Patriots’ NIck Caserio Talks Upcoming Season

Q: How do you guys determine when it is OK to take a risk on a certain player that may have all the physical tools but has red flags in other areas?

NC: It’s really relative to whatever else you may be looking at, at the time when you pick. So you grade the player for who the player is, you evaluate his play, and then we have a system in place that sort of marks it so we know whether it’s an injury issue, whether it’s a character issue, whatever the alert may be. So you evaluate the player numerically, you assign the grade, and then you just figure out based on relative to whatever else is available at the time when you pick, and then you just have to make the decision you feel makes the most sense for your team. I know Bill [Belichick’s] talked about this countless times but it’s a broad mosaic of things that go into the player. It’s never one particular thing that you’re evaluating. You’re evaluating an entire body of work over the course of three or four years, however long a player’s been in school. So you assign the value to the player, the grade, and then you’ll just look across relative to the other players at whatever positon you may be picking and in the end you try to pick the players off how you think they’re going to come off and then maybe relative to if you feel that you can get that player a little bit later. A lot of it is supply and demand so there are a number of factors that go into it. It’s never really one thing.

Q: Without a first-round pick in this year’s draft are you less prone to maybe taking a chance on a guy this year?

NC: I don’t think it really changes the overall philosophy. You still go through the same process. The reality is that our process really hasn’t changed this year relative to what we’ve done in previous years. We have the picks that we have and we go through a similar process. We grade the players and then we’ll evaluate the players and then we’ll look up there and see at the time that we pick, whenever that may be, what one player looks like relative to another. We’ve talked in the past about the vertical stacking and the horizontal stacking so that you’re working individually by positon and then you start to work across positons and then just weigh those particular players. It could be one position versus another, offensive player versus defensive player, and then you may go back and then look at your team and say, ‘OK, this maybe makes a little bit more sense or if we think if we pick this now then we think we can get this particular player later.’ It all depends in the overall composition of the draft and how you think – you never really know how they’re going to come off – but you have to make some kind of estimation of what you think makes the most sense.

Q: Would you agree that the wide receiver position is one of the more difficult positions to make the transition from college to the NFL?

NC: I wouldn’t say that there’s only one position. Look, the reality is that these players – I don’t care where you played – you’re making a significant jump from college football to NFL football. I would say college football has kind of evolved a little bit, both offensively and defensively systematically. Some players, honest to God, some offensive lineman have never been in a three-point stance so the number of times that they’re actually going to be in a three-point stance and have to run block is going to be infinitely more than they did in college. There are some programs, honest to god, that throw the ball 75 times per game. They’ve never run blocked in their entire life so they’re making a transition and they’re going to be asked to do things that they haven’t been asked to do before. So there are systematic issues, there are some communication issues just in terms of I would say offensively how teams operate. There’s a lot of information that comes from the sideline. You’re basically looking at one particular individual or one coach for a hand signal or a number or you’re looking up at the cards. A lot of teams use those in college so you’re basically wiping the slate clean and you’re basically starting at a different point I would say regardless of the position so you have to take that all into consideration and then project them into your system and the things that you’re going to ask them to do.

Q: Is this offense in particular more difficult for a wide receiver to adjust to due to all of the adjustments you make?

NC: I’d say it’s difficult for a lot of people. I’d say the offensive line that they have as many demands and challenges as any skill player. Change in protections, making adjustments at the line of scrimmage late in the play clock, you have to get the communication from the center to the guard out to the tackle, we’re going to go from one protection to this protection, we’re going to go from a run play to a pass play. So I would say that there are a number of positions offensively that just there’s a lot of communication and there’s a lot of dialogue that is involved and some can handle it quicker than others, and then you figure out what they’re learning mechanism may or not be and how to get them to a point where they can go out and operate and function at a competitive level. I think that’s the most important thing.

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