FOXBOROUGH – Inside the still-coming-along, but already beautiful New Balance Athletics Center next to Gillette Stadium on Monday, Eliot Wolf held a pre-draft press conference 10 days from the first day of the NFL Draft.
New England is obviously in a much different position this season picking at No. 31, so there’s a lot of things on the table. Wolf talked moving around the board, AJ Brown (sort of) and other things for about 17 minutes.
Here’s everything that stood out…
On the new facility
“There’s a lot of reason for optimism. I mean, first of all, we’re here in this new building. It’s really exciting. The reaction from some of the players that are on the team that have come through here, as well as some of the pre-draft visit players that have come through, it’s been pretty cool. Guys from big programs like Georgia and Oregon that have outstanding facilities are commenting on the space that the Krafts designed and developed along with their group. It’s been really cool. We have a brand-new draft room, which what does that mean? Everywhere, there are screens.
“We don’t have the little magnets anymore, which a lot of people are very excited about, but from a technology standpoint, it’s state-of-the-art. It’s first-rate. It’s made things a lot easier, and just give a shoutout to Mike Aronian, Keithen Shepard and Ryan Cowden, who have done quite a bit of work and will continue to do quite a bit of work formulating and making sure it’s exactly user-friendly and what we need not only now, but also once the draft starts.”
On if the draft board is finalized
‘It is not finalized. The college scouts are actually here now. We restarted this round of draft meetings over the weekend – not this past weekend, but two weekends ago. We’re still tweaking. We’re not through every position this round yet, but they’re doing some breakout groups right now while I’m down here, working through clumps of players and just kind of making sure that we have those guys in the right order. So, I would say the hay is not quite in the barn yet.”
On if he feels the team could move up or if it’s a draft where that could be the best option
“We’re open to anything. Whatever way we can possibly improve the team, we’re open to. We have 11 picks. Most of those are kind of later in the draft, but we do have some flexibility with those 11 picks. I think it’ll depend a little bit on how the board falls. If we view that there’s a player that whether he’s falling or there’s somebody that we think we need to go get, we’ll be open to those opportunities.”
On if he believes the team has improved since the end of the Super Bowl
“Yeah, I think so. With some of the free agent moves that we’ve done – primarily that because we haven’t done a lot of other things. But yeah, I think so, and then we’ll continue to supplement it. We’ve definitely increased our flexibility in terms of what exactly the needs – again, the needs on paper are just for this year, but yeah, I think we’ve improved.”
On Christian Gonzalez contract negotiations and the possibility of trading for AJ Brown
“No Gonzalez update other than I’ll continue to publicly say that we want Christian here. Again, he’s under contract, so we would expect that. As far as players on other teams, again, going to keep the door open to anything that we think may improve our roster, whether that’s with the player you mentioned or other players.”
On how involved Mike Vrabel has been in the draft process
“Very involved. I mean, business as usual. I would say he’s been in there with us probably – this round of meetings, probably a little bit more than he was last year, just because I know, there’s the coaching staff, he’s probably more – this is me putting words in his mouth – probably more comfortable just where things stand from that standpoint. But he’s been in there. He’s been contributing. He’s watched a ton of the players. I think he tries to watch every player that we give to each position coach.
“He watches that whole – they call it the coaches list. So, he has an opinion on these guys, and it’s helpful because sometimes there are players that the scouts like, me included, and he’ll be like, “Well, this is the reason that maybe this guy’s not the best fit for us.” So, we can, again, continue to compile all the information together.”