RICK SPIELMAN: How our coaches do and how they develop talent with the athletes we brought in today. Very excited what we're able to accomplish. We'll get busy here in a few minutes, once the draft ends, on college free agency. We have a lot of guys targeted if they don't get drafted. Even that area was done the same way we did the Saturday draft is, if guys don't get drafted, we already have our lists and our priorities in place, fitting all the trades and everything that we need.
I don't know if we'll get to 90 by the end of the day, because we still have a lot of time for rookie mini camp. There are still some guys out on the street that we may be looking at from vet free agency as well. The goal here is to get as much quality, not quantity, as we can with heading into college free agency. With that, I'll go ahead and open it up for questions.
Q. Rick, so you got two guys today with significant kickoff returner experience, and the Camryn Bynum said he had conversations with Ryan Ficken, one of the few teams where he actually talked to the special teams coordinator. How much -- how important was it to address special teams today after sort of some of the struggles last year?
RICK SPIELMAN: We did struggle on special teams last year, so a lot of these guys, whatever role they carve out for our football team, and that's yet to be determined, but when you have the type of athletes we were able to get in the third day of the draft here, nine times out of ten, those guys end up playing and performing well on special teams as they learn their craft at the position.
Anthony Harris was an example of that. We have a lot of young guys that actually start out at whatever role they're on this roster, but they contribute and make our special teams better. I know we wanted to put an emphasis on upgrading our return units as well. We weren't explosive enough last year in our return game, and to get a guy, the Iowa State running back, to get the receiver from Iowa who also has an opportunity to come in and compete as a punt returner, we feel we have added some explosive playmakers to our special teams.
Q. Hey, Rick, talk about Bynum. He played cornerback in college, but I guess you're looking at him as a safety. So why is that? And then your thoughts, you guys didn't, I guess, draft a cornerback in this draft.
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, Bynum, we watched -- spent time with him down at the senior bowl when we were down there. We saw him play corner. We also saw him play safety. When we went back and did our group studies, we felt he had the athletic skill set we look at and the instincts to play in the deep half of the field.
The other thing that really sticks out is not only the character of the kid, but how intelligent the kid was. So we think making that adjustment to the safety position fits the traits we're looking for very well and think that will be a very smooth transition for him.
Q. Do you think you're okay at cornerback with depth since you didn't take one in the Draft, though?
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, we were pretty proactive in free agency this year, with signing Patrick Peterson, getting Mackensie Alexander back here. We're probably going to be pretty aggressive in the college free agency, see where that goes.
But we were excited about the progress that Harrison Hand made last year. We drafted three corners last year, Kris Boyd. So we feel we have some pretty good depth there. We'll continue to look to add to that.
Q. Is this like an out of body experience for you not having a seventh round pick and having a whole bunch of time before college free agency starts?
RICK SPIELMAN: I don't know if it's out of body experience, but I would tell you that it's -- you know, it's kind of emphasized last night where he felt that most of the players that were going to come in and help us were in the middle part of that third, fourth, fifth round area.
We had a lot of opportunities to move back this year, but we didn't because we didn't feel that the depth in the later rounds, sixth, seventh round, was the same as it was last year.
So we tried to go through some strategies, just looking at the overall depth this year, just because there was not as many players that came out in the Draft, that that's the direction we felt was best for this football team. Now, that could change next year. So we kind of look at it like last year's philosophy was use seventh round as your college free agency because we're going to have to do virtual free agency, college free agency.
This year was different, and our scouts and our coaches are here together. So it's kind of back like we had done it in the past. But I just felt, with the amount of players that were going to be in that sixth, seventh round, that we want to just take the best players available as they came off our board.
Q. With a guy like Nwangwu, a couple people have referred to him as a hidden gem. When you have a guy like that who doesn't have a bunch of offensive numbers, is that a credit to the scouting staff for digging deep and finding a player like that?
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, I give all the credit -- especially as we get down through this Saturday process, because I haven't seen a lot of these guys. The only thing I've seen on these guys is when we group studied them and we're trying to stack that lower end of the board.
I also give a lot of credit to K.P., Kennedy, our running back coach. He really stood on the table for this kid. When you look at the touches that he does have there, take away the explosive kickoff return ability that he has, but he's a one cut runner that fits perfectly in this scheme.
When you've got a kid that's a 6-foot running back that's 210 pounds that runs a 4.31 in the 40, that kid has a chance to be pretty special. Kennedy's done a great job from developing the Michael Boones of the world. Dalvin Cook, he's done a great job developing him too. But that's why I put a lot of faith and trust in these coaches in seeing the results, when they get these type of kids, what they end up being.
Q. In the middle rounds, I guess, how do you view sort of the battle or the depth of the defensive end position now across on the other side from Danielle Hunter?
RICK SPIELMAN: It will be a pretty good battle. It will be fun to come watch training camp this year. Both those kids, Patrick Jones and Robinson, both those kids have the ideal length that we look for, the ideal athleticism that we look for, the wing span, and the twitch. Those are the type of kids that Andre Patterson loves to work with.
You pair them with Stephen Weatherly. You put in D.J. Wonnum, who we drafted last year, you're going to see at training camp they all look identical when they come out. They're all 6'4" to 6'6" guys. They're all lean, 270-pound guys with very long arms and very good athletes. Andre Patterson, once he stands on the table for someone, you've got to respect what he's saying because he knows what he's looking at in some of these athletic -- I don't want to call them projects, but these type of guys that have a lot of upside to develop.
Q. When it comes to someone like the tight end from Central Missouri, obviously you have scouts who know that area and whether it's a Division I or Division II school, but seeing someone come on the radar, what seems from Zach's perspective so quickly, only having one year, one body of work to go off of, how do you take a flyer on a guy like that and know what he could potentially project out to be? Considering he wasn't much of a blocker at the position, and you guys use tight ends quite a bit.
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, but I also know at his length, at almost 6'7", 250 pounds, and he ran in the 4.6s for us in our watches on Pro Day, and his incredible catching radius and athletic skill set to create mismatches -- you know, when we drafted Tyler Conklin, who's one of our best blocking tight ends right now, when we took him around that same time, the only place he lined up in college was outside at receiver.
So we see the vision. We see that you can't get an athletic kid with this size, this speed, this athletic ability and the catching radius that he does have -- those are the traits that you can't coach. But adding on strength, technique as a blocker, all that stuff will come.
Q. Matthew and Courtney both took my draft question, so let me ask you this moving forward. I'm going to my bronze medal question. So just looking forward, these veterans put out a statement a couple weeks ago saying many of us aren't going to take part in the in person workouts during off-season drills. How many Vikings do you expect to show up? Do you have any idea? How do you kind of stand on that issue in the spring?
RICK SPIELMAN: We'll see. We've got our OTAs coming up and our mini camps coming up. Right now our main focus today is on these rookies and getting the best players in here and then letting everything else evolve as it goes through the spring.
Q. When it comes to Twyman, he's a little bit undersized, but even he was talking about listing off names of guys at that three technique position, the modern fit. Why do you think he fits well in this one-gap system? And what do you expect from someone who comes from that long list of pedigree of really good defensive linemen at Pitt and what he potentially fits here?
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, you've seen his explosiveness. We're always trying to improve, especially our inside pass rush, and trying to find guys that do that. He had a very productive 2019 season. He did opt out this year. As he went through his Pro Day, he put up 40 reps on the bench, but he added some weight.
So Coach Patterson has talked to him numerous times as we went through this process, and he sent us a scale with him jumping on the scale and seeing the weight that we wanted him at. I think, when he gets down to that lower weight, that's where you see all the quickness.
But when you watched him in '19 at Pitt, you can see that he does have really good technique. He knows how to use his hands, just needs a little polish. But he gives us something that we've been trying to find as a potential inside Nick rusher.
Q. You mentioned earlier the emphasis on special teams, but kicker was not one of those. Some people thought a kicker could be a possibility today. Do you think that's a possible priority for undrafted free agency?
RICK SPIELMAN: I can guarantee you we'll have kicking competition.
Q. Coach Dre, when he was talking to you about Patrick Jones, he was also plugging for Twyman too and the way that they've teamed together in the past?
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, Pittsburgh, they had a lot of very good players, especially on the defensive side of the ball. I think most of those guys, the two defensive ends, the defensive tackle, they had a safety, they had some corners. They had a lot of NFL-type players on their defense last year.
So when you're looking and you're studying tape, you can see all these guys on one film, as we studied -- I don't want to say the names because they may have been picked by now, but a lot of the safety and the corner and the corner that could be a potential safety. The two defensive ends, our guys that we took, Patrick Jones and Twyman inside. You can see a lot of the traits that we look for that we were able to identify on that film, especially in 2019.
Q. Last year when you traded those picks to the Bears and the Ravens late on day 3, how hard was it at that time? As you look at it now, do you feel you got the value you were looking for?
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, we'll find out. I know it got us earlier in this draft, and we feel that we got a lot of players that have a lot of upside to develop. But I think that will be yet to be determined as these guys evolve through their career.
Q. You mentioned in the pre-draft presser, when the draft is over, that doesn't mean the entire off-season is over. Do you feel like you took care of a lot of things here in the Draft, or do you feel there's still things to address as you go forward?
RICK SPIELMAN: I think there's always things to address as you go forward, especially when we go through the rookies when they come in in two weeks and we get a chance to see them out in the field.
The other thing that I think is different this year for our rookie class is our coaches will actually get to work with them this spring. Last year the first time we saw the rookies, except on Zoom calls, was at training camp. So when you put an emphasis on athletes and the traits we emphasized, in the third day especially, and knowing that your coaches are going to be able to work with them this spring to get them caught up with technique, to start teaching them, that's going to give them a leg up, compared to last year's class that we didn't even see until training camp when we were off and running.
But we'll get a feel for that. We'll get a feel for some of the guys that are currently on our roster. Every day we continue to monitor what's out there. We'll be bringing guys in for workouts, and we'll continue to always upgrade our roster any way we can.
Q. A quarterback question. Mike Zimmer's always liked a backup with NFL experience historically, but now outside of cousins, the three other quarterbacks on your roster, none have a regular season snap. Are you comfortable going into the regular season with a backup who's never had a regular season snap?
RICK SPIELMAN: Yeah, we're going to see how all three evolve. I think the most exciting thing is to actually see them in preseason games this year. They'll all be here through the OTAs. I know Jake and Nate are here right now. They've been working out extremely hard. Then we'll get Kellen in here. Then let's just see how everything evolves.
Again, the roster is never set, but we are excited about the three young quarterbacks that we have currently on our roster right now.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports