was good in a draft room. Of course, he could be the one leaking all this crap to make himself look good, and maybe that's why everyone hates him. (Man I wish something would leak explaining why Howie is such a pariah, and why Lurie stands by him. I just don't get it.)
Doesn't the draft just seem out of Chip's wheel house? It's slow. It's boring. It's all hypotheticals! It's a ton of "if we go here, then we can do this but if they take him, then we can go this route, but yada yada yada". The whole process is just crazy anti-Chip. He just doesn't strike me as a guy who will concern himself with maximizing draft value via trade ups and trade downs. Didn't he even say that he didn't sit in the draft room last year? He's just like... "Oh, we're on the clock, yeah, I like that guy. I watched 200 hrs of film, he's good. Pick him, I'm going back to watch more film. You know, actual on field football. You nerds."