Head Coach Brad Childress following team’s final draft pick
We finished the draft portion of our picks here and still obviously are finishing the sixth round and into the seventh. We kind of move into our free agency mode. You guys already talked to Pete (Carroll) about (John David) Booty. Obviously he has played in quite a few big games over the course of his career. The thing that we liked about looking at him was you could see many of the throws that we have within this offense you could see him operate and do, so that was intriguing to us, and then also all of his movement skills. He comes from a coaching family, has had brothers that have played so all those things factor in, and then obviously his production. We felt like his value where we got him there was too good to pass up. We got a big defensive tackle, under tackle or nose guard, (Letroy) Guion from Florida State. He is a big banger from a little small country town in Florida. Got a chance to spend some time with him, Karl (Dunbar) did and Brendan Daly did down at the combine. Then the (John) Sullivan kid, we talked to Charlie Weis today and I liked some of the things that he brings to the table there. He’s a tough guy, a very smart guy. He’s from Greenwich, Connecticut originally and I like what he brings. Jaymar Johnson is a native of Gary, Indiana. He grew up by the lake and is not going to be afraid of the cold. He’s not from the south. He’s married, and gives you some punt return ability. He played in the Texas vs. Nation (game) and we got a chance to see him do some things there. Obviously Jackson State has a couple of good players that have come out of there. I just like what he brings in terms of return ability, speed, burst, and catch. That kind of finishes our draft.
Q: Where is John David Booty at as far as being able to step in and be more prepared than some kids would be?
A: Certainly more prepared from the stage that he has performed on. You always kind of hold judgment until you see him operate within our system around our guys. Southern Cal, just by the number of people they had drafted today, he has played around some speed and he has played in some big games but you want to see how those skills and ability and his football acumen kind of translate to what we are doing here.
Q: Does he have the ability to get outside of the pocket and throw?
A: Really that’s one of the things I just mentioned was he is very, very good both to his left and to his right with moving throws. With breaking the pocket and throwing those bootlegs and nakeds, that’s probably one of the better things he did in his college career.
Q: Of the skills that translate, is his accuracy one of the key elements? Coach Carroll was saying he would throw 50 passes and 48 of them would be perfect but might have a couple of wobbles but they still got caught.
A: That’s always the thing in this league is six inches makes a difference, whether you are leading a guy or whether he has to reach back. Typically there is a defensive back standing back there so accuracy is at a premium. A guy can throw it through the wall and he may have a big hose but can he put it where it needs to be put at the time it needs to be put there. That’s what he does bring is he is a very accurate passer.
Q: Do you expect him to compete with Brooks Bollinger for that number three job?
A: I would just say that as he comes in here we will just see how he factors in. Obviously Brooks has experience in the system. We wouldn’t have taken a guy if we feel like he didn’t had skills and ability, so we will watch and see how that plays itself out.
Q: Typically teams would carry three quarterbacks. Is carrying four out of the question?
A: It wouldn’t be out of the question. Some people go with two; there have been a few that have gone with four, but you would have to have a reason to do that. Obviously you are going to be stealing from another position.
Q: How do you feel about your quarterback situation?
A: Well, I felt the same way about it as before. We are adding a guy at the bottom to kind of groom. I feel the same way I did before. I feel like Tarvaris (Jackson) obviously is our starter. I feel good about adding Gus (Frerotte) in here with the ability to be able to come in and win football games. He’s still got ‘it’. He has got a great amount of experience, and then you have Brooks there as a number third with some experience and adding Booty just kind of pushes it along.
Q: Do you expect to go to training camp with all four of those?
A: Yeah, I think you’d have to go with four arms in training camp in case somebody’s arm goes dead. There are a lot of drills for running backs, tight ends, receivers, defensive backs, and you really probably don’t want to go with less than four.
Q: What is that Southern Cal pro day like? Has it almost become a mini combine?
A: It has. It changed a couple of years ago. They ran it in conjunction, until the NCAA got involved, (Southern Cal) and Notre Dame ran it in conjunction with having recruits to campus for a spring visit so it was kind of a jeez, look at all these pro coaches here. They were kind of showing you their athletes, kind of putting those guys on the stage. There was a little activity, football activity, along with an academic day. They got it to play in their favor, but yeah, with seven, eight, nine draft picks there is going to be some people attending their pro day.
Q: What did you like about Sullivan?
A: I liked Charlie’s description as a Jersey guy of his level of toughness. The center typically has to make your calls in the middle of the line. He is a smart kid; he can handle all that type of thing. When you listen to Charlie, you have to know what high praise is and he was kind of glowing in his remarks.
Q: He has played some guard in the past. Have you given some thought to trying him at both or is he just a center?
A: You know you always look at that. You figure sometimes if a guy can bring a ball through his legs that he can go over there and get in a three-point stance and play, so I’m sure we will take a peek at him and see if he as the ability to be able to handle those bigger three techniques that we play.
Q: Does Matt Birk’s situation have anything to do it or add depth to the position?
A: Well, it’s the only offensive lineman that we had right in there at that level at that point in time. So really it doesn’t have anything to do with Matt Birk at all.
Q: Would you have a like to have gotten an offense tackle in this draft?
A: You know it was certainly plentiful in terms of offensive tackles. That was a good spot within the draft. Yeah, but I would have liked to have gotten a lot of other things too. You can only get so many with the picks that you have.
Q: Was there some surprise that all those tackles did go in the first round? There were some teams taking guys that were projected as more second-round guys.
A: That was one of the strengths of the draft, so when you don’t have many people in another column…you may have needed something over here but if there is nothing in that column you are going to go back to where the strength is and where the value is. We had a pretty good idea there was going to be a run and a run pretty quick on them.
Q: There is a lot of competition at every position but what does it say about the roster that a lot of these guys are coming in behind some established veteran and that there aren’t maybe as many opportunities for strong competition?
A: You hate to waive good football players but hopefully when your talent level increases and your team gets better you know that you are going to be having to get rid of and cut good football players. That beats the alternative to be able to create competition. As we always tell the players when they come in here, make our decisions tough when you get in here. So like I said, it beats the alternative. Hopefully those players make those decisions real tough for us.
Q: Would you like to see Guion add some weight and maybe be a backup to Pat Williams or play that quicker role?
A: I think we assess that when he comes in the door and see what an ideal weight is. It doesn’t necessarily have to be 300 pounds. He may move around better if he is 294 or 295. Big is not necessarily better for us. We just want to make sure he can handle the weight that he has. I don’t have any illusions until we see him get in here and move around and assess his conditioning level and that.
Q: How do you feel about your offensive tackle position especially in light of Bryant McKinnie’s current situation?
A: I’m OK with it. We have Chase Johnson that I believe will be a year better. You have Artis Hicks who has that swing capability there and Marcus Johnson, so none of that has changed. Nobody has left us in that regard there. I would have to say that those five guys played all right last year.
Vice President of Player Personnel Rick Spielman following team’s final draft pick
I know Coach (Childress) covered a lot of it and we were pretty active as far as going up this year. I think a lot of it had to do with there were specific players that popped out on our board that we felt were worth going up and getting. We were a little bit more aggressive doing that this year. I think a lot of that has to do with what we’ve been able to accumulate during the offseason through the free agency period. There were guys that were on that board that we felt could come in and be potential backups, but then there were some guys that we thought could significantly upgrade our roster, either from the back end or hopefully down the road become starters for us. The theme was a little bit different this year than it was last year because there weren’t as many needs as we had going into the draft. By sticking to going to get the best available player and having a little bit of ammunition to go up and do that kind of changed a little bit of what we did from a standpoint last year, so we didn’t have as many picks. I know we are getting ready to stack that board and I know our scouts and our coaches and everybody are anxiously awaiting the end of this draft so we can get going on those free agents because we’ve had some success here in the past, and even last year going after the top college free agents. We’ll be just as aggressive this year. Zygi (Wilf), we’re allowed to do that this year, right? Zygi and Mark (Wilf) over there, this is their (most fun) time of the draft is I think, the bidding war on free agents.
Q: Scott Studwell said the other day about how it would be hard to find guys to come in and make a big impact with the existing talent on this roster. Will that make it harder to sign college free agents?
A: Again, there are sales pitches that you use and there are many sales pitches that go on during free agency. We’re fortunate enough to have ownership where sometimes finances could come into play to go out and get the best available player. We’re very fortunate to have that capability if there is a guy that we really want out there that we can go out and get.
Q: Is this an ideal situation to draft in where you don’t have to worry as much about need?
A: I still think you stay with the philosophy of taking the best available player. I know everybody has talked about the offensive tackle position, but I think what was their five or six that went in the first round? Seven, so that tells you how quickly those guys went before we would have even had an opportunity to look at one. Then we have a lot of other positions up there and a lot of other players that are stacked maybe higher than those second-tier type offensive tackles. Some of those offensive tackles maybe we had medical concerns with or character concerns with that we would just go by too.
Q: With John Sullivan did you look at more film of 2006 since in 2007 he was playing next to two freshman guards?
A: Yeah, and the way we have our system set up we have enough evaluations through ’06. We have evaluations through ’07, so we have a complete picture of what the guy is as a player. Sometimes guys don’t play as well in ’06 as they do in ’07. Some guys play better in ’06 than ’07, but the way that we have it structured and with as many looks as we get on all of these draft picks and all of the college free agents that we look at, we have a pretty good idea of what type of player he is. The one thing I do give him credit for when you watch him at the Senior Bowl and when you watch him play at that Senior Bowl game and some of the one-on-ones, we thought he played very well down at the Senior Bowl.
Q: I don’t know if you are too busy to do this, but do you try to look at the other teams in the division to see what they are doing?
A: No, you always look at that because you are always curious how they are doing and how you are going to stack up. One of the things, without getting into teams, and I’ll just give you the (John David) Booty scenario. We got very aggressive once he was there in the fifth to try to go up and get him and we talked to a lot of the teams up there, but talking to those teams there were three or four other teams that were trying to make a push for him too as you get the word back. We were fortunate enough to make that trade with Green Bay, but definitely you look at the other teams, especially in your division and their drafts, and how well they drafted. Like I said, it’s great to look at it all on paper and you guys are the experts that will grade everything here tonight and tomorrow, but we’ll see where it is three years from now.
Q: Is it unusual to trade with a team in your division like Green Bay?
A: I think it is if it is a player involved, but the draft, the picks are your currency. So it’s not as big a factor, especially if we covet something that they don’t covet and they may want to accumulate more picks. That’s more to me just exchanging currency. Now if it’s a player involved that might be a whole different ballgame.
Q: But it’s not like you mentioned to the Packers that you were interested in Booty?
A: Oh yeah, sure, that would be the first thing that came out of our mouth. No (laughing).
Q: How would you assess the talent level on this team right now?
A: Again, I think that we continue to build and we continue to add players to our roster, whether it’s through free agency, the draft, or through (waiver) claims. But again, I don’t think you are ever satisfied. You never have the perfect 53 and you are always looking to upgrade. We’ll continue to do that because I think the first time you say man, we’ve arrived, that’s when you make your mistake. Now you keep pushing through and right after this draft a couple of weeks from now we’ll be getting started on next year’s draft and we’ll see what happens during the summer on who gets cut or if there are any potential trades out there that could help us. That’s our job is to try to get Coach Childress the best players to help us win and we’ll continue to do that.
Q: Do you plan to release your free agent list tonight or tomorrow?
A: We’ll see. We’ll see where it goes. I don’t know if I gave it out last year or not but you guys can all say we did. In fact I think I had you up there so you knew it right when it happened.
Q: Do you have a specific number of guys targeted?
A: Yeah, the coaches and Brad put together the numbers we need for training camp. We know where our numbers are at now with the draft, but you know the draft picks don’t count toward your roster until they sign a contract. So in essence right now the way it is in the league we’re only going to have an 80-man roster. But with our five draft picks that come in and go through OTAs and they don’t sign a contract, you can have up to 85. Once those guys sign then you just have to make some cuts, so we’ll try to get hopefully up to 85.
Q: Were you surprised at how the tackles all went so early and is that how you had them ranked?
A: Do you mean did we have them in that exact same order that they came off the board? I would never tell you what kind of order we had them in but we all thought they were very good offensive tackles. But I think as you see every year in the draft when there is a run on a specific position they are going to go because you don’t know if there is going to be one. By the time you got to the end of the second round, the pickings got pretty slim then. But we thought all of those guys had talent and had ability and had ability to start and play in this league.
Q: How much did you see Booty and what impressed you about him?
A: He is a very smart player. Coach has hit on it; we felt he was very accurate and does a lot of the throws that we need to see on our offense. We got to know him pretty well down at the Senior Bowl. Coach (Kevin) Rogers, Coach (Darrell) Bevell, and Coach Childress spent a lot of time with him down there and got to get to know him a little bit as a kid. But a couple of games you saw him in the beginning of the season where he had a very good Nebraska game but then he got the finger injury, but then you go watch the bowl game. When Coach Childress and I sat there and watched that, it was like a 7-on-7 drill and you could see what type of player he can be when he is healthy. Between our scouts, Scott Studwell, George Paton, and everybody up there I think we have seen about every game that he has played in over the past two years.