New England Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio reacts to the first night of the draft.
New England Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio reacts to the first night of the draft.
Q: In terms of the makeup of the draft, would you agree with the assessment that the sweet spot of this draft is the second and third rounds?
I think that we feel that there are players littered throughout this draft. There are certainly a number of good football players that are still up on the board. I think there are some players that potentially could have very easily gone in this round; they haven’t so that’s second, third round. We thought there was some degree of value in the draft. We’re in a situation right now where hopefully we can capitalize on that. It just gives us the flexibility to do a few different things tomorrow.
Q: When did you start talking with Minnesota?
I think it was a pick or two out. We got on the phone and went back and forth. I think it's very indicative I would say of how trades are consummated. Some teams have discussions before the draft – maybe at the top portion of the draft, like we talked about the other day in here. It’s very similar to what happened to last year’s situation when we made our move up. It was something that we had talked about – that we hadn’t necessarily planned for – we got on the phone. We got on the horn and ended up making the deal. Typically that’s how most trades sort of happen. I think it's very player specific and it's player-based, based on the team’s level of interest, the team’s perceived need. And then you come to some agreement and that’s why we ended up doing what we did.
Q: Is there a player that, once he went off the board, you said, ‘Ok, now let’s look at trade possibilities?’
We had had conversations throughout, I would say, once we got to a certain point there in the middle of the draft. We had has some exchanges back and forth and as we got a little closer there were a few more calls. Minnesota had expressed and interest and we went back and forth and then we decided that this made sense, so we made the move.
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No, like we talked about the other day, we were ready to pick. We had a few players that we actually had in mind that we were going to talk about to consider picking, and then we decided to make the move that we did. So no question, we had players , a player, we would have taken.
Q: Did you see Joe Andruzzi’s moment up on stage?
I did, yeah. It was neat. We were sitting in there and I think someone asked ‘Are they booing him?’ because we have the feed from our people there. That was a neat moment. I don't think something like that has happened in the history of the draft. Joe’s a great ambassador for this organization, for this city, in what he’s done. He’s made endless contributions, forget on the football field, but just in terms of his contributions to the organization. I think this was another example of that, with the jersey and the message. I think everybody is still wary and cognizant of what had happened even in light of some of the recent developments over the last few days about the potential impact on New York. It’s a very sensitive sort of subject. Joe’s a great human being. He’s a great ambassador for our program and it was really a cool moment.
Q: Did anything surprise you?
To tell you the truth, not really. A lot of the players that were drafted, we had sort of expected that they were going to go, not necessarily in the order in which they did but I wouldn't say there were too many surprises. I think things kind of fell in place – we knew, like I said, the offensive line was definitely going to be in and as it turned out, we had figured there would be seven or eight guys that were going to be picked – there ended up being nine. The front seven, we figured there would be a fair amount of players that would be picked and that’s the way it turned out, so I wouldn’t say there was too much that was all that surprising about what happened.