Chiefs General Manager John Dorsey QuotesApril 24, 2015

OPENING STATEMENT: “Good morning. I appreciate you all taking time out to come here today. As usual, it’s a very exciting part of the whole process of building a football team. The draft will be here next week and with that, we’ll take your questions, we’ll figure out stuff.”

Q: What is left between now and the beginning of the draft on Thursday?

DORSEY: “Well, from a procedural standpoint, we met with the offensive coaches yesterday. Actually had some meetings with Andy (Reid) and Mark Donovan this morning and Clark (Hunt). We’ll meet with the defensive staff with regards to the defensive staff’s perspective, and then we’ll meet with special teams coaches on Monday.”

Q: And what does that accomplish?

DORSEY: “Well, I think what it accomplishes is you want to get as much input as you possibly can with regards to how people see specific players, especially coaching staffs because they are going to have to coach them. What we do is then, you listen to everybody, you filter through everything and see if it best fits the interest of the organization. Then on Monday, Andy and I will sit down, we’ll talk where we are as a team, where we think these players in this draft can help us, and at the end of the day, we’ll have this thing wrapped up here. The hard part is making sure you are making the right choices of the players. That’s the hard part.”

Q: When you assign grades throughout the draft process do you base it solely on a player’s ability or do you also consider your depth chart and team needs?

DORSEY: “No, I think what you do is, I think you evaluate his talent with how he plays the game. And then I think you have to begin to filter through the processes of the makeup of the person. How do they fit schematically, that’s how you kind of go through the process. It’s not one simple grade that you can automatically place on one particular part of it. There’s a few filters that you have to filter down.”

Q: But you still have to stay true to the board?

DORSEY: “I agree with you on that.”

Q: So when you do that, how much does need play a role on where you are ranking guys?

DORSEY: “I don’t think that you have to base your grade solely on need. I don’t think you can do that, that’s not the best way to do this.”

Q: Does it play a role though?

DORSEY: “No, I think what you do is you evaluate the person of how he plays the game of football and how best he can help this organization.”

Q: How much do you focus on the first round where you can visualize how things are going to stack up versus the later rounds where it’s a crapshoot?

DORSEY: “I think the hard part is, as you go through this thing is, at different points of this draft making sure that you are doing what is best for the organization. And that is studying the first round all the way down to free agency and making sure that you have everything completed, and all of your facts, and you’ve had discussion points, and you’ve laid out, and you’ve turned over every stone to make sure that that top guy all the way down to the bottom guy, you have done all of your research with regards to those players.”

Q: When it comes to grading a player, how much do the intangibles, like a guy’s work ethic or his character, come into play?

DORSEY: “I think that’s important. All along, we as an organization have done a really nice job of saying, ‘you know what? You get guys that really like football that have a degree of character within their person.’ I think that goes a long way in terms of sustaining a high level of success.”

Q: You say you typically have 150-175 guys on the board in a normal draft. What is the high and low side in all your years of football on your board in a given draft?

DORSEY: “I would say 220 all the way down to 150, 130. No, actually they say if you really do it right and are any good, you can hit 140.”

Q: So the fewer the better?

DORSEY: “Well, it’s quality over quantity.”

Q: What is your overall assessment of the center position in the draft with only one center on this roster?

DORSEY: “There are centers to be there and they are at all levels of the draft. There are some at the top, some in the middle and there are some down at the bottom and there are some free agents in there too.”

Q: So do you plan on adding through the draft to bolster some competition for Eric Kush?

DORSEY: “Well, I think what you have to do is you have to research everything that is out there. Right now our efforts are focused on the draft. That’s what we’re going to do is we’re going to focus on the

prospects within this draft and how they can help the Kansas City Chiefs. And if we deem that it’s one of the top guys, low guys, middle guys, we’ll make a push to get those guys.”

Q: How much does potentially drafting a player that is expected to make an immediate impact on the field factor into your decision-making process as opposed to a player that may take a few years to develop?

DORSEY: “That’s an interesting question because I think each position has their different degrees of how fast they can get up. What does the impact of a wide receiver have in his first year as opposed to an impact of a linebacker or an impact of a defensive lineman, as opposed to an impact of a tight end? I think the demands of each position vary. And it also comes to the person of what their makeup is in terms of how fast they can actually grasp the system. I think the hardest thing for young guys when they go from college to pro is grasping the playbook. I think that’s a really demanding thing and that’s hard to do. So that is one of the things that you kind of work through to understand.”

Q: Is there a way to determine that?

DORSEY: “I think one, you meet the people. I think it has to do with the coaching staff as well in terms of teaching. I think the teaching component is really important. I think that in this staff we have here, we have some really exceptional teachers. I think it’s a combination of the ability to grasp and the ability to teach.”

Q: Can you give us an assessment of your passing game with the pieces you’ve been able to bring in this offseason as compared to where you were last year at this time? There’s possibly more explosion with Jeremy Maclin. What are your thoughts on where the passing game stands?

DORSEY: “Well, considering this is the first week of OTAs, I haven’t seen them out on the practice field yet.”

Q: Of your pieces at wide receiver and how they work with Alex Smith and you signed Jeremy Maclin for a reason, what are some of your thoughts on your receivers and how they have grown?

DORSEY: “I think with Jeremy there’s a vertical threat. He’s a unique professional because he does know the offense. He has the ability to go inside and outside. That helps I think with the others. With Jason (Avant) and then with Albert (Wilson), these guys are getting to grow within this offense and you factor other players in as well. Here, I don’t know. I haven’t seen anybody on the practice field yet.”

Q: Looking at the attitude of this team, you have to consider a lot of things when you’re team building. Do you feel like at this point, this team has an edge to play with enough attitude and have some of the moves you’ve made this offseason kind of been made with an idea of improving that?

DORSEY: “Well, I like the energy that’s in the building this week. You know they’re around, that’s for sure. I think that the players that are here are truly professional in terms of the new guys that we’ve added. I’ve gotten a chance to meet them and watch them interact with their peers and they’ve

naturally kind of gravitated towards their specific groups. I like the direction we’re headed as a team and if we can put some more players within that puzzle through the draft, then that’s even more exciting.”

Q: What is your philosophy on how many character guys you can have? Take us through that process.

DORSEY: “When you do your research, you vet every player that you bring in here and you try to get the best assessment you can. I’ve always taken that approach.”

Q: I know this hasn’t affected the process up to this point, having a number two draft pick that you haven’t had since you’ve been here and 10 picks, how will that change your approach?

DORSEY: “Well first off, the second round pick is included in the 10 picks. I don’t think it changes your approach on how you go about doing your business on draft day. I think the hard thing and the tough thing and the most stressful is making sure you’ve got the right player for the organization. That’s the hard thing. I don’t think it changes how you go about your business one way or another. I think you go about your business the same way you did the first year and the second year and now the third year. The only difference is we have more picks.”

Q: But more freedom and ability to move up if there’s a guy you like with 10 picks and a second round pick than maybe you had before?

DORSEY: “I think for the organization, you try to keep all of your options open. If you want to move up, let’s say move up in the first round, we’ll try to do that or try to move back. The hard part is when you move up are you making the right move up or if you move back? Those are the things that you sit and think about on a daily basis. When is the time to strategically take the player, move back or move up?”

Q: Do you think you would have traded for Ben Grubbs not knowing that those compensatory picks were coming up?

DORSEY: “Well I think if you do your research and if you do your analytical studies you can kind of sometimes see things that may or may not appear.”

Q: So I can take that as a yes?

DORSEY: “In terms of?”

Q: The Grubbs trade. If you had not known or at least weren’t expecting those extra comp picks, you would have made it anyway?

DORSEY: “Yeah. I like the guy. He’s a neat kid. Pretty good player.”

Q: Alex Smith was saying the other day as a player waiting to be drafted, you kind of just have fun with all the hoopla that goes into it. How do you handle it when you’re in the front office side of it? All the cameras, all the attention.

DORSEY: “To me, it’s business as usual. That’s kind of how I look at it. Right now, to me what you’re doing is, we as a group, and I’d be a miss if I didn’t take time to thank all those guys upstairs in the

personnel department and the coaching staff for all the hard work that they truly have done, the efforts that they have done and the discussions that we’ve had with regards to this whole building process, but you have to sit and listen to this whole thing. I think you approach every draft, we go about the draft the same way year in and year out. It’s fun. It’s exciting. There is a degree of stress in it, but at the end of the day, once you’ve gotten all of your discussion points out of the way and it comes to draft day, for me personally it’s kind of boring because you sit there and watch it. It’s become factual now. The emotion’s out of it. You calculate the whole thing. That’s kind of the fun of this whole thing. When you start, okay is it the right player, do you move up, do you move down? That’s the little thing that kind of makes it fun.”

Q: You’re fond of saying it takes at least two years to have one draft class to develop. As you enter your third draft with the Chiefs, how would you asses the first draft class?

DORSEY: “As I look at it, early on we got some pretty good players. I think the one (T Eric Fisher), the two-threes (TE Travis Kelce and RB Knile Davis), turned out to be pretty good players. If I had to do it all over again, I think this is a quarterback driven league, you need a quarterback. I had no problem giving up a second round pick for QB Alex Smith.”

Q: Have you found that the number 18 pick in this draft has been an interesting one in the sense that teams are interested in moving up? Do exploratory talks begin now or later?

DORSEY: “Right now we have called around to express interest just to let everybody know we can talk and have an open line of communication. Whatever you have to offer, let’s sit and talk about it. I think the draft is a very fluid process in terms of how it unfolds. You kind of see there’s a lot of things that can happen between one and 18, it’s quite an interesting draft in that regard.”

Q: DE Mike Catapano and S Sanders Commings have lost a lot of time, what do they need to do in your eyes to have an impact?

DORSEY: “I think that they need to take the same attitude that they had this off season and continue it all the way into training camp. If you look at Mike Catapano right now, he’s 295 pounds, he looks wonderful. And then I look at Sanders and he’s diligently working. I just want those whole things to carry over into training camp and then we will see what happens.”

Q: So according to you, in the evaluation process, they aren’t that far behind the curve?

DORSEY: “I don’t think so, but I still think it’s a little bit incomplete.”

Q: With a possible suspension looming for CB Sean Smith, do you feel the need to address the corner position higher in the draft than you thought previously?

DORSEY: “No, we will see what happens in that regard. I think whatever does happen, we are prepared for it and I think we have enough flexibility in the draft to get the best player here.”

Q: Is it a coincidence that the last two years that your first-round draft pick has been at a position where you were basically planning ahead for a year or could have been planning ahead for a year?

DORSEY: “I think it has a little bit to do with coincidence at the time. We will see what happens this year and then you can probably say, ‘maybe it was.”

Q: How many first round players are actually in this draft? Just because there are 32 picks doesn’t mean there are 32 first round players.

DORSEY: “That’s a pretty good question. Overall, well of course there are going to be 32 players getting selected in this draft. From the total number of impact players in this draft, I would say there are probably 10-12 impact players in this draft.”

Q: So what factors in to trading up or trading down?

DORSEY: “Well you have to have a trading partner. That’s the first thing you have to do. I think what you do is when you get a chance to look at your board and you look at the players on that board and then you have to think of long term strategy like, what can happen if you do this trade? You have to begin to weigh those different options. That’s the judgement part, that’s the hard part of the judgement part of what is best for the organization. The simplest way to put it is this, never pass up a good player. Is the player that you are either going up or down for, is he a liked player? Or if you go back are you getting compensation in passing on a good player, if that makes sense. Or are you going up just for the sake of going up?”

Q: Where do you stand right now with Justin Houston and how does his future impact the draft?

DORSEY: “Justin is a great football, he really is. I foresee him not going anywhere in the future. If you want to ask me if I’ve had conversations with his representative, I have. I have had conversations with his representative, or we have, in the last three days.”

Q: Are you guys making headway?

DORSEY: “I mean we’ve had conversations.”

Q: How do you guys decide which prospects are shown and evaluated by the coaches?

DORSEY: “The best available player. For position coaches, I think it’s really important for them to get clarity because they are going to have to coach the guy. You give them usually a list of 10-15 guys by position. Have him rank those in order with a summary. With Coach Reid, I think you do a broader selection and to what his strengths are. Andy is a really good evaluator and he always has been. That’s what we always talk about in terms of, he and I see players very similar. That’s the uniqueness of having a head coach like Andy, in terms of preparing for the draft, because he truly does see players very well. I kind of give him, as well as the coordinators, a broader picture of who they should concentrate on.”

Q: How much film does it take for a good evaluator to see?

DORSEY: “I think it varies.”

Q: Can it be quick?

DORSEY: “It can be five plays. Seriously, it can be legitimately five plays. I bet if you talked to some of them old scouts and they looked at Emmitt Thomas, Willie Lanier, Len Dawson, it only took them a few snapshots there. Derrick Thomas.”