| Opening statement: “I just wanted to send a couple thank yous out there before we get started. I hope everyone on the call here is safe and healthy and everyone is doing OK where they’re at. Obviously just want to say a few things here before we get going here: Take a minute to thank a lot of people in the state of Michigan, and locally here in Detroit. First off, the people on the front lines – the doctors, the nurses, the medical professionals – those people are the real heroes right now in what we’re dealing with, so I appreciate all those people out there. I know all of us have some relatives and some friends, and I have some co-workers – obviously the people that do a lot of our medical stuff outside of the Lions – are on the front lines and talking to those guys – it’s amazing what they’re doing. So thank you to all (of) them. Also to the public safety officials, the police, fire, EMTs – those people out there – doing what they do to keep us safe. Delivery workers – you guys have it at your houses – Amazon, FedEx, UPS, U.S. Mail – I mean, my mini, little draft room here would not be functional right now without those deliveries coming in over the last couple of weeks. So thank you to those guys. Grocery store workers, restaurant workers for pickup and delivery, they’ve been amazing. It’s different times, but we’re adjusting. Really to all the essential employees out there – we thank them. From the Lions to everyone else out there, thank you for what you’re doing. “I want to thank Mrs. Ford and her family for the support they have given us over the last four weeks, the resources they’ve given us to get our set-ups up and running have been great. We feel good about where we’re at from a technology standpoint. We’re excited about heading out there and getting the Draft done next week. “I want to say thank you to my family – my wife, my children. It’s obviously different times here. Usually this time of year I’m not home very much, and now I’m home 24 hours a day. They’ve been great; they’ve been supportive; they’ve been helpful. My kids are upstairs in their virtual classrooms as we speak. It’s pretty cool to let them continue their learning with me being able to come downstairs and do my work. “To the scouts and coaches, I want to thank all those guys. We’ve done our work a little differently for this year, for the last month, but I think we’ve done it well. Done a really good job of adjusting, adapting to the new norm right now for doing things virtually – those guys have done an outstanding job at communication. The I.T. staff from the Lions, I can’t say enough about those guys. It’s been absolutely amazing what those guys have been able to do for myself and a lot of people in the organization to get us up and running. You guys know who you are, and I’ll just say I can’t imagine a better crew in the League. They’ve been really, really outstanding. “I also want to thank the players and (Head Coach Matt) Patricia for what they did with rallying the funds for the Empowerment Plan, the food trucks at hospitals over the last couple weeks. I think those guys are doing great stuff in the community. I know a lot of our players are doing a lot of stuff individually, too. I know the Staffords have done some stuff, Trey Flowers, Christian Jones, Frank Ragnow, ‘J.D.’ (Jarrad Davis) and Marvin (Jones Jr.) – I think he did something in California. So it’s really cool to see that. To be reflective here for a minute, we all – myself, our coaches, our scouts, you guys in the media – we feel like our jobs are so important. But really, when you think about it and look back over the last month, we’re really not that important. With the magnitude of what’s going on in the country, it’s really the people on the front lines, like I’ve mentioned before it’s the doctors, the nurses and those people, they’re doing an incredible thing. So again, to those people, thank you very much. “One last thing before we get started – in regard to the Draft-A-Thon, our team has chosen Feeding America as our nonprofit that we’re going to support. It’s a group that helps the food banks replenish in times of need. So we’re going to get on that next week. We’re working with the NFL and our community relations department to bring that to life in Detroit and in the state of Michigan. We’re going to have more information on that here next week for you guys. But myself, along with Rod (Wood, Lions President) and Coach Patricia and the Ford family, we’re all excited to help and do our part in kicking off the Draft-A-Thon next Thursday. With that, I’ll open it up for questions from here.” On his confidence that the player selected with the third overall pick will be impactful, and given the circumstances, how will he obtain the same level of success in drafting key players beyond the first round: “With the No. 3 pick, or wherever we end up picking, the idea is to get an impactfu; player. I think if there’s a number of players up in that top of the Draft that we feel good about, we’ll see what happens next Thursday, but I feel like that’s the goal. We have enough guidance in that range that we think we can do that. In the second part of your question, I would say we went through our normal process, it was just a little bit different. Our goal is to get impactful players throughout the Draft, whether they’re starters in the middle rounds or just backup and role players and special teams players later in the Draft. Our goals haven’t changed, the circumstances have obviously. We can’t use that as an excuse. We have to go out there and do the best of our ability to draft, grade the players, evaluate the players and then put them in the correct place on the Draft board, so next Thursday, Friday and Saturday, when it’s our time to pick, we feel comfortable with the selection.” On the logistics of the Draft this year and how he is designating his personnel to manage trade discussions and other draft needs: “I’ll take that in maybe kind of two parts. I’m not going to give you a picture of my setup here because I really don’t have that capability right now. But basically, I’m at my house, I have a home office that I use occasionally during the season and occasionally during the offseason – not very much – but I’m staring at a T.V. to my right. I have three monitors to my left, I have two laptops. I have a huge, what we would call our ‘draft phone,’ I have my home phone. I have two cell phones, and I have a printer. So that’s kind of my setup that I’m looking at right now. We can’t obviously replicate our draft board in my office here, so all the draft boards, needs boards, all of those things will be emailed, printed, they’ll probably be screen-shared on some platform that we’re still evaluating on which one we want to use next week – but we have two good options that we narrowed it down to. Then we’ll have redundancies on everything. We’ll have at my house and Coach Patricia’s house, redundancies for internet, redundancies for power, redundancies for phones, so I would say our I.T. department, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, they’ve done an outstanding job of setting us up. I feel really good about the setup; I feel confident that it’s going to work. Everything that we’ve done in the last four weeks, and I think I’ve been home in this home office for – I think yesterday was a month – everything has worked well. Obviously within the last week or so, I’ve gotten more stuff delivered to my house for technology, just for the Draft itself, and some of that stuff is being tested over the next couple days with the League – in terms of the camera that’s going to be here and all those things. I think big-picture-wise, we’re in a good spot technology-wise. We’re going to do a couple internal tests and trial runs here. The League is having a mock draft, mock trial run on Monday that we’ll participate in.” On his communication plan with his personnel during the Draft: “We’re working through that. We’re going to have one Zoom or Teams or whatever we decide to do here with the smaller group. It’s going to be eight or 10 of us in that virtual draft room, then they’re going to have a secondary call with everybody else that would be in the room – from the scouting guys that live in different parts of the country that are obviously in our draft room for a normal draft, but the people that are at the main two tables in our normal draft room will be on a separate call. It’s about eight to 10 people. So there will probably be two virtual calls going on at once. That’s kind of how we have it planned out.” On how many substantive trade conversations has he had for the No. 3 pick up to this point and a timeline for those talks: “We have conversations, myself and my staff, we’re doing our normal draft calls like we do every year – which we’ll call every team in the League, kind of see what they’re thinking. I’ll handle the calls that are a little bit closer to our pick, especially this year’s since we’re drafting at three. I’ve had a few of those conversations over that last week or so, had a few of those conversations honestly as far back as the Combine. There will be more substantive talks next week if people are interested. I think just the way the world we’re living in, with this being virtual, I think a lot of those things, if I’m going to do something, I think we’re going to have a pretty good idea Thursday afternoon of where we stand. I don’t think I’m going to be making a huge decision on trading the No. 3 overall pick while I’m on the clock, while I’m virtually talking to our head coach and our other personnel.” On if he currently has offers for the No. 3 pick: “I never go in to conversations I have with other teams. You know that. I never talk about a conversation I have with another team, sorry.” On if there’s a scenario where he would move back far enough where they’d fall out of first-tier talent: “I could see a scenario, yes, but ideally no. I say this all the time, but it takes two teams to do a trade. So when you’re trading back, and like you said trade back to after (pick) 10 or 11, then you have to know the ramifications of that. You’re going to get a different level player. So it’ll have to be factored in with the compensation you’re going to get back, if you feel good about losing out on one of those guys you like higher.” On the importance of selecting a long-lasting impact player with the No. 3 pick: “That’s the goal. We have high expectations for whoever we draft. But we know, especially in the situation we’re in now – I think when you’re going through the Draft, you have to really look for a certain type of player that’s going to come in a contribute, probably without an offseason program. Right now, we’re going to do three weeks of virtual offseason program, and then the League is going to let us know after that. How much time are these rookies going to have to learn the system? I don’t know. That’s really up in the air right now. I think we have to do a good job of evaluating the player we select, and come in right away, especially if we’re drafting that early, come in Day 1 and be a player, be a guy that can help us win games. We always give rookies a little bit of leeway to learn the system and all those things, but I think this year is a little different. We have to make sure we’re making the right decision that the guy can come in, maybe without a full offseason program and come in and contribute. That’s the goal every year, it hasn’t changed. I think we’re just in a little different atmosphere right now.” On how have limited Pro Days and virtual prospect visits changed the preparation for the Draft: “So what we did was we tried to be as normal as possible. When we get back from the Combine, one of the first things we do is set our schedule, set our coaches’ schedule. ‘Coach A, you’re going to see these 10 players. Coach B, you’re going to see these 10 players.’ Whatever that number is, it varies by coach. Then obviously myself, ‘Hey, I’m going to go see these players.’ So we stuck to that list of guys we wanted to see and wanted to see in-person; we just did it virtually. The coaches did a lot of Zoom calls – we had our normal Top-30 list that we wanted to bring in to Detroit, we just transformed that into a 30 visit Zoom with myself, Coach (Patricia) and Kyle (O’Brien, Vice President of Player Personnel) and Lance (Newmark, Director of Player Personnel) and the coordinators. So we have six, seven, eight people on that Zoom with the top players. This year, the League rule is 30 if you do it in-person, but if you do it with Zoom, virtual, FaceTime, all those, the rules are relaxed so you can do a lot more. So we actually took advantage of that and did probably more than we normally do. The difference being, these Zoom calls, these FaceTime calls can only be an hour long based on league rule. So you normally have a guy at your facility for say six or seven hours, so these are different. You have to condense it, work through the technology of watching film with a guy and talk to him about scheme, but I think we did a good job of organizing that. Credit to my staff, my scouting staff and our player development department for really organizing those calls and making sure we were very organized. We had a daily schedule that we went through. We’d start at the morning, and we did six or seven every day and ended a couple days ago.” On if any members of the Lions organization have tested positive for COVID-19: “No, not that I’m aware of.” On what went into the trade of CB Darius Slay and how big of a need remains at cornerback: “With the Slay thing, obviously that was something we had talked about since the offseason began. A couple of teams were interested in him, (we) had conversations at the Combine, had more conversations in the beginning part of free agency and (we) just thought it was the best thing for the team with just the parameters of what was going on with his contract and some of the things about the future and what the needs were from his end of things and we thought the best thing to do was to move that, get the draft compensation and go out in free agency. Obviously, we added a couple of corners and that’s something that we felt was the best thing for the team at that time. I had a really good conversation with Darius a couple of weeks ago when we ended up doing the trade. It was good on the end from my standpoint. Those are always tough decisions. He’s a good football player, we all know that. Sometimes you just have to make the decision you think is best for us.” On if the Senior Bowl proved to be a bigger advantage this offseason and if it’s changed their process: “I think looking back in hindsight, it was a great benefit to us. I would say the majority of the players that were on our team at the Senior Bowl, I think we were comfortable of the evaluation of the player and the person and the character fit and the culture fit and the mental, football capacities. I think we circled back with a handful of those guys but going back to when we got back from the Combine, we set our list of who we were going to go see in the spring. I remember distinctly saying, ‘Hey, we spent time with all these guys on our team at the Senior Bowl, so unless we really have a question we need to answer, let’s use our resources elsewhere and go see other players.’ So, that week was great for us. Like I said, I think we circled back with a handful of them, but for the most part, we felt really good leaving that week that we kind of knew our roster, our side of the ball, really well.” On if there’s added pressure this season based on the Ford’s mandate to win now, and if that becomes more challenging this offseason: “I answer this question the same way – I think you guys know what’s coming. I feel pressure every day I wake up and do my job. What was said was said, and listen, I’ve had really, really good conversations all the time with the Ford family and we really have a good working relationship. They want to win, and that’s our goal, too. The pressure’s the same for me. It always has been from Day 1 to right now. I feel that this year, with the circumstances we’re in, it’s just different. But every team is playing under the same playing rules right now with the virtual draft and the virtual draft preparations. Like I said, we’re ready, we’re excited about it and we’re ready to get going on Thursday.” On his reaction to NFL players testing positive for COVID-19 and if that adds concern for his own players: “Obviously, a high level of concern. We check in on our players multiple times a week. Our assistant coaches are talking to those guys, checking in on them, making sure their families are healthy, they’re healthy. It’s something that I worry about, I think about. It’s something that’s obviously scary to all of us, I’m sure everybody on this call knows somebody or has heard of a story of someone that’s been sick. Fortunately, right now, like I said, nobody on our team has tested positive that I’m aware of, and we’ve been in contact with everyone. To answer your question, it’s scary, just like it is for you guys when you go to the grocery store or you go wherever, you’re nervous. So, I’m nervous for our team, I’m nervous for my family, as we all are. It’s something – I think the League is going to come out with some guidelines about how we’re really going to deal with this once we get back and have the players in our facility. It’s really not going to be up to us. The League’s going to mandate when guys can come in and how that’s really going to kind of flow once we’re hopefully passed this.” On what new Defensive Coordinator Cory Undlin can provide this season: “Cory’s a guy that I’ve known for a long time. His expertise is the secondary. He’s been a defensive backs coach basically his entire career, so I think that’s probably his forte. But I think he’s really well-rounded with the front, linebacker players, pressure packages. He’s coached for a lot of different coordinators and head coaches, so I think he has a lot of different ideas that might expand our playbook a little bit and be able to put a different perspective on some of the things we do, which I think will be beneficial to everybody. I think it’s one of the things that Coach (Matt Patricia) and I spoke about when we interviewed Cory, felt really good about that. He’s a great person. He really connects with the players. I only have worked with Cory personally for one year, the one year that he was in New England and he was a quality control coach, but I’ve gotten text messages, phone calls from players that I know around the League that’ve played for him in other spots, just randomly about his ability to connect with the players. I would say just the little bit that he’s interacted with some of these draft prospects, some of the pro days that we were at before we got shut down, we were at together – he’s got a unique way about him to really connect with today’s player and get the best out of him. We’re excited about that, excited about Cory. He’s done a great job helping us with the Draft. He’s a good evaluator, a good communicator. So, I think it’s a good addition.” On if the differing medical reports on Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa impact what the team can do with the No. 3 pick: “We’re actually having our medical meeting this afternoon, so I don’t have our final medical grades yet. Our doctors and trainers have been compiling that over the last month or so after the Combine. I’ve gotten updates along the way, so I don’t have any comment about where we really stand. I’m not going to give out our medical grade on him or any other player, but just for me, I don’t have that information right now of where we stand. We have about a four-hour meeting scheduled for later today to kind of go over the whole Draft in terms of medical. And these medical things are a moving target. Some guys might not have a grade that’s great today, but in two months, they might be looking a little better. Sometimes those situations – it’s kind of a moving target. Our doctors might tell us, ‘Hey, right now, if we were starting the offseason program tomorrow, he might be a little limited. But in two months, he’s going to be fine.’ Some of those things are different for each individual player. I think Tua had his surgery a while back. The little video I’ve seen of him moving around looks pretty good, that’s obviously the stuff you guys have seen online, but we’ve got some other stuff via email that’s been sent out to all the teams. So, from a computer view, looks like he’s moving pretty good, but we’ll get the final doctor report later today.” On what he thinks of former players coming out against Head Coach Matt Patricia and if it’s problematic: “I’d say no. I haven’t talked about it a ton, but you can go ask anybody in the locker room right now what they think of Coach and how he runs the team, and they’re 100% behind him. You can’t make everybody happy in this business in terms of how you do certain things, but I can just say from the guys that we’ve signed in free agency, the guys that wanted to be here – a number of guys in our free agent class reached out to us. We obviously liked them as players, but in the weeks leading up to free agency, those guys had their agent call me and say, ‘Hey, my guy wants to be there and play for Coach.’ So, you just have conversations with guys like Duron Harmon, who we traded for. I mean, I’ve never seen a player more excited to be traded – and we’ve done a lot of trades since I’ve been here – than Duron Harmon. I mean, he was like literally jumping out of my FaceTime wanting to come out here immediately. I have no concerns with that at all.” On if there are values to different tiers in the Draft and if it’s similar to what former Cowboys Head Coach Jimmy Johnson used: “The Jimmy Johnson thing is totally different. The Jimmy Johnson thing is the trade-value chart, I’m sure you guys have probably seen it online, that each pick is worth a number value. That’s really for trades. Obviously, when you’re talking about value and you’re talking about tiers in the Draft, if you drop from your Tier 1 to your Tier 2, then you’re getting a different level player. So, the draft-value chart might get thrown out the window because if you’re going to do that, you better get a huge return. You better win that trade on the value chart, double. I’m not sure where exactly you’re getting at with the Jimmy Johnson value chart. We use our own. I think that one’s been updated over and over again since that came out. With the new rookie wage scale that come out a few years ago, that kind of threw a wrinkle into all the old trade charts because the compensation is much more even across the board for the rookie contracts. We had to redo our trade-value chart there.” On if the team would be willing to take a pick at No. 3 that might not be able to help the team this year: “My goal is to take the best overall player that can help us, whether that’s tomorrow, whether that’s this season or next season. Ideally, that player can help us this season, obviously. But that’s something that you have to take into account. If you have a guy that’s just by far and away the best player on the board, and it’s not a position of need, you have to have a long conversation because sometimes that’s when you make mistakes. It’s different for everybody. I think this year is unique for a lot of different reasons. We’re trying to put together the best team, whether that’s through the Draft or free agency or any other avenue that we have that we use throughout the season. It’s something that we have to take a hard look at.” On if the heavy investment on the defensive side of the ball in free agency gives him more ability to go with offense with their first-round pick this year: “Good observation. It’s something that we set out to do at the start of the offseason, was to improve the defense. Obviously, that wasn’t up to par last year, so that’s something we went out and tried to do. I think that does open up the Draft for us, whether that’s early, whether that’s mid or late. I think if you’re looking at our depth chart right now, we could probably go out there and play, line up a defense and go play competitively right now. Obviously, we want to improve that, we want to improve that every day. But that’s something that was good, and I think one thing that we talked about heading into the offseason, we got off the road when this whole thing – I was at a pro day, I think it was Clemson. I think Clemson was the last pro day I was at, and we got back that weekend and we started talking about our final plans for free agency and we had to take all of our scouts off the road and we had nobody really at the office. It was just a couple of us that were dealing with free agency at the office. So, some of the defensive players we picked up in free agency that had familiarity with our system, that made the most sense for us because we didn’t know if we were going to have an offseason program. We just knew that something was really different about this offseason. To go out and we had the Duron Harmon trade to start off free agency, that kind of made us think a little bit more about maybe getting some guys on defense that have been in this system, know the terminology. Hopefully (inaudible). To say that the defense was a priority is correct, and we feel like we’ve upgraded. Really, at each position group, I think we’ve added somebody or multiple players, so hopefully that works.” On what it’s like to work at home with children and what contingency plans he’s working on: “It’s been great. You wake up in the morning and you can come down and you can work. You run upstairs at 8:20 a.m. and make sure your 14-year-old son is out of bed so he’s ready for school. It’s good to take a 20-, 30-minute break at lunchtime and go over to the kitchen and you can actually have a meal with your kids, which you guys know for me, doesn’t happen very often. So, that’s really cool. Then, the same thing for dinner and then you can actually see them before they go to bed. It’s been different, it’s been an adjustment, no question, but I think it’s something that we’ve embraced. Once we kind of got direction from the League that we were kind of shutting down and we were probably pushing toward a virtual draft, we just jumped in. My wife and my kids, they’ve been helped. They’re old enough now where they know I need privacy and I need to go out here and work. I know it’s a lot more difficult for people with younger kids, that they can’t really control that. I totally understand that. I’m very fortunate. I can’t imagine if I had a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old running around my house right now. But it’s been really cool to spend this amount of time with them. It doesn’t happen. You guys know what the NFL life is, and the amount of time that we spend at Allen Park is crazy during the season and in Draft prep. So, it’s been interesting, it’s been productive, and I can’t thank them enough for helping me. They come in and they help me move around some stuff in my office and it’s been pretty cool. The bonding has been brought to a different level. The second part of your question, the offseason program, we kind of made the determination, Coach (Patricia) and our staff, we’re going to start our virtual offseason program on April 27. That’s not next Monday, it’s the following Monday. And really, what the League’s told us, is just plan on the virtual Phase 1 for three weeks and then they’ll get back to us about what we’re going to do after that. We’re really taking it in week-to-week segments, but we know we’re going to do a virtual offseason program for the first three weeks at least.” On weighing the value of the type of compensation he can receive for the third overall pick versus drafting a player in that spot: “It’s something we’re consistently talking about. What kind of player are you going to get at seven, eight, nine, 10, five? Like, it’s all those conversations and you kind of have the list of the players you like, right? And then you work backwards. So, if you like six guys and you feel like you can move back and they’re all similarly graded, then you try to do that. If there is a great variance in those six players, and you only feel really good about three or four of them, then you can’t go back as far. So, it’s a constant conversation. It’s a good question. It’s something that we’ve been having, I’d say two weeks. We’ll talk more about it over the weekend and into next week about those opportunities. But like I said at the beginning, you can’t just say, ‘Hey, I’m going to trade. You need a trade partner. So, you need somebody that wants to come up, and those conversations are happening, and we’ll see where they’ll turn out next week.” On weighing the need versus the value with the third overall pick and what excites him about the leverage ability of the pick: “Yeah, I’ll start with the second one (question). Obviously, it’s different. You’re looking at hopefully a different level of player than we’ve been taking in the past. We’ve felt like we’ve done a pretty good job with drafting guys in the first round my first four years here. It’s a different level of player. I’ve never been (picking) here in my career, hopefully never here again. But we take the opportunity. It’s the opportunity to go out and you get hopefully an impact player that can help our franchise for years to come. That’s the goal. Little bit more, I’d say, media attention to the pick, obviously with being that high. But like I said at the beginning, our process is the same of evaluating it and we’ll go through the scenarios of the third pick compared to the picks behind it. And if there’s an opportunity to move back it just has to make sense. It has to make sense and you’re comfortable getting a player you really like if you move back to a certain spot. So, we’ll take all that into consideration. Some of that is instincts. Some of that is value. Some of that is a player, it’s all combined. It’s not one computer project that you just type it in and say, ‘Do it or not.’ You’ve got to have that feel about where you can go down to and what kind of player you can get later on.” On how comfortable he is with the health of QB Matthew Stafford heading into this draft: “Yeah, Matthew is doing great. He’s probably like me, he’s home with children and he calls me probably once a week to check in. I know he’s working out. I know he’s feeling good, so health wise he’s good to go. As I said at the end of the season, if we were starting our offseason program next week, he’d be there as a full participant. He’s cleared medically from that standpoint.” On how much he has enjoyed using his best poker face when discussing the third overall pick: “Well, that’s kind of part of the game. Obviously, what we try to do – it’s really, I have a great deal of respect for all of the other GM’s. I’m really, personally, friends with a large number of them. A lot of them I have worked with over the years at a very intimate level. You do that. You have to make those calls. They understand what we’re doing, and I understand where they’re coming from. So, you can’t tell them obviously who you’re drafting and who you like. But you’ve got to be truthful and just tell them, ‘Hey, this is what it would take if you guys want to come get this pick.’ And you have that conversation, it’s not a five-minute phone call. It’s a lot of back and forth. It’s like, ‘All right, let me call you back next week. Let me call you back Thursday and we’ll talk more.’ So, this is ever evolving when you try to trade a pick, if we can trade a pick because as of right now, we’re six days out. So, there’s nothing set in stone.” On how many players are in his “tier one” of players in this draft: “I’m not going to answer that question.” On why teams have historically not drafted cornerbacks in the top five of the Draft and what he would have to see from a player to think he would be worth a top five pick: “I’m not sure why teams have shied away. Honestly, I don’t. I think it’s obviously critical and has high value in the League. Really, when you look at corners, basically you have three corners that are starters in professional football now. We go back to free agency a year ago, we signed Justin Coleman to play nickel and we paid him like a starter because we feel like you need three starting level corners to have a productive defense. So, why teams have shied away, I can’t really answer that. You have to ask the teams that have passed. I’ve never been this high in the Draft to experience that. In terms of the corner position, I think there’s a number of players this year that are really, really high-quality corners. I think it’s a deep class. I think it’s a deep class that you can get great value later on in the Draft, too for guys that can come in and contribute right away. And they’re all shapes and sizes. There’s some really undersized guys that are really just great football players. There’s some bigger guys that have a great skillset as well. So, it’s something that is not unique to take one in the top five, it’s just got to make sense for your club.” On what he has in mind with the salary cap flexibility the club currently has: “Yeah, we have a little bit of room. I think you guys have access to the cap data. Obviously, there’s other factors involved if you guys realize about other types of budgets. I think we’ve spent a considerate amount of money in free agency this year at various different positions. So, we have other things on the horizon, whether that’s internally, or whether that’s stuff that we’re going to do into the season that we’re planning for with some of our current players.” On if he thinks there will be an NFL season: “I do. I do think there will be a season, but I haven’t been told that. I’m like you guys, I’m hoping that this pandemic gets cleared up as soon as possible and we can get back to life as normal. That’s including our home lives, our family lives, as well as our professional lives. If I had to guess, yes, but I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s something that we are waiting for the League to tell us about as we get further down the road.” On if this year will be more challenging for undrafted free agents to be evaluated by teams: “Yes, I think it’s going to be harder – not impossible – for guys that are later round picks, rookie free agents. Really, their time to impress and get on the radar, and get real reps in training camp is during the spring because you have more opportunities. Some of your veterans aren’t taking as many reps, as you guys know, in the OTA practices. So, you can get a lot of these young, late draft picks and rookie free agents a ton of reps in the spring. And then if they show that they are capable and they deserve a chance to compete, then they are going to get more reps during the early part of training camp to really be able to make the team. If we’re not going to have a normal offseason, we’re already going to be delayed at least three weeks, it’s going to be harder for them. It’s kind of something we’ve talked about internally, for sure. Fortunately for us, our roster is at I believe 78 right now, I think we’re at 78 with Kenny Wiggins on yesterday, so really, we’re not going to have a huge number of undrafted free agents. We’re going to have a handful depending upon what happens.” On some of the things he has learned regarding some of his picks that have maybe panned out opposed to the contrary: “That’s something we constantly do. We constantly go back and evaluate ourselves. You go back and you say, ‘Why did this work? Why did that not work?’ So, it’s something, it’s not an exact science, unfortunately. There are different circumstances for every player that you take, whether it’s the team around him, whether it’s the positions we put him in, whether it’s an injury. So, there’s a ton of factors, but to answer your question, we definitely go back, I go back every year, I go back to as far as my first year here and we look at the mistakes we made. Look at the good things we did and kind of go forward for that. There’s a core criteria that we always try to stick by, but as you get to the middle, late rounds, that criteria kind of dwindles a little bit because all the players can’t check all the boxes once you get down later in the Draft.” On if he is confident that the season will start on time and if there has been any dialogue with the NFL regarding contingency plans if the season is delayed: “I personally, and as an organization, we haven’t had a lot of dialogue with the League about the season or anything like that. The latest dialogue that we’ve really been concentrating on is like, how this draft is going to work, number one and how the start of the virtual offseason program is going to work. So, we’ve had no communication about the season whatsoever.” On if he expects OL Halapoulivaati Vaitai to be the starting right tackle: “Yeah, Vaitai is a guy we obviously like a lot. One of the best things about him is we feel like he can play two positions and he has played two positions. Does he have the ability to play right tackle? Absolutely. Can he go inside and play guard at a high level? We think he can. So, that’s one of the reasons why he was kind of a target for us because depending upon what happens in the Draft and the rest of free agency, we feel like we can plug him into either spot. Obviously, he has more experience at tackle. This guy played left tackle in the Super Bowl. He’s played a bunch of games at tackle behind two outstanding tackles at the Eagles. So, he has versatility to play both. We’ll kind of see where the roster shakes up here in another three, four weeks and kind of solidify the depth chart going into the offseason.” On the possibility of playing NFL games without fans and it potentially being a deciding factor in starting the season on time: “Obviously, number one, we want to be safe, right? I think that’s what everybody wants. I think we’re in different times. Number two, it would be vastly different. It would be very, very unusual. I can’t really put into words how different it would be. It’s something that we would probably have to talk at length with our players about how to handle it, how to handle without the atmosphere and the energy level. You’re going to have to bring that energy yourself. Just to be honest, I haven’t put a lot of thought into that. It’s a really good question that I think, once we dive into this and if that is the case, which I have no idea if that’s going to be the case or not –if that’s the case, that’s something that we’ll address with our players and our organization. Hopefully we all get pass this. Like I said at the beginning of the call, we all work together to get the country back healthy again and work together as communities to put everybody back at ease. And hopefully we can get back to life as normal, that would include football, obviously that would be secondary to life. But to include football being normal again would be great for the country. And I think with the Draft next week, that will give everybody a little bit of relief. And hopefully like I said, hopefully we can raise a lot of money with the Draft-A-Thon. I think that’s an incredible way for our fans that can really help us, help the communities and we’re excited to be a part of that next week. I’ll be talking to you guys probably late Thursday night, probably back on a similar channel to this one.” |
