Charley Casserly Pick Quotations

I think if people had just listened to what we had said, they would have seen that we were serious about Mario Williams. Once we brought him in here our statements never changed that we were seriously considering him for the first pick in the draft and I understand that people didn't believe it, but we always said it and we believed it.

I think that if Reggie Bush wasn't in this draft, Mario Williams would be head and shoulders the first pick in this draft. What you have ... is a pass rusher who has unique size and speed for the position. He's almost 6-foot-7 and runs a 4.7 (40-yard dash). Vertical jump is exactly the same as Reggie Bush and he's 90 pounds heavier.

We arrived at this decision a short time back that these are the two players that we would pick from to make our first round pick.

We're going to take the best player available. We have enough needs. We did a good job I thought in free agency. But we still have areas where we can use depth. It won't be hard for players that we pick to come in and contribute this year.

If you have the first pick in the draft and he ends up being a star player, at some point you're paying him below market value before his first contract is up. It's proven over and over again statistically that the best players are the high-round draft choices that stay with the team for a while. Obviously, you need a core of star players.

The best thing for this football team was to use the first pick in this draft to add a premier player at another position. Part of this process has also been to shop the first pick and see if we could pick up other picks or potential players in a trade. Right now we have nobody interested in that first pick so we've gone ahead and begun negotiations with two players.

You've got to pick a No. 1 pick which certainly is important, but you've got a whole other draft to run and we've got to get players out of those other positions in the draft.