Patriots’ NIck Caserio Talks Upcoming Season
By Cyrus Geller
Q: You seemed to say that the philosophy doesn’t change but now said you may change things?
NC: What I was alluding to is our philosophy of scouting players, that hasn’t changed for as long as Bill [Belichick’s] been here. We still go through the same process so what part are you alluding to?
Q: So if you strike out on a particular player, then the philosophy that led you to draft him stays the same?
NC: We go through the same process every year. We evaluate the player, we meet the player, we spend time with them and we project them into the role. Sometimes it works the way you think it’s going to, other times it doesn’t work. We’re looking at everything that we do in our program on a multitude of levels. I would say that the process of the scouting process from the beginning of, call it May of this time or April of this time last year until the end, just structurally how we do it. Now we may change a part of it but just from the beginning to the end of the process that you have to go through, you have to evaluate the player on their film, you go through the all-star process, you go through the combine, you go through the pre-draft process, you go through the workout, you go through the visit. Structurally, that stays the same. Now what you do within the context of that, if there’s a better way to do it then we’ll look at it.
Q: What are some of the challenges of having such a long wait between picks when you select in the third round and then not again until the sixth?
NC: We’ll see. The most important thing is kind of knowing the draft from top to bottom. So if you do – I mean a couple of years ago we had five picks. We were going into the draft with five picks and we ended up with more so it can move both ways, so I think the most important thing is knowing the players, knowing who you’re talking about, and then if you are going to make a decision to move up from where you are, who are you moving up for and what’s the rationale. So you try to weigh out a number of different things as you’re going through it. However it works itself out, we’re prepared to pick either way whether it’s from 96 to 196, whether we move, we’re prepared, we’re flexible. I think you have to keep an open mind with a lot of this. Nothings really set in stone, if you will. You have to be flexible, it’s pretty fluid and you just have to be prepared for when every opportunity comes.
Q: How much have you and Coach Belichick talked privately about how asinine it is that you don’t have a first round pick?
NC: Our philosophy is we control the things that we can control. Our job is to prepare for the draft and whatever our picks are then be prepared to pick. A lot of that is out of our hands. There’s nothing we can do about that so there’s no sense in spending extra time on it because there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re just going to try and prepare for the draft and take advantage of our opportunities when we pick.
Q: What is the long-term and short-term significance of not having a first-round pick?
NC: Like I said, we’re prepared to pick whenever we pick and there’s been many years where we haven’t had a first round pick and we’ve adjusted accordingly. A couple of years ago we drafted [Patrick] Chung at the top of the second round. I think we didn’t have a first round pick. Whenever we pick we’re prepared to pick and we’ll take advantage of the opportunities the best we can and try to add good players to our team. That’s ultimately what we’re trying to do.
Q: Would you acknowledge that you’ve been pretty successful on the first-round picks in the past?
NC: Look, we can’t control where we pick. It’s out of our hands. What we control is what we do with the pick when we have it and that’s what we’re prepared to do, and that’s how we’re going to approach it the next couple of weeks.