Q. You traded down. What was that time like as you were considering those options?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yeah, we had played out so many scenarios leading into this that when you actually start seeing the names come off the board and kind of the situations present itself with possible deals and possibly staying at the pick, just as I expected, Kwesi was fantastic. Just the communication there of explaining exactly kind of what it would look like to make that move and then ultimately the value and the type of targets we knew would be there. Especially Lewis there at that 32nd pick. We were really excited about that.
Just the whole process of getting there and knowing we ended the night having added a pick. Obviously, having three picks tomorrow, we're really excited about, but mainly a really, really good player that fits exactly what we're looking for on our defense.
Q. How does he fit, I guess, to go off that how he fits so well?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: I think any time you can add a really good football player with kind of the traits of toughness and that explosive speed -- the guy made a lot of plays on really the best defense in college football. It's not a coincidence that five of those guys got drafted tonight. I think one of the coolest things, you talk to a lot of those guys throughout the process, and a lot of them would say, hey, which one -- when we asked them, which one of your teammates would be you love to bring with you, and we talked to a lot of those guys, but Lewis Cine's name came up a lot.
And just that kind of unique skill set that we can add to our back end, that kind of interchangeable feel that we can maybe have at that safety position, it will make for great competition because we feel really good, obviously, about Harrison Smith, Cam Bynum, and the ability to add this player in Lewis to compete in that room.
Then, there's a lot of things you can do personnel-wise to be dynamic on defense, and just those interchangeable pieces that allow us to put that master plan together that Ed and his staff are going to do. I'm really excited about that.
Q. Just off the top of your head, what would it look like? Could you have those three guys on the field at the same time?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Absolutely. I think not only Lewis's skill set, but the other two guys I mentioned. Having those guys around the line of scrimmage, physical players that can tackle, stop the run, but also have a presence in coverage, be good blitzers. Those savvy instincts to play the ball in the air and be around the football. There's absolutely a plan of attack.
Obviously, this pick happened not too long ago, so schematically it will take some time to think about that, but like I said, our goal, number one, first and foremost was to make sure we added our kind of football player, a player we felt really strongly about. A player we would have taken a lot higher. How the board kind of shook out, we were just really happy Lewis was there, and it was a really cool thing to get to be a part of making that phone call.
Q. How much did you talk to Lewis pre-draft, and what stood out to you about the kind of guy he is?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: You talk to him. As the head coach, I talk to a lot of the guys throughout the process, but I know for a fact that -- whether it was our defensive back coaches, Ed Donatell, who has coached a lot of the safeties in this league, and our scouting department, from the first time they went in that school, which obviously, you spend a lot of time at Georgia in a draft year with the type of talent they had. The coaches down there, coaches around the league that I have talked to, this kid, five stars across the board as far as the type of person he is. Then just what he has put on tape you feel really, really great about the player.
Just hearing his voice and hearing just the genuine excitement to be a Minnesota Viking got me excited to get him here. It will be great to get him here tomorrow, and we'll be looking forward to get him to work right away.
Q. What are your thoughts now? You have the number two pick tomorrow. Just your thoughts heading into tomorrow?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yeah, a chance for us to really get together. Obviously, that 34th pick, the second pick tomorrow, and then we'll obviously pick a couple of times there in the third round. We have three really good chances in a draft where I really felt like the value -- obviously, there's some big-time players at the top of every draft, but I really felt like the value that could present itself in that kind of 30-ish to 70-something type of picks, we've got a lot of guys on our board stacked there that can help us win a lot of football games.
That's what we'll go through tonight and tomorrow and make sure we've got a great plan for how we want to go about things, and then we'll just take it one pick at a time and see if any value presents itself that could help us possibly add more picks, but at the same time I know at final glance looking at the board before coming down to talk to you guys, there was a really exciting opportunity all over that board for us to go get some really good players tomorrow in addition to Lewis.
Q. You guys were looking at the board ahead of the draft. Did you feel like there was going to be that kind of value that would allow you to trade back that far to go back 20 picks and still feel okay about it?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Absolutely. As that 32nd pick kind of started to get a little bit closer, we had some players targeted there. We had a plan in place just in case Lewis did get picked kind of where we would go from there.
Yeah, if you are going to trade back and really try to capitalize on that value, you are always watching those names go off the board there as you are kind of waiting for your time to come up. There was a lot of good players picked tonight, and I think our goal was to, obviously, add a piece on defense, and we were able to do that in a guy we feel really strongly about.
Q. Any apprehension with trading with the division rival, especially seeing the player that they got?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: I think always that's something you have to consider, and we talked about it. Not knowing exactly who they're coming up to get, obviously, is always part of that process when you are going to make a trade like that.
Obviously, they took a good player there, and we were able to make the trade and get the kind of value we were looking for to get out of that pick if we were going to ultimately get out of the 12th pick. So I think trades are never going to be perfect, but we made the trade, and we made the move that we felt best about presenting the best possible draft that we can possibly get starting with picking a really good player who, like I said, we would have felt great about picking even earlier than 32. So to get that kind of value there in addition to moving up and picking second tomorrow and adding the third round pick, I feel like it was a win for us.
Q. How do you feel about playing against Jameson Williams for the next few years?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yeah, he is a good player, and we're going to have to defend him like all the really good players on our schedule that we'll defend, but I think for us it's really just about worrying about our team and how we're going to go about playing everybody on our schedule, and we'll do that by adding the best possible players that we can over the next two days.
Like I said, in addition to Lewis, there's a ton of value there for us. We've gotten off to a great start with our offseason program and feel really good about our team, but these pieces that we add are important, and we feel like we can add some integral parts to both our offense and defense that will help us win those games, but we're going to have a competitive schedule. We know that. That's why we've got to make sure no matter who we play, we're putting the best possible team out there.
Q. You're always talking about collaboration, but what do you see out of Kwesi and the way he sort of worked the room?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: It's been the same thing really the whole draft process from the time we started to really get in there together as a staff or just Kwesi and my dynamic together. Incredibly poised. Had kind of really worked a lot of the scenarios out ahead of time, which I thought allowed us to kind of think clearly in the moment of knowing exactly what we wanted to do.
There was dialogue before the trade. There was obviously dialogue after the trade and then leading up to that 32nd pick. We'll continue that absolutely. I'm 100% in support of Kwesi and how he has run this whole process. I'm excited to see what we're able to do the rest of this draft.
Q. You talked about the trading back out of 12. Is that a situation where you kind of just trust Kwesi that the numbers on whatever chart he is using add up and the math works out for you guys there?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Obviously, the chart will always be something that people go back to in draft trades, but it's really about each individual aspect of these trades because where are you going? What does your board look like at that value? Are you going to have the options that you want when you get back there? That's ultimately very, very important.
Then, what else are you adding? In our case we really were looking forward to potentially moving up in the second round if we could and finding a way to do that by moving back and then adding that other third round pick in that range where we feel like there's a ton of players in this draft that can help us. I feel like that was a huge part of that goal of doing that, and Kwesi was able to do that.
Q. People talked heading into the draft about a lot of potential uncertainty. Do you I think there was a lot of uncertainty in the first round, or did the board pretty much fall the way you thought it might?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: There's always one or two one-offs. I thought those rushers would go pretty early, and then you right about that time you expected the offensive linemen to start to go. They did, and then the receiver run kind of started. You kind of knew that going into it.
We didn't really know, obviously, where those top two corners would go, but absolutely not surprised to see those guys go. We obviously spent a lot of time on those players, and those guys going early was not a surprise to me one bit.
But, like I said, this draft is always going to be a couple one-offs, but you spend enough time really studying the value and really studying what these guys look like and what these guys project as as NFL players. A lot of these picks aren't surprises when you see them come off the board.
Q. Since you mentioned corners, how much of a priority do you think a corner could be on day two?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: I think it's all going to be about where we have particular players valued and what we really think their role is going to be stepping in here. Not only day one, but what can they ultimately develop into to help us not only win in the short-term, but have a chance to be a long-term kind of answer for us as well.
Q. When those corners went, did you guys give any thought about moving up to try to get either Stingley or Gardner there?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: We had talked about. That's a long way to go to get up from 12 to go try to get up there and just not really knowing exactly, and I think it comes from those teams that have those multiple picks because they can really kind of dictate a lot of those things. When there's a couple of teams within the top ten that have multiple picks, there's a lot of scenarios where people can trade up for one of those picks, but that a lot of time requires the player to be there past the third or the fourth pick, whatever it may be.
I think, like I said, the rushers going early, and then the corners going early, not a surprise to me at all, but ultimately, where we got our player at the value we did after picking up some picks, I thought it was a really good night for us.
Q. Kwesi mentioned there was almost a curve ball thrown into plans at the end as you were about to turn in the card for Lewis. You got a pretty strong trade offer. What is that time like as you start to think, man, we might be going all night without picking someone?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yeah, it's the nature of how it works when you go on the clock, and maybe the phones ring three or four times, and the phone range a lot tonight. You were kind of having that dialogue a lot. I think it was kind of a theme probably going around the league of just the different movements. Some people moving two spots, picking up a later round pick. Some people moving, like we did, a little bit further back and picking up some value picks that we'll use tomorrow.
Either way, it's always for the experience of that phone ringing and then having to have those conversations, that's why you put so much work in ahead of time that when those scenarios present themselves, you've said to yourself, okay, this player is here where we can get great value, and we've already been able to add some picks already. We'll see what tomorrow brings, but ultimately, love the way Kwesi handled tonight, and I'm really excited to see how the rest of the weekend goes.
Q. In order for a safety to be in the conversation in the first round, you must have had conversations about what the advantages of maybe a three-safety defense are. Could you describe some of those advantages?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yeah, you have those conversations for sure, but the main thing to remember, too, is you want to take the best player available and the best player to help your team. I think you start really going down that road of need driving everything, and you would love it to align with exactly how your board dictates need versus value and all those things, but it doesn't always work out like that.
What I would say is the goal was to add a really good football player to help us, and the competition will obviously play out starters and things like that, but I've had a lot of dialogue with Ed, and we did a lot of unique things, and the different defensive structures we ran in L.A. I think helped us use different personnel groupings against different opponents.
Lewis, obviously, gives us a chance to do that as well as some of the other guys that we have to play not only outside, but the inside nickel position, other safety positions, things like that.
Q. How much sleep do you get on nights like these?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: We'll find out tomorrow, but hopefully I'll get to sleep here pretty soon. We're going to go upstairs and have a conversation initially about obviously -- we had more than one player on our mind to pick at 32, so hopefully only being one pick away, tomorrow we feel really, really good about a couple of the options we may have, but we'll solidify what that kind of looks like.
Obviously, we'll have the day tomorrow to kind of possibly field some phone calls on what may or may not be out there for us, but the goal is to continue to add the best possible players at the value we can through the rest of the draft. If that means adding more picks, if that means moving up with the picks we have, all options are on the table. Kwesi has done a phenomenal job kind of presenting those to us as the staff, a coaching staff, and personnel side as well. Like I said, it will be a continued work in progress, but he is doing a great job leading the show.
Q. Does it cause a stir when you see big name receivers getting moved on draft night?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: As an offensive coach, you are seeing some of the receiver movement around the league, and then you are obviously seeing some guys drafted, and you are kind of looking around saying, okay, there's a lot of players moving in this league at that position, and you start to ask yourself, why? I think every single case is its own deal.
Whether it's the veteran receiver going and signing a new deal somewhere or it's a team moving up or moving back or moving within rounds to draft a receiver, I think people are just seeing the dynamic nature of the passing game and kind of what it can mean for a group. Luckily, having spent the first three weeks here, I feel really, really good about our receiving core and the guys that we have here, and I can understand why people that maybe don't feel like that are in real need to go try to add to that room.
Q. While you mention that, how was the first week on the grass, as you like to say?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: It was awesome. It was really, really great. The way the new phase two kind of rules and not to get too far into it with you guys and bore everybody, but the new rules in phase two we can actually line up some looks across from one another, at least offensive players against offensive players, and start to really build our offense. You're not just running plays on air. You're not just throwing on air. You're actually taking the time to run plays versus defensive looks where guys can start building within our offensive system and understanding the why.
Two great weeks in the classroom, but there has been nothing better than just the energy and guys showing up every single day out there, offense, defense, special teams have been phenomenal. Watched those guys and the energy they're working with. That's been the best part of it for me is getting those guys back here in our offseason program. Three weeks in, six more weeks to go. A lot more football. A lot more teaching left, but I feel like we're well on our way to feeling great about what kind of team we'll have reporting to training camp.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports