GENERAL MANAGER TRENT BAALKE
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2023
(On if players may be willing to take less money to stay with a team they really enjoy being on) “I think
you can say at times that does occur. Does it occur across the board? No, but you want to create an
environment where they want to be, and Doug’s (Head Coach Doug Pederson) done a great job. I think
the entire staff has done a great job, this player group, it’s a close-knit group. When you’ve got a
situation like we have, it’s tough to leave if you’re a player. Hopefully that works to our advantage to
getting them back, whether that is reflective of the contracts or not, that remains to be seen.”
(On how important it is to retain core players like TE Evan Engram and OL Jawaan Taylor) “I think you’re
always looking to keep as many players in the nest as you can. You work hard to draft these guys or to
secure them through various methods, whether it’s free agency or the draft, college free agency, a lot of
different ways these guys come onto the team. Once they’ve proven themselves, not only on the field,
but in the locker room, those are the core guys you want to build around.”
(On why this team’s group of players worked) “There’s a lot of things to point to, but I don’t think you
point to anything greater than Doug’s (Head Coach Doug Pederson) influence as a leader. When you
have someone at the top that’s as steady as Doug is, as fearless as he is, and really as authentic. Those
are three things I think of when I think of the way Doug’s led this organization and this football team
that really stand out, and people get behind that. When you’re authentic, you’re the same guy every
day, and you’re fearless as a leader, people—players, staff, fan bases—it’s encouraging, and it’s
engaging.”
(On OLB Travon Walker’s performance) “I think Travon, like all these rookies, it was a season of growth.
You’re always looking at young players, and usually that step between year one and year two is the
biggest jump that these guys have as players, but I think he did a lot of nice things. Like I talked to him a
week ago, that stat number that everybody has in their mind of sacks is, in a lot of ways, very
overvalued. There’s a lot of ways to influence a game, and I think Travon, you saw him do it, whether it
be the run or the pass, he had an impact this year, and it’s only going to get better from here.”
(On use of the franchise tag, given the financial situation this year) “I’m hoping we don’t need to use it.
Right now we’re evaluating this team as a staff. Doug (Head Coach Doug Pederson) and the rest of the
coaches are going through a process, an end-of-the-season process that we’ve set up. Our personnel
staff is doing the same thing. We’ll join forces tomorrow and meet for most of the morning to really put
a plan in place for how we’re going to attack this offseason.”
(On maneuvering the salary cap and how much it will affect what they can do this offseason) “Cash is
more important than cap. There’s ways to maneuver the cap, and there’s ways to extend things into the
future, but you’ve also got to be smart and diligent when you’re doing that. Again, we’re going to look at
all of our options, we’re going to meet as a staff tomorrow, go through what our wish list is, then we’ll
sit down with ownership, we’ll sit down with those that work on the cap and contracts, we’ll sit down with them, and we have been. We’ll have a final meeting with them to really get the ball rolling for the
future.”
(On the importance of bringing TE Evan Engram back and the fit for him as a member of the team)
“Obviously, we’d love to have Evan back. Evan and I visited yesterday as he went around the building
and visited with everybody. I think it’s mutual. Now we have to make it happen. That’s something that
we’re going to work on with Evan and all the other free agents that we have. We have a list of them that
we’ve got to mow down one at a time.”
(On evaluating a free agent on the team compared to one on the market) “Obviously, you’re dealing
with the known versus the unknown. I think one of the things that we’ve talked about with this free
agent class this year and last year’s free agent class, I think they’ve been two very productive classes,
and it’s weighed out on the production that they’ve had on the field, but there was a lot of work that
went into that process and getting to know these guys as much as we could from a distance. The
coaching staff was heavily involved, the personnel staff was heavily involved, the support staffs were
heavily involved, the trainers, the strength coaches. The more information you can get, the better your
chances of getting what you believe you’re getting.”
(On if this is an offseason that the franchise will move away from depending on free agents and focus
more on the draft) “Yeah, I think it has to be that moment. First of all, we’re up against the cap a lot
more than we were the previous two years. We feel really good about the nucleus of young players that
we have on the team. I believe we’re the fifth or sixth youngest team in the National Football League
right now. We have a lot of young players on their first contracts, a lot of players overall on their first
contracts. As you transition into more guys that are on their second deals, it becomes more and more
difficult to use free agency as a strong vehicle to improve your team, so we’ve got to look to the draft.
We’ve got to look to developing the guys that are currently here and obviously retain as many of these
guys as we can.”
(On his evaluation of the offensive line) “You never want to see guys get injured, when Cam (OL Cam
Robinson) went down, but what injury does is create opportunity for somebody else. When those guys
went down, when Ben (OL Ben Bartch) went down, Shat (OL Tyler Shatley) stepped in and did an
outstanding job. When Cam went down, Walk (OL Walker Little) stepped in and did an outstanding job.
It gave us a chance to evaluate not only the front-line guys but the depth of our roster at that position,
and we feel really good about it. I think Coach Rauscher (Offensive Line Coach Phil Rauscher) has done
an outstanding job working with those guys, and they’re only going to continue to get better. The good
thing is, most of those guys are young. Most of them are on their first contract. You’ve got a couple that
are early stages of their second contract, and only Shat, really, is a guy that is up there in years, but you
couldn’t tell by the way he performed this year for us. He stepped in and did an outstanding job.”
(On comparing Week 18 of 2021 to Week 18 of 2022 and any vindication he feels) “I don’t look at it like
that. We’re paid to do a job, and our job is to put the best product we can on the field. I’ve never
listened to the noise. The noise doesn’t determine the decisions that we’re going to make as an
organization. I think the best thing you can do when there’s a lot of noise is put ear plugs in and go
about your job, and that’s what we tried to do. Again, it’s never one person that makes these decisions.
It’s a group decision, organizational decision. Doug (Head Coach Doug Pederson) and I are very much
involved together in this process, and we involve everybody underneath us to the nth degree. There’s a
lot of collaboration that people don’t see behind the scenes.”
(On what he saw from C Luke Fortner) “I think what you saw is a guy that’s got a chance to have an
outstanding career in the National Football League. He’s highly competitive, he’s smart, he’s tough, he’s
got the size, he’s got the skillset to be a very good player in this league for a long time. To come into this
league and play in the middle of the offense, play the center position with all that has to go into it
mentally that goes into playing that position. To do as well as he did is a credit to him and the work that
he puts in. He’s a pro’s pro at a very young age, I look at him as an old soul. I think the best is in front of
him.”
(On reflection of C Luke Fortner) “Well, I think again, we spent a lot of time evaluating these guys. Coach Rauscher [Offensive Line Coach Phil Rauscher] went to the school and did a school visit with him. His O-
Line coach at Kentucky used to work for us when I was in San Francisco, so we had some real inside knowledge of the type of guy that we were going to get. He’s been everything and more that we’ve
imagined. He is, I can’t emphasize enough, their ability to come in at a young age and be a pro from day
one. Sometimes it takes these guys a little bit to learn how to be a pro, what it all involves. This game is
a lot more mental than it is physical a lot of times. For him to step into that role and excel the way he
did, the future is very bright for him.”
(On QB Trevor Lawrence being deemed as an elite quarterback in the NFL) “Well, I think he’s certainly
trending that way and is there more? There’s a lot more. I think Trevor would say the same thing. His
upside, his ability to grow at the position from just a knowledge standpoint. You got to remember now,
this is the third offense in three years that Trevor has played in, counting his senior year in college. You
go from that to a new system in the NFL and then all the sudden, it’s a hit the reset button as we’ve got
another offense. It’s his third offense in three years, and it takes a while to master that. I think you saw
the development in him mentally as well as physically throughout the course of this season. I think it’s
only going to trend upward from there.”
(On if there were times during the season he realized how good QB Trevor Lawrence is) “A lot of times.
One thing about him, he’s really a lot like Doug [Head Coach Doug Pederson] in the sense that he’s very
steady. He’s very even keeled. That’s a marriage made in heaven there because they related to each
other that way. They’re both fearless, Trevor doesn’t fear anything. They’re very authentic, so when you
have leaders at the quarterback position and at the head coach position that are like that, everybody
else just kind of falls in line.”
(On if structuring next year’s roster will be different than previous seasons) “Well, goodbyes are tough.
You want to keep as many of these guys as you can, everybody understands that we’re going to do
everything we can to make that happen, but if we’re going to make that happen, something has to give.
Everybody has got to give a little bit. We had those conversations on the way out with the players and
they understand that. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us in order to make this happen, but I’m pretty
confident that we can do what we need to do structurally if we need to sign the guys back that we need
to bring back.”
(On if players seemed open to restructuring their contracts) “Restructuring is the easy part. Because
restructuring is just semantics with the numbers and it’s not like you’re taking money away from them.
They’re just restructuring how they’re getting it and when they’re getting it. That’s never been the real
issue in this battle, it’s more getting the guys that are free agents under contract and something they’ll
agree to.”
(On the challenge of going from chasing the division to being the team everyone else is chasing) “The
good thing about that, first of all, it’s a lot easier to be the hunter than the hunted, right? As you get
better and you become the hunted, the challenge gets harder. You’re going to get every team’s best
when they show up in Jacksonville. In the past, maybe they thought this was going to be an easy out,
that’s no longer going to be the case. I think the last part of this season really prepared this young group
to understand that there’s a real sense of urgency that goes into being a championship caliber team. It
just doesn’t happen. The players saw that, you really see it in the playoffs, but because we were playing
playoff football for the last month of the season, it was evident to them just how much urgency there is
starting on Monday. You don’t wait until Sunday to get excited about playing or get prepared to play. It
starts on Monday and as they got to understand that better, we played better. That should carry over to
next season for us.”
(On if QB Trevor Lawrence and Head Coach Doug Pederson will enjoy being the hunted team in the
division) “I think we’ll all enjoy it, but yes, obviously, the leadership matters and if you’re fearless and
you’re not afraid to be the hunted, then let’s go. There’s a lot of work to do, you can’t just talk about it.
You got to go do it. We were able to get them to understand the urgency process, they made that
adjustment, they did that very well and played at a high level. Now we got to go do it from the get-go,
from the start. That starts April 17th for us with the offseason program.”
(On evaluation of receivers and potential addition of WR Calvin Ridley) “That’s really for the coaches to
address, but we feel really good about Calvin and what he can bring to the organization will bring to the
organization. We feel really good about the guys we have under contract. I thought that group this year
did an excellent job, but the most important thing is we’re going to surround Trevor [QB Trevor
Lawrence] with the same cast of characters, if you will, the same cast of receiving threats, the same
running back core for the most part. We’re always going to look to insert guys here and there, but for
the most part, getting that core group back for a second year in the same offense with the same play
caller and all of that goes with it, I think that’s really going to help Trevor take the next step and this
team take the next step.”
(On assessment of the pass rush this season) “Well, you’re always looking at ways to improve as a unit.
That’s two-fold, right? It’s coverage that helps pass rush and it’s pass rush that helps coverage. We’re
going to look at ways over the next couple of days, especially tomorrow, when we get together with the
staff, really sit down and talk about those things to decide what needs to be addressed and what’s going
to get us to where we want to be defensively sooner rather than later.”
