Here's why George Paton is the right man at the right time for the Broncos

You don’t build a team entirely with spreadsheets and analytics. But in this day and age, you can’t build a team solely with your eyes and intuition. The teams that flourish today do so because they incorporate both and find common ground.

And George Paton might be perfectly perched at the intersection of time-tested methods and modern innovation.

“He is an outside-the-box thinker,” said Minnesota Vikings general manager Rick Spielman, who worked with Paton with the Chicago Bears, Miami Dolphins and for the last 14 years with the Vikings.

Spielman calls Paton his “best friend” other than his brother, Chris, a former Lions linebacker and long-time broadcaster who now advises Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp.

One way in which Paton worked “outside the box” was in analytics. When the Vikings installed an analytics department, Rick Spielman made sure Paton was in charge of its development.

“Let’s look at analytics because I think our analytics department has done an incredible job. That’s part of our process of how we draft now,” Spielman said. “It’s not the final answer, but it gives us some direction and tiebreaker methods.

“I have two-to-three incredibly intelligent people that can sit there and come up with all these different algorithms of what’s important and not important at each position. How do you tie in a 40 [yard dash] time to self-efficacy on a psychological test? How does all that tie into that position?

“George did oversee that department as we put it together, and that became a big role. It’s really grown over the last five or six years for us, and it’s becoming another tool that helps you make the best decisions possible.”

In this regard, Paton fits the bill of the ideal modern general manager. He combines his analytics familiarity with a deep background in scouting, an endeavor almost as old and proven as the NFL itself.

Paton also has a knack for relating well with people throughout the organization. You won’t find an unkind word to be uttered by anyone connected with the Vikings regarding the Broncos’ new general manager.

This relationship-building helps when it comes time to help build a consensus between the personnel staff and the coaches. Paton’s ability to connect should help both sides of football operations find harmony and accord on significant decisions.

“[Something] that really sticks out to me about George and his personality is how well respected he is amongst the coaches and how he relates to the coaches and builds their trust and builds a relationship with a coach,” Spielman said. “I don’t know how many times I’ve walked past his office and I’ve seen coaches sitting there talking with him or him down in coaches offices just sitting there talking football and talking about what we are looking for — or just talking with his friends.

“He has an incredible aura about him. He’s a great listener and the relationships that he builds, especially with the coaching staff, is pretty unique.”

Another key tenet of Paton that Spielman noted: the Broncos’ new general manager learns from his mistakes, a trait that goes back to his days as a scouting intern and later an area scout with the Bears, when Spielman and Paton first crossed paths in 1997.

“I tell people this — to the young scouts especially — is [that] you don’t become a great evaluator in Year One because you don’t know how that player is going to be three years from now,” Spielman said. “You can’t go and read it in a book; you can’t take it in a class at a university.

“The only way that you become a very good talent evaluator is following the draft classes year-in and year-out and going back to assess where you did well — why did that work? Where did you fail? And reassess why it failed and make sure you don’t make those same mistakes again, but you can’t do that until you actually go through all those experiences.

“That’s why I think George is so prepared for this, he’s been through so many experiences with me side by side.”

Paton has learned by doing. But he also possesses an open-mindedness to new ideas and aspects beyond his own experience.

He will be the first general manager or chief personnel executive that the Broncos hired from outside their midst in 40 years. In 1981, Edgar Kaiser installed Grady Alderman, a former Vikings player and executive — and accomplished accountant — as the general manager.

The Broncos’ overall success in the last 40 years made promotions from within palatable. Their struggles in four consecutive losing seasons changed that. And while the change to Paton isn’t as extreme as the one Kaiser instituted within two weeks of buying the Broncos, it comes two years after the Broncos brought in Vic Fangio as head coach.

The Broncos are changing, changing fast — and, they hope, changing for the better.

Paton appears to be the right man at the right time for the Broncos.