The final general manager of the San Diego Chargers has now become GM of the Las Vegas Raiders.
What are the Raiders getting in Tom Telesco? A reputedly diligent worker whose teams went 84-95 (.469).
An NFL Draft veteran, one who hit on several top-20 picks but struggled in many other rounds and never traded down in a draft.
A front office leader who, although not a Luddite, wasn’t at the forefront of the analytics wave that benefited the Eagles and Ravens.
The Raiders are getting a team-builder whose players almost never created “character” problems off the field but one whose clubs seldom won high marks for physicality and depth.
Above above, this is what the Raiders are getting in Telesco:
A GM who will forge and maintain strong relationships throughout the franchise and industry.
“He’s very good at building relationships,” Jim Caldwell, a former Colts colleague and Super Bowl head coach, told me in 2015.
Expect Telesco to bond with team owner Mark Davis. Earning and maintaining the trust of an NFL club’s top bosses is perhaps Telesco’s lead trait.
As both a scout and an executive, he impressed Hall of Fame talent man Bill Polian with the Bills and the Colts.
Telesco must’ve impressed someone above Polian, too, during his 15-year run with the Colts.
That’s because Telesco survived owner Jim Irsay’s massive purge in January 2012 that banished Polian and son Chris Polian among many others.
In his Chargers tenure, Telesco worked closely with John Spanos, a part-owner of the team who — importantly — was promoted into the football braintrust shortly before Telesco’s arrival.
Their 11 years together was a long time for a GM whose tenure produced no divisional titles or home playoff games.
Telesco held the job longer than predecessor A.J. Smith, under whom the Chargers won four consecutive AFC West titles and reached an AFC championship.
His tenure exceeded the 10-year run of Hall of Fame talent man Bobby Beathard, an architect of the Chargers’ lone Super Bowl team.
Pulling back his NFL curtain a few inches in 2018, Telesco gave sports-career pointers to students at his alma mater John Carroll University, a liberal arts-based, Jesuit school in Ohio where he earned a degree in business management and played wide receiver.
“Be willing to work from the bottom up and realize that progress is not always measured in quick promotions,” he said. “The sports industry is very competitive, but work ethic, determination, and an attitude to do more than your job description states will pay dividends in the future. Work ethic and attitude rarely goes unnoticed, especially in the world of athletics.”
It was John Spanos, newly empowered by his father, Dean, the team’s chairman, who hired Telesco as the final GM of the San Diego Chargers in January 2013.
Being able to please John Spanos, a member of the team’s ownership, was crucial. Because John would be a constant presence.
John displayed an amiable personality in his dealings with the San Diego media, myself included. The delicate part for Telesco may have been that John viewed himself a football man, given that he’d worked as a Chargers scout and scouting executive.
John Spanos and Telesco watched hundreds of practices together. The relationship withstood many on-field disappointments.
Telesco had final say on the player roster. But if Smith’s comments on the Spanos philosophy still applied, it was understood that Telesco was not to bring in players with significant “character” risk.
This, too: John Spanos said in January 2017 he would have a big say in who became head coach.
Anthony Lynn and Brandon Staley were those hires.
Though Lynn’s second team went 12-4 and won a wild-card game at Baltimore as a favorite, things unraveled over his final two seasons. (As a footnote, Telesco-Spanos didn’t heed Lynn’s predraft endorsement of Patrick Mahomes.)
Staley got along well with John Spanos, but things got so bad on the field this past year that the Spanoses fired both Staley and Telesco on Dec. 15, the morning after the 63-21 defeat at Las Vegas.
The Raiders would love for Telesco’s “quarterback luck” to manifest itself in Silver and Black.
Telesco’s first season with the Colts coincided with the arrival of Hall of Fame QB Peyton Manning. Polian was able to draft Manning first overall because Indianapolis had gone 3-13 the previous year.
In Telesco’s final year with the Colts, available to the team was one the most heralded QBs in the draft’s history: Andrew Luck.
Telesco said it wasn’t a difficult decision for the club to draft Luck first overall. The team’s 2-14 record in 2012 made it possible.
Months later when Spanos hired him, Telesco inherited Philip Rivers, 31.
The good luck continued, as Rivers made every start in his final six seasons with the Chargers.
A month after Rivers and the team agreed to part, the Chargers lucked into Justin Herbert, whom Telesco drafted sixth in 2020, and saw him be available for every start until breaking a finger late in the 2023 season (by which time Staley’s club had already gone belly up).
Telesco will need to be more creative this time at QB, as the Raiders employ no QB comparable to the likes of Manning, Luck, Rivers and Herbert.
Their top draft pick, at No. 13, likely won’t be high enough to land them any of the top-3 prospects.
