Scott Pioli joined Pat Kirwan and Tim Ryan on Moving The Chains live from the 2007 NFL Owners Meetings in Phoenix, AZ.
PK: Can we please get you on our show, Mr. Pioli? Right now. We'd love to have
you. Five minutes. Five minutes of you, right now. We even warmed up a
headset for you.
[Laughter and crosstalk]
PK: Scott, this is not sacred ground. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to talk to Scott
Pioli, the best GM [sic] in the National Football League. He's got about
eight trophies at home for winning the MVP of this thing every year. I respect
the job you do…and you came on!
SP: You just hail people in the middle of the lobby?
TR: His whole deal is 'Look me in the eye
when you say 'no.' ' That's Pat's whole deal.
[Laughter and crosstalk]
PK: First off: off-season. Awesome.
TR: No, no, no. First things first. Stay out of the weight room, big boy. What's wrong
with you? [Laughter] Look at you. … It's not here,
dude, it's in the chest and the arms.
PK: How many reps at 300 could you put up, if you had to?
TR: Three plates. 315.
SP: I have no idea.
[Crosstalk and laughter]
PK: How many guys have you drafted that can't lift what you can lift?
SP: Too many.
[Laughter]
TR: I know Scott; he takes a lot of pride in his physical condition. He's working
a guy out and he sees them…I know he goes, 'Are you kidding me?'
SP: I have to be honest, sometimes when I look at these guys during their
workouts I'm thinking 'Come on, you're 21 years old. If you just would have trained for this. I'm an old man right now.'
TR: But you've got 'dad strength.'
[Laughter]
TR: See, that's what they're thinking, 'Well he's got 'dad strength.' Come on, I can't compete with that.'
TR: Twenty reps?
PK: Come on, he can…
TR: Thirty?
SP: I don't know about 30.
[Laughter and crosstalk]
TR: We'll give you the high side of 25. That's awesome.
PK: Great offseason, Scott, so far.
SP: Thank you. Thank you. We'll see.
PK: You guys pounced on it – Adalius Thomas, Wes Welker,
Donté Stallworth. The
names keep going. It looked like – and we talked about this last year in the
offseason – not a lot of movement. You guys positioned yourself, it looks like,
for this opportunity to really hit it hard here for the 2007 season.
SP: Well, we hope so. We felt that we had a couple of positions of need, or areas that
we felt we could upgrade where there were players available at the same
positions where we felt we needed to upgrade or wanted to upgrade. And
fortunately with the six new players that we brought in, all of them really
wanted to be with us, as well. So the whole process, like especially with
Adalius Thomas – when we went to Adalius and his agent, Bus Cook, they were
ready to do business immediately when we jumped in. I think it says a lot about
our locker room and the players that we have in our locker room. And the
receivers – in recruiting the receivers, they as much want to be with Tom Brady
more than they wanted to be around Bill [Belichick] or myself, I guarantee you
that. [Laughter]
PK: Well, you know what's interesting to us is, we always label your former
philosophy, which is 'be patient, hold on, let the first wave go by and then
go get those nuggets, the good players that will come for a different price.' This year
you guys were very aggressive. Not the normal style of the Patriots. I
applaud you for it, but why the change in philosophy?
SP: It really wasn't, Pat. It wasn't a change in philosophy, it was just more
or less a change in timing. The way that free agency has gone in the past, it
seemed like the good value deals and the players were wanting a lot of the crazy
deals we felt were done in the beginning. And this year, for whatever reason,
the timing changed. There have been other years where we've tried to get in
early, but the contracts and the salaries, or the requests, were just far higher
than what we wanted to be at. So when we went in and got in early this year, so
many other teams I think were sitting and waiting and watching what everyone
else was doing. The players said 'Well you know what, this is a good enough
deal, I don't need to be a pig, I'll jump in.' So it wasn't really a change in
philosophy, it was just more a change in the timing based on what the players wanted
to do, as well.
PK: Fair enough.
SP: Believe me, we've tried earlier and always lost. [Laughter]
PK: You've had great responses to your draft. Incredible. You're a very good football team.
You were seconds – we had [Patriots owner Robert] Kraft on – seconds away from
the Super Bowl again, in what we called your rebuilding season. Incredible reality
that you're definition of rebuilding is almost making the Super Bowl. And
now you're positioning yourself again – two picks in the first round.
Gotta think that there are all kinds of ways that you could handle this. You
know, I have to
write those mock drafts, so I look at it and say, 'This guy, Scottie knows
who to take. They don't even need to move up.' There are going to be some
beautiful players right where you are.
SP: There's a lot of opportunity to do a lot of different things. Again, you
don't know until the moment comes whether you're going to sit at 24 and 28…there may be an opportunity earlier on where a team wants to
drop back, they're not satisfied with where they are, we may move…there
are a million different directions we could go with this. I mean, we could be
sitting with 24 and 28 and move back from there. So it's a good position
to be in. We feel we have a lot of equity there.
PK: You should. You have a lot of options there.
TR: Scott Pioli joining us on the program. General Manager [sic] of the New
England Patriots. Scott, evaluate the two quarterbacks for us, what you see on
film with JaMarcus Russell and Brady Quinn. Compare and contrast. I know you
guys don't have a huge quarterback need, but what are you seeing from those
guys?
SP: I'll be honest with you, from a philosophical standpoint, players
like that, that we know first of all that we don't have a need for right now, and that
we have absolutely no opportunity in getting, we don't spend a whole lot of time
on those players. For me and Bill and our scouting staff to spend a
lot of time on those players right now, where we can spend time and energy more
efficiently for the organization – again, other than being on radio or being on
TV or talking to sports writers, my opinion about JaMarcus Russell and the top
five players, even Joe Thomas, doesn't really…
TR: Doesn't relate to where you are.
SP: Exactly right. So the time and energy that I could be spending on
evaluating those players, I'm going to do a better job hopefully at 24 and 28
than being up there.
PK: And evaluating those players – just to continue on with that – and
evaluating a lot of them, and you're not going to get most of them, three years
down the line when these rookie deals come up, you know a lot about the guys
that you spent time on that may have been second-day draft choices without
wasting your time on the top quarterbacks.
SP: That's exactly right. And then those other players, the top five players
that we won't have a chance to be near, it'll serve us better to evaluate them
once they're pro players, to know what they are, than to spend time on them
[now]. Because they're going to be different players, more than likely. Because
they're going to get drafted, they're going to sign six year contracts. So for
me to know or spend a lot of time and energy on something where it doesn't
really impact us in this draft, I think from an organizational standpoint our
time is better spent on players further down the line.
PK: Just because we get a lot of Patriot callers, is there a possibility – I
know the answer, I want to hear it from you though – that you have 24, you have
28, you have a really good football team, you've plugged in so many good players
– Wes Welker, all that stuff – is there a chance you
could look at your two first-round picks and say, 'You know what, we're better
off selling one of those for something next year'?
SP: There's always that possibility. Because again, we think we have a pretty
good nucleus of a fairly good football team right now. And we're not in this for one
shot, or one run. It's funny, someone asked me a couple weeks ago if we're
making one last run, trying to win it…
[Laughter and crosstalk]
SP: And to me it's amazing, because we're not building just
for the 2007 season, we're building for '08, '09, '10, '11, '12. This is
long-term. So Pat, that's is a possibility. I mean, if the right opportunity is there
for…
TR: Somebody sees something at 24 and they go crazy for them and offer you
next year's first, and you don't think they're going to be a great team and that
pick could turn into a 15 next year…
SP: We've made that trade before where we've moved picks from this year…we
did that with Baltimore a couple years ago when they wanted to move up to get
Kyle Boller. So we've moved into the next year. And again, because we
take a long-range look. Bill and I want to be there for a while. We want to have
success. It's not just about building and making a quick run at it. We want to
try to sustain success.
PK: We have a caller that calls in all the time about another team, no reason
to mention the team, who the head coach is entering year two, and he's thinking
'now or never.' We use you and the Eagles all the time about stability and
building and having the opportunity. These things don't get built overnight.
SP: No, they don't. And I'll tell you what, they guy you're referring
to…Eric's a very smart guy and he's very patient and he understands. He's been
through some really good programs.
PK: You know he had more sacks in college than [Tim Ryan]?
[Laughter]
TR: And if I'd have saw him last night I'd have pushed him in the pool, too.
SP: Hey, but he doesn't have his picture hanging up in the USC defensive line
room, which I see every time I go in there.
PK: You do.
TR: Thank you.
SP: I make sure I sit in that room. That's where I watch tape.
[Laughter]
TR: I appreciate that.
SP: I bow to it.
TR: Yeah, I'm sure you do.
[Laughter and crosstalk]
TR: All-time leading tackler at USC.
SP: Wow.
TR: Three hundred eighty-nine tackles. Three hundred fifty of them were JOPs
[jumping on the piles].
SP: Have you seen the picture they have up there?
TR: No.
SP: Great shot.
PK: Twenty sacks in a single year, Scotty. Twenty sacks as a DT.
SP: That's a pretty good year.
TR: But Eric was better. I just want to make that point.
[Laughter]
TR: He's shorter. It's a leverage game, Pat. You know that.
SP: Yeah, but when you're playing against UCLA or playing against Trinity
College, there's a little bit of a difference I think.
PK: Don't offend the Trinity College guys. [Laughter] OK, we have to let you
go, my friend.
TR: Last thing, I have to ask you real quick for the Patriot fans. Laurence
Maroney, I know guys were worried about him and his shoulder. At least some of
the callers. Any worries for…
SP: Laurence is fine. There was a report yesterday, I guess back home he had
surgery. Laurence is going to be fine. His mom came out and made a statement today, I think, that he's going to be fine.
[Crosstalk]
PK: Scotty, thanks for joining us my friend.
full audio available on the SIRIUS NFL Radio website |
