New York Jets General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, and VP, College Scouting Joey Clinkscales, 4.23 On where Vladimir Ducasse is in his development… MIKE TANNENBAUM: With Vladimir, we’re really excited about him. We spent a lot of time with him in the offseason program and the whole process of getting to know him. He’s really an interesting guy, originally from Haiti, an incredible worker, and he’s one of those guys where with what he’s been through you’d never bet against him. So, he obviously has the physical attributes. From a technique standpoint, it’s not completely clean. But we spent a lot of time with him as a department, and then Bill Callahan (Assistant Head Coach/Offensive Line), in particular, spent a lot of time with him. When Bill Callahan signs off on a guy, you feel really good about that. We’re excited about his long-term prognosis with us. When he’ll play and where he’ll play, that will be determined on the field, but this guy had all the attributes we wanted. In our division, and we talked about division matchups, we just felt his size and his length was a good matchup with the 3-4 teams and the size of the people that we have to block to be successful. We’re excited to get him. On where he will be positioned… TANNENBAUM: We’ve talked about two places, right tackle and left guard. We’re going to keep playing around with that over the next few days. We feel like we’ve got a little flexibility with Rob Turner’s versatility and Wayne Hunter’s versatility. (Matt) Slauson played center against the Buccaneers last year and also has played guard at Nebraska. We feel like with that group of guys we have some flexibility with the backups. On what they’ve seen in Ducasse so far… JOEY CLINKSCALES: Well, he started playing football a little bit later than most guys, but he was a three-year starter at UMass. I want to say he started 35-of-50 games. Experience-wise, he’s further along than you would think and he played great at the Senior Bowl. On his love for football… CLINKSCALES: He has a passion for it. He really does. I mean he’s a tough guy. He plays with an attitude if you’ve watched him play. I really do think he loves it. He has a passion for it. On Alan Faneca’s status with the team… TANNENBAUM: Alan’s on our team. He’s done a lot of great things for us. I know this weekend that there’s typically a lot of transactions that happen, but he’s on our team and Alan’s done a lot of great things for us. On whether Faneca will be on the team when the season starts… TANNENBAUM: All those other questions are hypotheticals. I can tell you where we are now, and again, all I can say is really good things about Alan and what he’s done for us. I know there’s a lot of speculation, but that’s typically what happens over a weekend like this. On whether the organization was anxious to trade up this year… Tannenbaum: We tried. (Laughing). We did a lot of practice trading. I thought I made some really good ones on paper. We did look into a couple of trades, moving up a little bit, moving back a little bit. Yesterday was probably a little bit closer than today. I think that was probably because of the quarterback situation going on around us (and) a couple picks here and there. But at the end of the day, we just felt good about the two picks we have. We just went ahead. When we re-stacked the board last night, Vladimir was one of the guys we were really hoping would be there. We feel fortunate that we waited through the whole round, got to (pick number) 61, and got the guy we wanted. On possibly moving up in round three… TANNENBAUM: Yes, we want to keep an eye on a couple of players. That’s why we’re going to cut this (press conference) a little bit short and see what happens. If a player or two specifically are there, we may try to take a shot here. On Ducasse’s life experiences… TANNENBAUM: It goes into the equation a lot. Not that the NFL is easy by any stretch, but what he’s been through in his life should make acclimation into the NFL somewhat more plausible for him. He speaks, I believe, three languages, and he’s really just an incredible person. I would never bet against him to be successful in whatever he did. You put that together with his size and Bill Callahan, we feel like his upside is really compelling. On Ducasse’s run and pass-blocking skills… TANNENBAUM: He had a little bit of a struggle there initially in the Senior Bowl with his pass protection, but over time I think he should be able to do both pretty well. I thought he played well in the game. On being patient during the draft… TANNENBAUM: Going back to yesterday, we really felt like we wanted to add the corner. Once we had signed Jason [Taylor], it allowed us to break a tie relative to a corner or a pass rusher. Because of that, moving up wasn’t as big of a necessity. We wanted to take the corner and they kept falling. [Devin] McCourty was falling and Kyle Wilson was falling. We felt like something good was going to happen there. We liked the other guys there that hung around. All those guys in that whole group, we felt good about. Likewise today there’s a group of players, about three of them, and there’s enough there that we felt like we could let the board come to us. On the quarterbacks sliding down affecting who would be available to them… TANNENBAUM: We always say, “Why are the guys that we like there?” We just have to stick to our board and I think that certainly could have been a factor. When we looked at the board last night and we looked at Vladimir as a guy that if he was at 61 we’d be really happy. Obviously there were some weird things like [Colt] McCoy making it to the third round and [Jimmy] Clausen making it to Carolina. I don’t think most people anticipated that happening. I think it was probably a confluence of a few things. We’re happy with the two players we’ve gotten so far. Now you put Braylon Edwards in for our third-round pick as of now and we feel with Kyle Wilson, Braylon Edwards and Vladimir we’ve just helped our team. On if a player from a smaller program starting in his first year is too much to ask… CLINKSCALES: I don’t know if it’s asking too much. I will say this: I think he has the work ethic, I think he’s tough enough, I think he’ll do everything in his power to be as good as he can be. Now whether that translates into a starter in year one, we’ll see. He’ll compete with [Matt] Slauson and [Robert] Turner and those guys and the best player will win. We drafted him because we think his ability will allow him to compete as a starter.
Heh, so Faneca is 'on the team', but Ducasse is going to compete with Slauson and Turner for a starting role? Bit of a giveaway!
You read all those comments Tannenbaum makes on Ducasse and say to yourself how the hell is he willing to make this guy the starter?
I partially agree. It's scary to think they may start this kid, when clearly he is extremely raw. But I have to trust they feel strongly about Slauson, or at least think they can mold Vlad into a quality LG. He does look great in run blocking, from what I've seen, but he looked out of his element playing in pass protection as LT at the Senior Bowl. He's going to need time, but in a a year or two, I think he could be a star. 2010 is all that worries me.
