Q. Did you think that Reese would be there?
JOE SCHOEN: No. No. We hoped. But there weren't a lot of scenarios that we went through where he may be available.
Q. How do you envision him fitting in?
JOHN HARBAUGH: Reese, he's, Arvell is a versatile player, and we're going to play him at inside backer, Will linebacker. Our defense is pretty flexible, position-less you might call it. We'll have an opportunity to move those guys around. But he'll line up next to Jermaine, and he'll be in the A gap, the B gap, the C gap, the D gap, off the edge. He'll be moving around with all of our guys. Abdul and Brian and Kayvon and Tremaine. We'll be running games and picks and stunts and different things like that on passing situations, and he's good in coverage as well, he's a versatile player. He's a young player. He's gotten better every single year, playing off the ball and on the ball, so he does both. Probably why he was our highest rated player non- quarterback player in the draft. He's an exciting player. We are fired up to have him.
Q. You mentioned Kayvon's name. (No microphone.)
JOHN HARBAUGH: No, no, we keep all the good players as much as we can. Right?
JOE SCHOEN: Yup. We love Kayvon.
Q. What is Reese's upside as a rusher?
JOE SCHOEN: It's tremendous, it's tremendous. Again, he's just scratching the surface. You see the size, the length, the traits. And again, like Coach was talking about, just the versatility that the player has and how we can use him with some of the pieces that we already have. We're not going to necessarily have to ask him to win off the edge, we've got guys that can do that. So we have a phenomenal defensive staff and they're going to find creative ways to use him.
JOHN HARBAUGH: I can tell you, like, we're watching pro day, right? And just standing there watching him, he lines up on the edge in a drill where you time him coming off the edge of quickness, and it was shocking to see how quickly he goes from point A to point B out of his stance. There's really nothing he can't do physically. He's going to turn 21.
JOE SCHOEN: In like August 30th.
JOHN HARBAUGH: In August. He's a young player. It's all upside for him.
JOE SCHOEN: He's one of the guys playing on one of the best defenses in America that, he shows up and you're like, Wow, wow place, wow place.
Q. Was it tempting about Caleb Downs sitting there at 10 to choose him and why did you go with Mauigoa?
JOE SCHOEN: We stuck with the board. And CC's another 20-year-old, believe it or not, he'll be 21 in June, so we got two young players that we're fired up about. But a powerful young man with tremendous athleticism and size. And I don't know if you guys saws saw his interview there on TV, they asked him what he should tell Jaxson. And that was, that's the type of kid he is. So again, to get those two young men that have size and athleticism in the makeup that we desire, and the fact that we know that we're going to have those guys under contract for five years, to add some of the young foundational pieces that we already have, I mean it's really exciting, really exciting.
Q. Do you view him as a guard?
JOE SCHOEN: We're going to put him inside at guard. He can certainly play tackle. Sometimes we call these schools and get the film, and they have two really good rushers down there in Miami, and to watch the practice film -- he's going against NFL dudes on daily basis, and was doing a really good job, it was pretty impressive. He can certainly always bump back out to tackle at any point. We're going to start him at guard.
Q. Was the back, was that something you heard about him, someone who would possibly need back surgery? Where do you guys stand on that?
JOE SCHOEN: We're comfortable with it. We're fortunate that the former trainer from the University of Miami is now one of our trainers. So we have somebody that's been with him for his entire time at Miami, and lived with him through the process. It was an injury that occurred in the Texas A & M game, and we were certainly comfortable with it.
Q. Does that mean you don't think he's going to need surgery or just be something you'll see how where it's at?
JOE SCHOEN: Right now he's fine. He's good right now.
Q. John, with Mauigoa, I know you, back at the owners meeting, you said that offensive line is still a work in progress. What does this do for your work in progress?
JOHN HARBAUGH: It advances it. We'll have to finish it off at practice for the next couple weeks and put it all together, but it makes us a lot more stout. It's two picks that strengthen us down the middle. Down the middle of our offense, down the middle of our defense. These are two -- these are great players, these are two top-5 players in this draft in our opinion. You couldn't do any better. I think Joe probably ran about a zillion mocks -- no maybe that's a slight exaggeration. A zillion seems like a high number, but maybe it was a couple million.
JOE SCHOEN: Close.
JOHN HARBAUGH: And this one didn't come up. This was not one that was really anticipated. Just shows you that, you know reality is -- fiction is stranger than reality? Reality is stranger than fiction? It's one of the two. You know what I'm say, right? This is exciting. This is not expected. This is something that's really a great, a great opportunity for us.
Q. This is the first time we get to talk to you since the Dexter trade. How does that change your overall approach to this process?
JOE SCHOEN: The only thing it changes is we had another premium pick, you know, with the 10th. We were able to get two good players in the top 10 of our draft. And to get two players that we had ranked where we had them ranked, it's really going to help us. Again, before we traded him and we knew maybe what the compensation was going to be, we were deep into draft prep and we had an idea of what that pick would mean to us. Maybe not to the extent that it actually ended up the way it played out, but we knew we were going to get two good players if we did have to move him.
Q. When you were going through the trade did you see CC there?
JOE SCHOEN: We probably didn't anticipate him, but again, tackles go relatively early. So the fact that by the time, you know, we anticipated two tackles going by the time we got to 10, so however that played out. And it played out that they went 9 and 10. That was -- we figured Cleveland was, and they ended up moving back. So once it came to that, we were a little bit nervous, we weren't sure which way they were going to go, so it worked out well.
Q. Any temptation to trade down? You seem very happy with these players, but maybe?
JOE SCHOEN: We had an opportunity at 10 to get out. But just where we had the player ranked, we stuck with our board. We were so fired up with who we got at 5 and to follow it up with CC at 10, just didn't make any sense to try to get cute and do anything else.
Q. I realize you're always looking for the best available player, but after you get an impact player for the defense at 5, is there a natural tendency to lean toward offense at 10 to try to make a difference there or is that a factor?
JOE SCHOEN: Yeah, and Coach will tell you, we went over our list of 10 players, I mean, the last two weeks we've stared at it, looked at it, adjusted it. We watched more film, got together watched more film.
JOHN HARBAUGH: A zillion times.
JOE SCHOEN: We went at it a zillion times. So we just, it was, it was, the way we had it, we were very confident in it and it just made it real easy, we were just going to follow the board, in terms of, you know, if it worked out and it was two offensive guys, that would have been okay. If it was two defensive, that would have been okay. We had an opportunity to get two of our top-10 players in the draft, regardless of position, that were going to help us continue to build this thing.
Q. John, obviously the best Giants teams have had dominant pass rushers. Curious if you think this has got the potential to be a dominant pass rusher?
JOHN HARBAUGH: Absolutely. I think it's pretty dominant pass rush off the edges already. We had three practices this week with those guys, seeing Abdul, seeing Kayvon, seeing Brian, I mean, it's eye opening. It's eye opening. I haven't seen those kind of guys for a while on a practice field, those kind of talented guys. Now we add another guy into that mix. I mean, you just, you get excited. I can't wait to get him on the practice field with all those guys. And Golston, he's a heavy-handed guy. We got some dudes.
We still have work to do on our defense. You know we do. We still got some work to do, but this is a big step.
Q. John, we haven't got a chance to talk to you since the Dex trade. You said you wanted to keep all the good players, how did it get to the point of no return with him?
JOHN HARBAUGH: I don't know. There's a lot of factors, a lot of layers to it. I think there's the financial part of it, there's probably family part of it. There's probably an important time in someone's career where they say, you know, it's just time for me to make a change, you know. Things like that. So, but it was -- I look at it like a win, win, win. I think it was a win for everybody.
For us, the most important thing was that it was a win for the Giants. That's what we cared about the most. We wanted Dexter to be happy, but we wanted the Giants to be taken care of first. That was our responsibility.
To get the 10th pick in the draft, and then to see it play out tonight, it's pretty clear cut that it's a W for us. Not that it wouldn't have been a W to keep Dexter, it sure would have been. But that didn't turn out to be possible. It wasn't something that he was really prioritizing in the end.
And that's okay. That's just, that's fine. He got an opportunity and the Bengals got an opportunity to get a great player, and, you know, it's going to make their defense better. So everybody's a winner on this one.
Q. You have been in one place for so long, this is your first draft working with this operation. Did it seem different to you? You haven't had two picks in the top 10 either, so...
JOHN HARBAUGH: Yeah, that was different. That was different. We had one in 2018 and now we had two in about, I don't know, an hour, hour and a half, maybe. And it was fun. It was impressive to watch.
It's not so much -- you know, I thought Joe did a great job tonight, operating under pressure. He was very well prepared, obviously, just knew what he wanted to do and was fielding the different calls and communicating with everybody. We just, I thought we had a really good operation. Joe leads the way on that and did a great job with it.
Then the lead up, the preparation, the scouts. The scouts were really good. I thought the scouts were good throughout. Great dialog. Not always agreeing. It wasn't like everybody was on the same page, you know. Consensus is not always a great thing. But we ended up agreeing to kind of agree on the fact that we had 10 really good players on that board for 10 picks, and we got two of our top 5 at the end of the day.
So I thought the scouts were great, I thought the coaches did great job. Just really throughout the organization it was really fun to be a part of it and watch it, and I was very impressed with everything. And, as much as anything, the outcome right now. We still have work to do. We have two more days. But it's a really good start.
Q. John, the Raiders have taken defensive players high on drafts. Curious, how did that philosophy mesh with looking at a player like Reese to say, hey, this kind of fits in with what I want, and also with what the team wants to do with him?
JOHN HARBAUGH: It's similar in the sense -- and Joe and I, we had a lot of these kind of philosophical conversations. But really what you want to do is you want to give the draft an opportunity to work for you and let it come to you. You don't want to chase picks, you want picks to chase you, you know, and give them an opportunity to come to you. And sometimes you got to be patient to do that. Get your board right, make sure you understand all the different possibilities. And don't over react to things that you hear, things that might happen on draft night. I thought we did a really good job of that. All of a sudden, there's Arvell Reese, he's coming to us. And that's happened in Baltimore. It's happened in New York a number of times too. I know Joe's had that experience here as well. So it worked out just the way you would hope it would -- doesn't always work out that way, but it did tonight.
Q. Where did you have Reese ranked among your top 5?
JOHN HARBAUGH: Go ahead.
JOE SCHOEN: We had him No. 1. Nine quarterbacks.
Q. Was Mauigoa in the top 5? 5, 4, 3?
JOE SCHOEN: I think it was 4, wasn't it?
JOHN HARBAUGH: I would say top 5.
JOE SCHOEN: I can't give up everything. (Laughing.)
JOHN HARBAUGH: I think he was 4.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports