Everything Jason Licht said during his pre-draft press conference

“We all have all the respect in the world for Devin. He’s done some great things for us as a player and we look forward to more from him in the future. He’s on our team. We are looking forward to the season, we’re gearing up for the season with the draft right now [and] free agency. [We’re] looking forward to him being a part of this team. If he has the kind of year that we all think he’s capable of, we can hopefully put this to rest and everybody is happy.”

“I have no intention.”

“I can’t look into the future. Like I said, we have the utmost respect for Devin. It’s part of the business of this job that we have. He’s a competitor, he’s a player, everybody holds him in high regard.”

“Going back a few years, we’ve come very close to taking inside linebackers high just because we know the depth of that position and how important it is. Not to necessarily replace Devin [White] and Lavonte [David] in the last few years at all – but in the last few years, depth has proven to be one of the things that has been related to our success winning the Super Bowl. We’re never not looking at the middle linebackers or the inside linebackers. There’s always some good players at every position in every draft – I wouldn’t say that [position] is a strength of this draft. But, yes, we’re always looking and if it’s at the right time, at the right place, the right fit – we wouldn’t be afraid to take one, no.”

“That’s a quality that we look for in all of the players that we draft. Not all players can be captains – all players can be leaders in one way, shape, or form – whether they’re a servant leader or an outgoing leader, whatever it is. But, yeah, it’s a quality we look for in all of our players. When players tend to become more and more viewed as a leader, the more and more they play and the better and better they play. Obviously, the best players in college are the ones we’re drafting, so they’re viewed as leaders. We do like that quality of being voted on as a team captain by your peers.”

“Like I said, we have the utmost respect for Devin [White]. You guys know him as well as we do – he’s a great guy. We’re looking forward to this year and we’re looking forward to him having a great year.”

“We’re not really changing anything we’re doing in the draft in terms of that is not affecting us. If you walk through the halls, our scouts and our coaches, people are all in up there – we’re trying to win. We’re trying to bring in the best players that we can this year and it’s no different than we have in the past. Now, just because of the fact that we’ve lost quite a few players that were contributors to us and helped us win the Super Bowl and helped us have some good seasons here lately, there’s probably a few more areas of need across the roster than we did in 2021 when we brought everybody back. Now, looking back on that, that was quite a feat that our team was able to do. But, we’re still looking to add depth, add good players, look to the future – if they can play early, that’s great, but we’re not trying to pinpoint one particular thing [like], ‘This guy will be able to start Week 1,’ as opposed to, ‘This guy is going to become greater – a better player – in two years.’ We’re still going to look for what’s best for the future.”

“If they can [contribute immediately], that’s great. If they can, that’s great – if you have that ability to look into the future and see. You can say a guy is going to play right away but it doesn’t always work out that way. You still want to develop these players.”

“Like I said, we have a lot of areas that we could improve, upgrade, or add depth to. I would say we do need to get faster and we do need to get more physical.”

“Helping us win games, playing hard, playing well, affecting the quarterback [and] helping us play good defense. Sometimes it’s not in the stats. A lot of people want to relate it to the stats, but it’s not always in the stats.”

“It’s the toughest position to find. It’s the most important position on the team. You see teams that in consecutive years take them in the top 10. We have an unknown in Kyle [Trask]. We have Baker [Mayfield], who has had some great years and now we’re hoping he shows up this year in that competition and we get the best out of both of them. I would not be afraid to take a quarterback – another quarterback – because you might as well have another shot at it. Maybe not this year, but maybe in the future.”

“Well, we know that Antoine [Winfield Jr.] played it last year, so that is always an option. That would be a better question for Todd [Bowles], but we have some players like Zyon [McCollum] – we worked him in there and he will be going into his second year. He’s a phenomenal athlete and we think he is going to get better and better. We have [Anthony] Chesley on our team who we did a lot with in practice. Luckily, we don’t line up and play in two weeks. Our first game is in September, so there is a lot of time. We have the draft and in June, July and August players become available, so we will figure it out at some point. I guarantee somebody will be lining up at nickel.”

“Tackles are very hard to find. There are a few good ones that we like that we’ve spent a lot of time on. It’s a little bit more dominant from the beginning of the draft until the end of the draft this year, I think, with interior linemen. There are some very good ones there I think, too. We love our offensive linemen, so it’s a position that quite possibly we would be addressing. But once again, we have a lot of in-house options, as well.”

“No, not if you feel like it’s going to be a special, special player.”

“I think it has changed a little bit over the years in that regard. You ideally want to pick a player that is going to be on your roster – if you’re picking high – for a decade. But, they’re very few and far between. It’s an offensive dominated league right now and you want as many playmakers as you can get.”

“I would say it’s probably average in terms of numbers.”

“We try to look at the whole picture. I wouldn’t say that we’re going back to their freshman year but their last two years. In this case for this year’s draft, their 2021 [year] because we know what a lot of those players turned out to be that they’re going against. So, we know that they were going against a really good tackle for instance, as opposed to a guy that didn’t make it with a team or is on the streets. So, you have to look to where the production comes from and you’re not just looking at the sack numbers and the pressure numbers, you have to look at the whole play. There are some players that don’t have great stats but we feel are tremendous pash rushers. For whatever reason the quarterback got out of the pocket before he could get there, or they’re double-teaming him, or whatever the case may be. So, you’ve got to look at the whole thing.”

“I think every case is different. This isn’t something I’m holding against [inside linebacker] Devin [White], I still feel he’s a tremendous person. I just feel like this is a great place to play, we’ve had tremendous coaches, support staff and ownership. It’s obviously an awesome city and an awesome place to play. It took us some time, but we got there but that was because of, really it starts at the top, ownership. In this particular case with Devin, I’m not holding it against him. I would never say that he’s not the type of teammate that we want because of this.”

“Yeah, it was great to first of all get [inside linebacker] Lavonte [David] back and [cornerback] Jamel [Dean], and then some others. With [defensive lineman] Greg Gaines, a nice piece there for the defensive line and then [safety] Ryan Neal, I’m very excited about him and just his desire to want to be here. Turns out he was in Tampa working out and [Head Coach] Todd [Bowles] was able to slip away, he wasn’t a free agent, so it didn’t count against our comp (future compensatory picks) and all that kind of stuff. But Todd was able to slip out and have dinner with him and sell him on our place, which [he] did a great job of. Overall, just very happy with where we’re at. I don’t mean to be leaving anybody out, but it’s been great. It’s been a lot of fun, it’s been challenging but this year we had a lot of fun doing it operating under the cap budget that we had.”

“Well, we just finished up meetings with the coaches yesterday. [I] met for a few days with them and he dove in, he watched every offensive player. The guy works extremely hard, and we have constant talks with him about how he feels about one player compared to another, even crossing over positions, so he’s had his say. Now, the draft room, I kind of operate it a little differently than having everybody in there. It will be [Head] Coach [Todd Bowles] and I, and then my scouts and owners. But they’re always on call to ask them questions.”

“Yeah, Bruce has been involved, I’ve been on the phone with Bruce a lot. [He’s] not quite as involved as he was last year but he’s still always a great person to talk to.”

“Yeah, it’s probably one of the deepest [classes] it’s been in at least 10 years.”

“Cade could’ve had 100 catches last year and we’d still be looking at tight ends. We love the role that [tight end] Ko [Keift] has, and we love the role that Cade has, [but] it’s always good to have more weapons.”

“There’s no secret to it. First of all, I’m going to say that I have a great staff and they do a phenomenal job. That’s just facts. But I was talking about it today, that very same thing, with [Vice President of Player Personnel John] Spytek and [Director of Player Personnel Mike] Biehl and [Director of Player Personnel] Rob [McCartney] and the scouts, and it seems like the offensive linemen that you mentioned, like Tristan [Wirfs] and Ali [Marpet] and [Ryan] Jensen – that’s free agency – the guys we just had fun watching while we’re evaluating, have fun watching them, those are the guys that we’ve hit on. It’s not that you don’t have fun watching some others, but sometimes they can kind of put you to sleep. Okay, he’s doing his job. But the one that is getting that little extra in at the end – legal, but just that little extra in at the end – or having a lot of fun playing, because you can tell, those are the ones that you usually hit on.”

“We had him number one.”

“Well, we started trying to move up before that and we were striking out. So, was it stressful? Yeah, it was stressful. We got some wind that another team was trying to get into San Francisco’s spot and their need was tackle as well. One of their needs that we projected, their top need, was tackle. So we went, and we had to do it. I know it looked a little [strange]. ‘Why are you moving up just one spot and giving up a fourth?’ But we just wanted to make sure we got our guy. It worked out, but there was a good hour, hour and a half or so, of a lot of phone calls and a lot of cursing and a lot of, ‘What do you mean you’re not going to take our trade?’ It was proof that it takes two teams to want to do a trade.”

“Well, you never know exactly when it’s going to be, but that year tackle happened to be a very good, very deep and one of the top positions in the draft that we felt, and it was a need for us, too. We knew there would be a run at some point, so we had to go through every slot in front of us from…we started at, like, slot five all the way down to our pick, [which] eventually was 13, and what we would give up and what player would it be. How many players would be remaining that we would want to move up to that? If there’s only one remaining, then obviously you want to give up more. If there were four remaining, you would give up less or maybe not move up. There was just a lot of strategy involved that Mike and John and [Senior Director of Football Research] Jackie [Davidson] and Rob and the scouts put in. It was a time-consuming process.”

“You still get it both ways. You kind of nailed it. We’ve seen it in our interviews that we’ve had, the 30 that we’ve brought in and the ones we did on Zoom and the ones we did at the Combine. These older players, there is a lot more mature players that seem to have their…I don’t want to say, ‘life in order,’ but they just have a little bit more of a different perspective on life than a typical that’s just coming out of college. I would say that we still want a great player. We’re not going to knock a guy because he’s 24 or 25. If we’re projecting and we think that guy’s going to get to a second contract and we’re going to be deliberating over it, that’s probably the right player to pick.”

“I would say it’s a lot different than that. There are some similarities to the movie you’re referencing. I kind of like that movie; it’s fun. It makes it looks like we’re doing more than we are. The work is done. You’ve got the boards set, you know who you’re targeting, you know who you might move up for and when you might move up. So it’s just kind of, you wait and let it fall and see what happens, because it never goes exactly the way you think it’s going to, obviously. Every draft is different, every draft the way it falls, there’s always surprise players, but you just kind of let it come to you.”

“We’ve just projected him – just the size, the length, the body type – as more of an inside player. Now, he played very well at Notre Dame there and [Assistant Head Coach/Run Game Coordinator] Harold [Goodwin] and [Offensive Line Coach] Joe [Gilbert] aren’t opposed to giving him a shot. We’ll move guys around and see what happens, but his skillset is better off inside.”

“I guess, a little bit, in terms of the numbers.”

“We were very excited to get him back. If he plays [how he did in the playoffs in 2020] then we’re going to have a good situation on our hands. He played like a true starter in those three games that he played – three-and-a-half games.”

“I think they’re both right where they should be – right where they should be.”

“[It’s] no different – same processes, same amount of meetings – just different players. There’s always pressure to get good players, but there’s no extra pressure, really, for us this year. It’s just the same amount of pressure.”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”