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State of the Giants w/ GM Jerry Reese
By Michael Eisen, Giants.com

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FEBRUARY 27, 2009

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ - Today is the beginning of the National Football League's 2009 calendar year, which marks the start of the trading and free agency signing periods. Giants General Manager Jerry Reese this week sat down with Giants.com to discuss several issues relating to free agency, the NFL Draft and the team.

Q: You are now in your third offseason as the Giants' general manager. Do you view free agency as something that augments the draft or is it more consequential in your opinion?

Reese: "We really don't use a template. We try to do what is best for our team every year and that may be different from one year to the next. Your team changes every year, so we have to do what is best for the team. Some years it might be best to try to fill holes with free agency if the right players are there for the right price. In other years you are always going to get the draft picks. So sometimes it is best to wait and use the draft as a supplement to fill holes in your team. So we don't pigeonhole ourselves with either way. We try to do as best we can in both areas. But we don't have a template that we use which is written in blood every year and says, 'This is how we are going to do it.' We try to do what is best each year."

Q: This year, 14 players received the franchise designation. Are there fewer top-line players available in free agency in your opinion?

Reese: "I don't want to say there are fewer top-line players. There are always good players in free agency. You just have to look deep into free agency and see what is available and see what your needs are. You can always fill some holes in that respect. But with 14 guys (including Giants running back Brandon Jacobs) off the market and 32 teams bidding for a couple or two or three guys at the very top, it really drives the price up. So you have to be careful in that respect as well."

Q: Quite a few teams are well under the salary cap. Do you expect that will make the bidding for the most desirable players more competitive than usual?

Reese: "I'm not sure, because you never know what's going to happen in personnel. So it will be interesting to see how things start to flow. Each year, the free agency period has a different flow. There are really three stages to free agency. You have a mad rush at the beginning for the 'top guys.' And then you have a lull that gets to the mid-level and then on the back end you have some guys that you can get for a good price. So it will be interesting to see how it goes this year. It is different. It is a different dynamic every year."

Q: The Buccaneers released several players this week and several other teams recently let players go or will do so in the coming weeks. How much do you play catch-up to learn about these players that are cut loose, especially those you didn't expect to be free?

Reese: "We look at the wire everyday when a bunch of guys get cut. You kind of scramble to try to take a look at them and see if somebody there can fit what you are trying to do. Our pro personnel staff is always on top of that. And we try to get a quick look at them before the next day. So if we have to put a bid out there to try to get them in for a visit, we can quickly do that."

Q: You talked last Saturday at the scouting combine and again today about finding players who fit into your team and your schemes. How important is the personnel department in finding these guys at this time of year?

Reese: "It is truly important. I say this all of the time, our personnel department - our scouts and our pro department - are really our lifeline to what we do. They are on top of the college players and the pro players and we try to put both personnel departments together and come up with what we need."

Q: You have been asked repeatedly this offseason about how you are dealing with the uncertainty regarding Plaxico Burress. Just to clarify, what kind of plans have you formulated, because you don't know whether or not he will be here?

Reese: "There is one plan if he is not going to be here and the other plan is if he will be here. That will be great if he is here. But we will plan as if he is not going to be here as well. We would like for him to be here, but there are a lot of circumstances involved with that moving forward."

Q: So much of the attention at receiver has been on Burress and Amani Toomer, neither of whom might be in uniform at the start of the season. But you still have several receivers on the roster, including Domenik Hixon, Steve Smith, Sinorice Moss and Mario Manningham. What are your thoughts about that group?

Reese: "We have young receivers that we like. We can always improve positions and we want to improve that position as well as every other position. We like to create competition on this team and we will try to do that at the receiver position. And we have some young guys that we like there. Is one of those guys the number one receiver? We are not sure yet. It is a perfect opportunity for some guys to step up and say, 'Look, I am the guy.' So they will have the chance to do that. But we will definitely continue to look to improve that position."

Q: In your opinion, is it important to have a so-called No. 1 receiver? Or can you be just as successful spreading the ball around without having someone who is the obvious No. 1?

Reese: "We will see. You would always like to have a true blue goose number one receiver, but maybe that is not the reality. Maybe that is not the way you can do it this year. Maybe you have to have two really good number twos or two really good number twos and a number three. The team that won the Super Bowl (Pittsburgh) - they didn't have a big 6-5 guy. They won with some normal size receivers. They did a good job. Arizona really had the big skyscraper (Larry Fitzgerald) who played great in the game. But he didn't have enough to get them to finish line even though he played well. It is always great to have one of those guys, but it's not always possible to have a big, 6-5 receiver who can bail you out of a lot of things."

Q: I was also speaking in terms of receivers you can throw to in clutch situations...

Reese: "It is not necessarily just the big guys that can do that. The Colts won a Super Bowl. Marvin Harrison is not a big guy and at that time he was a true number one receiver. So there are other ways to do it without having the big skyscrapers out there that may attract double-teams. You have to spread the ball around and you still have to have good players and a good running game and good offensive linemen who can protect your quarterback. So it is a big puzzle and we are just trying to put the right pieces in it."

Q: You re-signed David Carr as the backup quarterback to Eli Manning. Last year, you made it through the entire season with just two quarterbacks on the roster and Andre' Woodson on the practice squad. Would you prefer to have a third quarterback or were you comfortable last year with two?

Reese: "Well, you are always uneasy when you are carrying two quarterbacks. We like Andre' Woodson and we are hoping that he will come on and develop. We are not sure how it will work out. Again it just depends - it unfolds right before your eyes and you have to go with what is necessary at the time. Last year, it was really kind of necessary for us to go with two quarterbacks because we were carrying two kickers. And so we were fortunate enough to have Andre' stay on the practice squad the whole year. So he has some experience in that respect. And hopefully he will come on and show us what he can do this offseason and going into the new season."

Q: Having two quarterbacks was beneficial because it gave you an extra roster spot...

Reese: "Right. I think ideally all teams would like to have three quarterbacks. But there are several situations every year where teams only carry two. And that is what happened to us last year, we ended up carrying two."

Q: Did you arrive at the combine with a preconceived notion about a lot of the players likely to be chosen in the first round of the draft and did what you saw reinforce or change many of those thoughts?

Reese: "We meet with our scouts before we go into the combine. We have an idea of who we like. But there are always some guys who work out really well at the combine who catch your eye. You star those players if you want to go back and do some extra work on them. So the combine confirms some things that you thought about guys going in. The number one thing that the combine does for you is it gives you a chance to meet the players and interview them and also get their medical information. All that stuff is very important."

Q: Do you have to be particularly careful with players who have great workouts, because sometimes it doesn't reflect on what they are capable of doing on the field? Do you place greater emphasis on what a player does during his college career?

Reese: "We go with what they do for their team, how they play for their team and the production they have with their football team. That is most important to us. If they work out well at the combine, it just kind of confirms some things for us. But we like what they do for their team. Again, if they jump down and run really fast we will double-check them. But what they do for their team carries the most weight for us."

Q: You and Tom Coughlin both said at the combine that you expect Mathias Kiwanuka to remain at defensive end. That would give you a three-man rotation of Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora and Kiwanuka - two Pro Bowlers and a first-round draft choice. Do you think that position is so important that you need to leave Kiwanuka there instead of returning him to linebacker?

Reese: "I think having those three high-caliber players at defensive end would definitely give us a boost. If everybody comes back healthy and ready to go, I think that would make us formidable at that position. We just have to stay healthy and stay focused. We should be able to generate some edge rushes with those three guys."

Q: Was part of it that you just didn't want to move Mathias back and forth?

Reese: "Yes, that is part of it. His natural position is defensive end. And so I think he feels most comfortable there. He did us a good service being versatile in playing that SAM position a year ago before he broke his leg. And the coaches really liked him in that position, but I think it is best for him to keep him at his natural position. And if we ever got into a pinch, we could still move him back. But I think we will have enough linebackers to keep him down."

Q: You mentioned at the combine that Barry Cofield and Fred Robbins had arthroscopic surgery. Are your expectations for them that they will be okay?

Reese: "I'm not a doctor, but I expect our medical staff to get those guys ready to play when we roll out there for the first game of the season. I'm not sure how their offseason is going to go. I'm sure they will take it slow. But from everything that I'm hearing, we expect them to come back and be ready to go."