Head Coach Mike Nolan  - Day 2 Wrap-Up

RE: What is your overall assessment of the draft?
“I believe it was a good draft because we had positions of need and we were able to address those at the same time, so when it came time to take the best player on the board, we did come out fairly well most of the time all the way through to the seventh round. We did talk about inside backer at some point and hopefully Larry Grant is a guy who will compete for that position. He comes from a very good program, obviously, Ohio State and he was a very effective player. I felt good about yesterday, and I feel good about where we ended today.”

RE: Is Larry (Grant) a Ted linebacker?
“By position, he can be either one, but that’s where he will be.”

RE: Will Larry be competing with three other guys?
“Two other guys. We are six deep inside at two positions, so three and three. He will be competing with all of them because they are all interchangeable. We’re just going to line him up left and right and just go with it.”

RE: Which side is Patrick Willis on?
“Patrick is the MiKE linebacker. The others are fighting for the other spots.”

RE: Who are the three Ted's that will be competing?
“The three Teds will be (Jeff) Ulbrich, (Larry) Grant, and Dontarrious Thomas. Not particularly in that order, but those three.”

RE: Will Brandon Moore be your Will linebacker?
“Brandon will be the MIKE. He can go inside, outside but he will be behind the MiKE backer.”

RE: Who will be competing for the nickel linebacker spot?
“Ulbrich backs him up. Outside of that, the guys that play the inside backer position, when we have what we call a big nickel, they will play that. You have Ulbrich behind Patrick right now in the sub category. Behind him, Grant and Thomas will compete for that. So we have four guys right now. When you go into training camp, that’s typically what you have.”

RE: Is it still possible to sign Takeo Spikes?
“It’s not out of the picture. Nothing will happen today, though.”

RE: Is Grant big enough to be a Ted?
“Sure, he’s big enough. He has a sturdy body. He’s not huge. He’s not as big as some Teds I would agree. Dontarrious probably looks more like it than anyone else, but again our key is to get the best football player on the field, so if he is one of the better linebackers, he can get that job. If we have to go 4-3 to cover him up because he isn’t big enough, we can do that. The issue with the 3-4 is that in a straight up 3-4, you need bigger inside backers because they have to pound with the guards all day long.”

RE: Can Grant still do the over under with the 3-4?
“That’s right. That’s the beauty of being in it. When you talk about overs and unders that’s immediately 4-3. You don’t have an over under 3-4 defense because once you go over and under, that creates the 4-3. So if somebody tells you they are a 3-4 under team, they are basically a 4-3.”

RE: Does Grant have skills in special teams?
“Yes, Al Everest was very excited. He was still selling him after we picked him.”

RE: What about Josh Morgan stands out to you?
“He’s a strong, productive guy that has good numbers as most guys do this time of year. He was at Virginia Tech, which is a very good program with a lot of good players. Several of his teammates were also chosen. He played at a high level in a very good conference. You want to get playmakers when you take them on the offensive side of the ball and he has been that. You like to have bigger, stronger, faster players not only because this is a big man’s game, but also for durability. He’s about a six foot half inch, 220 pound guy, so that’s a pretty good size.”

RE: Was he (Josh Morgan) a guy you wanted to invite to the Senior Bowl after some of the guys got hurt?
“I don’t remember. Scot (McCloughan) would be a good guy to ask that. Scot typically communicates with everyone more than I do. Early in the week when a guy gets hurt and another guy comes on, he talks to Steve Hale.”

RE: What did you need to see from him (Josh Morgan) in person?
“I wasn’t in here. I didn’t meet him when he came in for that visit. But, he did come in and (wide receivers coach) Jerry Sullivan went to dinner with him and our other coaches met with him. When the guys come in, we try to get as much of the interview process as well as the medical done.”

RE: Do you have any concerns about his (Josh Morgan’s) 2006 arrest?
“Yeah, we know about it. We’ve checked into it, but we don’t think it’s anything significant where we felt it would be an issue.”

RE: When he (Josh Morgan) talked with us (the reporters), he seemed cognizant of it (the arrest) and he seemed to be saying that was the reason he dropped and he could see why. He seemed to have some maturity about him. Did you get into that?
“No, we didn’t discuss that with him. Why he dropped for us – he had good value for us at some other picks, too, we talked about him at times, but he was not our top-rated guy. Why other teams stayed away from him, I don’t know.”

RE: He (Josh Morgan) was a little bit inconsistent. He would be brilliant one play and then he would drop a pass.
“Overall his statistics for certain games were better than others.”

RE: Is he (Josh Morgan) a guy that you asked Mike Martz’s opinion about?
“Yes, I did, but earlier on. When we took him, it was clear cut we were going to take him.”

RE: On Morgan being a that’s a big physical guy like he's had in the past
“Before I got here, but since I’ve got here we’ve only drafted a couple of wide receivers. As a matter of fact, the one guy we did take was a guy that we had to let go every year. Brandon Williams – he’s a smaller guy. We do like the bigger guys. When you look at all positions, particularly linemen we have some bigger guys.”

RE: Is a bigger body receiver fine with Martz since his history has been with smaller plaeyrs? 
“At the same time now, there were smaller guys on the board we liked. We liked the guy (DeSean Jackson) across the way at Cal. We liked some different guys, but for one reason or another who ends up in a 49ers uniform has a lot to do not with what we think but with what others think of them because they may take them. There were also some guys who had return ability – some smaller receivers – that we were interested in, but it just didn’t fall that way.”

RE: How did you improve your team as a result of these six picks?
“Well we added on the defensive line. Let’s just start with that one. (Kentwan Balmer) is a very good player and add on top of that a very versatile player to protect, as I said yesterday, arguably the best defensive player in the league in Patrick Willis. So, we got better there. That should add to the Justin Smith acquisition we did in free agency. The second one – as we are all well-aware of the loss of Justin Smiley, Kwame Harris and depending on what Larry Allen does – we needed to improve our depth on the offensive line. So the addition of Chilo Rachal from USC was very good in that respect. It gives us a guard and maybe a tackle. If the next question would be, ‘we didn’t add a tackle’, yes we did not. It wasn’t through lack of effort. It just didn’t work out that way, but we do have some versatile guys that have been playing guard. We know that we’ve got Adam Snyder already. That’s not the direction we want to go right now, but if something happens in that respect that’s what we do. We are still working on some free agents right now, so we’ll see who we sign with rookie free agents as well. I’m talking about in the way of depth in the offensive line. We do need to add a couple more players who will have an opportunity to make our football team. The next player we took was Reggie Smith. We thought he had the best value on the board – as I said earlier you can never have too many corners on your roster. I think he’s a good matchup corner for our division with the getting up in years, you know, for Walt (Harris). In particular, because Walt doesn’t practice very much during the week. Walt’s still a very good player, but you still need to prepare yourself for some situations, so he gives us a guy there and is a very athletic player as well. Then we took Cody Wallace, again offensive line. Not necessarily that we need a center, but we wanted the best player on the board and because of the flexibility of the other guys, it doesn’t hurt us to take a center. As a matter of fact it helps us in getting a better offensive line. We coached him at the Senior Bowl. We really liked him. We were pleased he was there at our fourth pick, and we got him. And the last two we have already spoken about – Josh Morgan, a wide receiver (and a position of need) but more importantly the best guy on the board for us, as well as (Larry) Grant in a position of need but also a guy that we felt was the best at that time that could also play some special teams.”

RE: So Wallace was your only Senior Bowl guy?
“Wallace was our only Senior Bowl guy this week. As I said before, one of the reasons for coaching the Senior Bowl is you learn who you want, and you learn who might be better on a different team. There were some players, obviously, that we liked that we talked about throughout the draft that we did coach. But in the end, obviously, we decided to take the players that we did. It’s good to feel good about when you’re talking about a player and what you think he can do and what he can’t do. If somebody else gets him before you do, so be it. But, at the same time, we’re not talking about some guys who we already decided who won’t fit what we do. So, even though we go to another player who we haven’t coached, necessarily, we still feel good about our evaluation of those guys.”

RE: Do you have any overall, big picture, draft observations about what other teams did – trends?
“I’m going to go back through those later on today; normally that’s what I do. I thought Kansas City, who had a ton of picks, up until the fifth round, the last time that I looked at their draft, I thought they did an outstanding job. They have done very well.”

RE: What did you think about Glenn Dorsey? Was he the top player in the draft?
“Top player on their board he was. Kansas City took him.”

RE: Was he No. 1 overall?
“(Kansas City) got (Brandon) Albert. There’s two very good players. Did they not? They got the tackle Albert. And they got some other guy? I just remember looking at their top five; those were all guys we liked when we looked at them. There’s a lot of guys that you like, and there’s 32 teams picking, you’re only going to come up with a few. If you only like a few, then you’re dead in the water, because you’re not going to get anybody you like. You have to have more than one. That’s why so much work really goes into it.”

RE: Chris Long was taken by St. Louis. That means you’ll face him twice a year, once on turf. Is that Joe Staley who might go against him?
“He could be. We’ll see how they use him. Be interesting if he’s going to be the right end or the left end and what they do. They are a 4-3 team. I think he’s very good player. He’s a great motor player. He plays extremely hard. Justin Smith, who we have, who went about the same pick – Justin went 6, and I guess he went 2 – but anyway, two very high-picked guys. They remind me of one another, because they have very good motors. Even in their stances. Both of them get out of four-point stances. They both have the ability to neutralize bigger men. They’re both similar size, although, our guy Justin’s in the 280-range, 285. At least that’s what he’s at right now here. I’m pretty sure that Chris Long’s in the 70’s, 270-pound range. They’re a very similar type of player. So they got a very good player. I like the fact that ours has played in the league six years already. I think they got a good one.”

RE: How many undrafted guys do you expect to sign?
“We need to sign a few more offensive linemen, a couple more wide receivers – just to get our numbers right for our mini-camp. We will, more than likely, be under the 80 limit for the mini camp. And depending on what they do for the 80 or 86 limit in the end, I’m not sure exactly where that stands.”

RE: What is (that number refer to)?
“The limit of number of players you can have on your roster.”

RE: They might bump it up to 86?
“Rumor has it. But we’re not working off of that. Right now we’re working off the 80 number, and if that’s where it stays we’ll be okay. But I don’t know if we’ll get up to 80. I think we’re at 71 on our roster right now. We’ll probably, rough guestimate, sign about six guys. So obviously we’ll be under the 80. Right now we need a couple wide receivers, a couple offensive linemen. And then a guy here and there – one guy here, one guy there. If somebody very good wants to be a 49er, which does happen from time to time, and sees that he’s got an opportunity to make our squad, and we think he’s a pretty good player. He might not be a position of need, but if he wants to be here we’re going to try to sign him.”

RE: So, two wide receivers, two linemen?
“Yeah, that’s just kind of throwing it out there because I know that’s someplace we want to keep the depth. Wide receiver and DB’s run like hell all the time, so you need about three-deep, plus one or two. Offensive linemen and defensive linemen, you need three-deep typically because they’re hitting all the time. One guy misses a practice here and there. So the positions because of the physical expectations where you need a little bit more sometimes, and just to protect ourselves. But the most important thing is, the guys we’re signing as free agents, we’d like to think they have the chance to make us better.”

RE: You mentioned both today and yesterday about protecting Patrick Willis. Has that been a big offseason focus?
“No, it hasn’t been. But when you’re trying to improve your defense, and all of a sudden, you see you’ve got a guy – it’s like quarterback or running back. You start thinking about, ‘How can I use this guy.’ The best way to compliment a quarterback is a lot of things. It’s the lineman. It’s a running back. It’s a wide receiver. They all compliment the quarterback and make him better. When you’re a defensive player, the linebacker is probably the No. 1 position where you can do something to help him. It’s hard to help a corner, unless he’s not very good, then you got to help him. But if he’s good, you actually say, ‘I’m going to leave him alone.’ Some positions on defense, you can leave them alone – whereas on offense, you try to make their world a little more secure.”