March 31, 2007
Pioli on Sirius
Patriots vice president of player personnel was a guest on Sirius NFL Radio earlier this week from the league’s annual meeting in Arizona. The audio of the interview can be found on
Sirius’ web site.
A few comments from Pioli:
On the offseason
“We felt we had a couple positions of need, or areas we felt we could upgrade with players available. Fortunately, with the six new players we brought in, all of them really wanted to be with us as well. So the whole process, especially with Adalius Thomas -- when we went to his agent, Bus Cook, they were ready to do business immediately when we jumped in. I think it says a lot about our locker room and the players we have in the locker room. The receivers, in recruiting, they want to be with Tom Brady more than they want to be around Bill [Belichick] or myself, I guarantee you that.”
On getting into free agency early this year
“It wasn’t a change in philosophy, it was more a change in timing. The way that free agency has gone in the past, it seemed like the good value deals [came after] a lot of the crazy deals we felt were done in the beginning. This year, for whatever reason, the timing changed. There have been other years where we tried to get in early, but the contracts and the salaries, or requests, were far higher than what we wanted to be at. So when we went in and got in early this year, so many other teams I think were sitting and waiting, watching what everyone else was doing. The players said ‘this is a good enough deal, I don’t need to be a pig, I’ll jump in.’ It wasn’t so much a change in philosophy, just more a change in timing based on what the players wanted to do as well.”
On trading a first-round pick vs. the idea that the team is loading up for one “final” run
“There is always that possibility [of a trade]. We think we have a pretty good nucleus of a fairly good football team right now. We’re not in this for one shot, or one run. Someone asked me a couple weeks ago if we were making one last run, trying to win it. To me, it’s amazing, because we’re not building for just the 2007 season,
we’re building for ’08, ’09, ’10, ’11, ’12, so this is long-term. So [a trade] is a possibility if the right opportunity is there. We take a long-range look. Bill and I want to be there for a while, we want to have success. It’s not just about building and making a quick run at it, we want to try to sustain success.”
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