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Opening Statement: “We have another draft in the books and I am pretty excited about the picks that we made. I want to make sure and acknowledge and thank Jeff Ireland, our college scouts, our pro scouts, and our coaches for doing a great job this year. I know that Sean (Payton) has been down here, he talked to you about each one of the individual players, so I will open it up for questions if you have any.”

Are you confident that you are going to generate offense without Jimmy Graham and Kenny Stills?

“Yes, I think we do have confidence in our ability to move the football and score points. I think coming into the draft we would say that. That doesn’t and didn’t preclude us from thinking about drafting a tight end or a wide receiver, but it just didn’t really fall to us that way. Look, it is not a bad thing because we have a lot of confidence in guys that we have on our roster now. I think that is a little bit of a reflection of that because obviously there is a number of times when we are picking there are real good receivers available and yet there are other guys at other positions available in a similar if not better grade range so that is the direction that we went. But to answer your question, yes, we do have a lot of confidence in our ability to move the football.”

What can you make of the fact that it was going to cost you a lot to move up in the draft this year?

“I don’t know. I think what happens, particularly in the top of the draft, if you are picking up there you’ve got access to a pretty elite group of talented players so in your mind you are thinking it is going to cost a lot to get me out of this spot. Some teams in the past have been willing to pay that and we just weren’t. There was never a deal that was close moving from 13 up higher than where we were.”

Can you talk about how you haven’t drafted an offensive tackle in 10 years? Was any of it a philosophical change?

“No, I don’t think so. The last draft that I participated in Seattle, I’m not taking credit for it but the last draft I was in Seattle, we took Walter Jones and that worked out pretty well for Seattle. I certainly don’t have any aversion to taking an offensive lineman or tackle at the top of the draft based on that experience.”

Any reason why you haven’t drafted a linebacker in 10 years?

“No, again, I think that is just the way those drafts have fallen, or we specifically traded up to get somebody in another position that we coveted. There is nothing philosophical about the fact that we hadn’t taken a player at that position. On a side note, I keep seeing this graphic that this was the highest quarterback taken since Archie Manning, but I think they’ve forgotten about Dave Wilson as a supplemental pick. He was in the first round wasn’t he? I would say that graphic is wrong. I think I keep seeing it on my television screen. I wasn’t involved in that one either. That was before my time.”

Last year, you picked some guys who had transferred or underachieved. Now you’ve picked fourth or fifth year guys who had all been productive at their schools or stayed at their schools from the start. Does that reflect what you talked about with character issues and wanting to build stability in the locker room?

“I think we did re-emphasize that focus coming into this draft. I know Sean talked about it and we’ve talked an awful lot about re-emphasizing the character, the intelligence, the toughness, the productivity of the players that we selected. I think that is a reflection of that.”


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