Once again I find myself in Indianapolis for the NFL’s scouting combine. It’s my favorite time of the year as every head coach, executive and incoming prospect get a chance to talk the media.
On Thursday, about half of the coaches and general managers talked to the media. Tight Ends also spent time behind the podium. Here’s a rundown of the most important quotes you need to know.
Miami Dolphins
With the controversy of the Jonathan Martin situation still swirling around the team, head coach Joe Philbin had a prepared statement to open up his press conference. Later in the interview, he commented on whether or not this had been an embarrassing six months for the franchise.
"It's been tough on a lot of people. It's been tough on a lot of people. It's been tough on our ownership, it's been tough for our fan base,it's been tough for everybody in our locker room. It's touched a lot of people across the country. It's been difficult. I know, I can speak for our owner, Steve Ross, we're resolute in our dedication to getting this right and correcting any problems that existed. We're going to do that."
New general manager Dennis Hickey answered a few questions about the ground game. He was asked about second-year running back Mike Gillislee.
“Obviously he was a rookie last year but I’m not going to get into specific descriptions of players. But obviously it’s a great opportunity for him this off-season to work and to develop just like all of our players. We want to continue to see them progress. We have an excellent coaching staff. We have a committed owner whose allocating resources to be the best we can be. We continue to want each player to make that next step, to be where we want to be and that’s about competing and winning championships. Every player, that’s our expectation in the off-season.”
Chicago Bears
The second-year head coach, Marc Trestman, confirmed that linebacker Shea McClellin will switch positions and move from defensive end to linebacker in 2014. 'I think Shea is really excited about it; just the opportunity to get off the ball, to be able to run and do some things,' Trestman said. 'And that doesn't mean Shea won't be a pass rusher. But his skill set is speed. I'm really excited to see how this evolves with him. And most importantly, he's excited about it.'
Phil Emery, general manager of the Bears, also chimed in with quarterback talk. Emery said the team would be open to drafting a quarterback if impending free-agent Josh McCown leaves in free agency. The Bears would like to re-sign McCown, but the market for his services could be fairly hot after the way he performed as the team’s starter in 2013.
Pittsburgh Steelers
With 102 underclassmen declaring for the NFL draft, it should be no surprise that Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert declared this class deep by immature. “Experience has told us that a lot of these younger players aren't ready for this,' Colbert said. 'It's a huge leap. I don't think a lot of them understand that until they actually get on a playing field and see the increase in the quality of play.”
The Steelers have an exciting receiver in second-year player Markus Wheaton. Colbert was complimentary of the young receiver. “Markus had a setback last year. He came in and worked his way in. First, he couldn’t be with us for OTAs because of his school commitment and the agreement we have with the colleges. So we didn’t get him until the tail end of OTAs in June. He came in behind. He worked his way into the rotation. Then he broke a finger. It heeled. He worked his way back in and broke another finger. It was just a medical frustration for him. But he has had some offseason surgeries to correct that further, and we are hoping he has a nice year next year.”
Tennessee Titans
New head coach Ken Whisenhunt revealed the team is not going to rush any decision on running back Chris Johnson. “Am I optimistic that he’ll remain on the team? Well, it’s a process that you go through with everybody on the team. This is a part of it, the draft, the combine, and then free agency. Putting together the team is not an exact science. We’re under no deadline to do it. We still have a lot of things that we have to evaluate going forward. Chemistry is a big piece of it. We haven’t even spent any time with our team yet. Like I said, there’s no rush to make a decision.”
General manager Ruston Webster also commented on what the team may do with Johnson. "We can be as patient as we want to be.” Webster said. Johnson has a $10 million cap number in 2014, and most think he’s not going to be with the Titans this year.
Buffalo Bills
Doug Marrone revealed news about running back C.J. Spiller. Marrone said Spiller (ankle) was never close to '110 percent' healthy last year with his nagging high ankle sprain. Marrone also reiterated his preference for a two-running back system.
Marrone also said many players had to work through adversity in 2013. “Not only C.J. Spiller but a lot of our players, we went through a lot of adversity, through some injuries. So it's going to be important for us and our top priority to make sure our players are healthy going into the season and stay healthy during the season. We did a much better job at the end f our season than we did in the beginning. We'll go back, evaluate that and see what we can do to help the players.”
Arizona Cardinals
General manager Steve Keim talked about his young running backs heading into 2014. Keim is confident in Stepfan Taylor as a complementary back to Andre Ellington if impending free-agent RB Rashard Mendenhall leaves in free agency.
“Taylor has been fantastic for us, not only in the pass protection phase but his run skills. He and Andre are really polar opposites, when you talk about perimeter runner than you have an inside pounder like Stepfan, who when the game was on in Seattle and we needed a first down to ice the game, we gave it to Stepfan and he had a 10 or 11 yard run to finish the game.” Keim concluded, "He's a guy we have big expectations for us. He's very smart. He's articulate. Great young man, works his tail off. I think the future is really bright for him."
Atlanta Falcons
Mike Smith, head coach of the Falcons, talked about how the team could replace retired tight end Tony Gonzalez. “You can’t replace Tony Gonzalez. He’s a first ballot Hall of Famer. Levine [Toilolo] has the ability to play both what we call the Y and the F so he gives us some flexibility. He doesn’t have the speed, but he has the size and catching circumference at 6-foot-8 that will make it easier for our quarterback. So there will be some mismatches that will be in our favor in regards to covering the tight end, but Tony is going to be tough to replace.”
Detroit Lions
New head coach Jim Caldwell started off his press conference with a joke. “Everyone I’ve seen in the hallway keeps telling me ‘good luck.’”
Caldwell wrapped up his press conference talking about quarterback Matthew Stafford’s fundamentals. "I've had an opportunity to look at him and here's my assessment of him, and I haven't found anyone that hadn't been able to correct any issues that they had. First of all, we're always, each and every guy and he's one of those, is looking for ways to try to improve. He's hungry to improve. I've noticed that about him. He's eager. He's a willing worker, he's smart and he has tools. And when you find that combination, typically you're going to find a guy that does everything it takes to get him in position where he's a championship quarterback. Now, a lot of people want to talk about so many other things that really aren't that important. Whether or not he's elite or this or that. That doesn't matter. We want a championship quarterback is what we're looking for. And I think we have the makings of that. I think you're going to see Matthew take the bull by the horns and do all the little things that are necessary to get us to keep moving forward as a team.”
San Francisco 49ers
Head coach John Harbaugh was incredibly ornery at the podium. He deflected many questions, and Harbaugh was essentially toying with media members who tried to pin him down with a precise question.
Harbaugh did reiterate the 49ers wanted to keep wide receiver Anquan Boldin. "It's not just me who wants Anquan Boldin back," Harbaugh said. "We're all in lockstep with how we feel about him."
San Diego Chargers
General Manager Tom Telesco was happy to talk about the Chargers 2013 season. One answer especially noteworthy was when he discussed the tight end position. He had good things to say about Antonio Gates, budding star Ladarius Green and blocker John Phillips.
“We thought we had a really good group this year. Antonio, even though at his age, we thought he played at a very high level this year, both as a pass receiver and even blocking on the line of scrimmage. That was great to see. Ladarius is a great complement. He still has room to grow, and he's still getting better. But as you saw this year, he's got the chance to make some plays downfield. And we had John Phillips, who gave us a lot of dirty work around the line of scrimmage. As a group, we were really happy with those three guys.”
Denver Broncos
The Broncos could use more of a power ground game to soften up tougher defenses in 2014. I asked head coach John Fox about if that was a need. “I think, offensively, you do strive for balance. You’d like to have that attitude, that mindset to be able to run the football. It is something that I think every year when you look back at your season and evaluate schematically or even physically where you go, that’s an area we want to improve in.” Fox said.
I also asked Fox about the faith the team had in second-year running back Montee Ball. “Obviously we think very highly of him. I thought he had tremendous growth as a rookie running back in this league. He got better with every week. We look for a big improvement next year and think he’s very, very capable.”
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Jason Licht, general manager of the Buccaneers, was asked if Mike Glennon was his starting quarterback. “Well, there’s a lot of positions on our team that I’m sure that Lovie would agree that we don’t want to anoint as the starter. We want competition for Mike. When you evaluate him off last year, we had injuries at receiver, we had injuries at running back, we had an offensive line that didn’t play as well as they would’ve liked. We were 4-12 last year. So you throw the fact he was a backup at the beginning of the season, getting thrown into the fire. There’s still a lot you have to evaluate. You don’t get a real fair picture of him just off the tape. He’ll get every chance to be the starter.”
Licht continued, “You can’t have too many good quarterbacks. I was fortunate to be with the Patriots and we took Tom Brady in the sixth round. In Arizona, Kurt Warner. I wasn’t with the Rams when they got him as an undrafted free agent. You can get them at all different levels of the draft.”
Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings have a great young talent in wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson, and general manager Rick Spielman gave us his thoughts on the second-year player.
“I know Norv [Turner] already put in 10 plays for him. That’s the first thing he was doing when he was putting the X’s and O’s part of it together. He is a unique talent.” Spielman continued, “Last year, we were able to collect three first round draft picks and felt very strong about him where we did trade back up in the first round to get him and know what type of unique traits that he has as an athlete just not only because of his speed and movement skills, but his size. When we did trade Percy Harvin away last year, we wanted to get that dynamic returner back. We wanted to get a guy that had traits Percy Harvin had for us and it’s a young guy that I think is going to continue to develop, and I expect him to thrive under Norv.”
Jacksonville Jaguars
General Manager David Caldwell was asked which one of the top three quarterbacks in this draft class were the most pro ready. "That's tough. We're still going on with that evaluation process. We have to sit down with these guys - a lot of it will depend on the interviews, the workout, when we bring them in. Rookie quarterbacks, as a whole, generally aren't NFL ready. You get the exceptions like Andrew Luck and Matt Ryan and Peyton Manning, but those are guys that spent 4-5 years at a university playing in a pro-style offense. That's not the common thing right away for a rookie to come in and start."
He also commented on troubled wide receiver Justin Blackmon. "Justin needs to take care of himself and our biggest thing for Justin is to make sure he lives a happy and healthy lifestyle."
Philadelphia Eagles
General manager Howie Roseman pulled out baseball references when discussing what quarterback Nick Foles needs to improve. “It’s almost like a rookie pitcher in baseball. You go through the league the first time, you go through the lineups the first time, and now people are going to spend the offseason studying you and studying your weaknesses.” Roseman continued, “The best part about Nick is that he has a tremendous work ethic. He has a tremendous amount of will to get better, to improve on the things that are his weaknesses. When you looked at Nick from year one to year two, a big thing for him was (the improvement in) his footwork and being able to drive the ball down the field. And we all saw tremendous growth in that area. I think we look for him to continue to improve. He’s a young qb. He’s 24 years old. He’s been in the league two years. And he’s going to cointue to develop and get better.”
New York Jets
John Idzik, general manager of the Jets, answered a question about their group of running backs. “Well we certainly had some production and we ran the ball pretty effectively. We always think that we can get better. We look at it with a discerning eye, a critical eye, to say how can we take it up a notch. I think in general when you have the production of backs, and one of them we lost to injury early in the season, we were pretty pleased with it but that said we realize that we need to get better.”
Kansas City Chiefs
Andy Reid enters year two as the head coach of the Chiefs with a better picture of what his team could be. He spoke about the proper-sized workload for running back Jamaal Charles and if we’d see a bit more of Knile Davis in 2014. "You saw as we went on, we were able to do that with Knile. Knile, he was a rookie and he was learning every week and getting better every week. As the season went on, we were able to give him the ball a little bit more. I think coming into the season, we'll be able to mix it up a little bit better than what we did early in the season last year."
New England Patriots
It’s no surprise that head coach Bill Belichick didn’t really answer any specific questions. To open up his press conference, he did reflect on his 30 years of attending the scouting combine.
“I was walking over here this afternoon and thinking about how far the whole Combine has come. That’s probably my 30th year. The first one I was at was the second one at Arizona State — obviously held outdoors. One of the days ended, not in total darkness, but certainly past dusk. I still have the image of Refrigerator Perry doing the vertical jump out there on the Vertex in the middle of the Arizona State field. In almost total darkness.”
Carolina Panthers
General manager David Gettleman was non-committal when talking about the future of veteran wide receiver Steve Smith. “We're going through the whole process. Steve's had a great career. He really has. None of us are here forever. But that's not to say -- he's part of the evaluation process. That's just the way it is.”
Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys Jason Garrett spent a lot of time talking about the changes to the coaching staff. He did comment on whether or not we’d see Gavin Escobar cut into the playing time of Jason Witten. ‘Well, I don't know about that. Witt's a great football player and has been for a long time, a Pro Bowler again last year. In my opinion, our opinion, the best tight end in football and has been for decades. Witt's certainly going to be a big part of what we do with our offensive football team. But that doesn't mean Gavin can't be more involved. I think we saw more of him as the year went on and on, as he got more and more acclimated to our style of offense and playing the game at this level. And he made some great strides for us. If you look back at his tape and the opportunities he was given, he was very productive with the challenges he got. So we gave him more and more as the season went on and he responded well. We expect a big jump from Gavin this offseason.”
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