Jauron talks T.O. and other moves

Bills Head Coach Dick Jauron spoke today about the team signing WR Terrell Owens Opening Statement First of all, I’d just like to say thanks for coming out today. It gives us all of us a chance to talk about our offseason to this point and the personnel that we have acquired this offseason. And I’ll go through it very briefly and I’ll end with our most recent acquisition of Terrell Owens. But in terms of our practice squad, Brandon Rodd, Chris Denman and we got another offensive lineman that was out of college named Marvin Philip. C.J. Hawthorne was on our practice squad, Mike Jefferson, Felton Huggins, another wide receiver that we got who was out there as a free agent PK Sam and then Marcus Smith, a defensive lineman and Vince Hall all re-signed with us from our practice squad which was really good. And also from just street free agency. Restricted free agents that we re-signed were Gibran Hamdan, John DiGiorgio, Justin Jenkins and Dustin Fox. Those were important for us, too and we’re really happy to have those guys back. And then we get into the unrestricted free agents and I’ll start with our own. Kirk Chambers was a guy that played a good deal a year ago and we really wanted him back, we were pursuing him right before, tried to get it done right before free agency and we got it done. It was really a good signing for us. Same with Corey McIntyre our fullback, came back to us, so that was important for us also. Then of course when free agency started, as you all know, Ryan Fitzpatrick who we think is a real quality, backup quarterback who played real well for Cincinnati a year ago, we signed him to be in the backup role and to be there with Gibran and with Matt Baker and of course with Trent (Edwards). Drayton Florence is a really good addition for us we believe, especially with the loss of Jabari (Greer). He adds veteran depth, has played outside and can play the nickel and plays it well. And Geoff Hangartner, really we were in need of that center as we really didn’t have one on our roster with Duke (Preston) out there in free agency. We really like Geoff and what he did in Carolina. I’m happy to have him. And then of course Terrell Owens, and that leads us to what you’re all here to talk about, well maybe to talk about other things also, but I’m assuming mostly about Terrell. We’re really, really happy to have him on our football team. Clearly he brings to our squad some of the things we’ve talked about, some of the things we needed and felt we lacked and they’re represented really in him. Clearly his body of work speaks for itself. He’s got 951 catches in the National Football League, that’s a lot of catches. He has 139 touchdowns, that’s a lot of points on the board. In the last three years alone in Dallas he scored 38 touchdowns. That’s a very productive player, so there we are. We’re very happy to have this guy and all of these guys on our roster and moving into 2009. On how he intends to approach Terrell Owens I have talked to him. Obviously, I have talked to him. In terms of what we talked about I’m certainly not going to discuss that. That’s between he and I. If he wants to talk about some of those things, that’s fine. It will not come from me. The things that he brings to us are really clear. We’ll start with him just like we do with every player that’s new here and we’ll start and build our relationship from this point forward. And we’re very excited about it and about the opportunity. As I have said publicly, and I heard it from many sources, many credible sources, people have never or very seldom been around anybody that works as hard at his craft as this guy. So that in and of itself is a big positive for us. We’re a hard working team as it is. We’ll become a harder working team. I think he’ll be a good example for a lot of our younger players in how he prepares and certainly once again, his stats speak for themselves. On how much of a factor he was in bringing Owens here and what his initial reaction was when he heard Owens would be a Buffalo Bill I would say I was as big of a factor as anybody involved in the decision. Of course they (Dallas) released him, I’m not one those 24-hour a day guys watching the television. As soon as I found out which was very early the next day, we got together, Russ, myself, Jim Overdorf and John Guy and we talked about what we thought about it. And we felt the same way. It’s something we should seriously look into. Clearly, we didn’t play well enough last year to make the playoffs, so what are you looking for as a football coach or personnel office people on a football team? You’re looking to better your team. When you look around in free agency or you look at the college draft where there’s no player that’s caught a ball in the National Football League yet and there’s a player available that’s got 951 catches and 139 touchdowns, clearly he grabs your attention. When you compete in a division that’s as good as our division, you better get good and you better have it everywhere to compete with these guys. And he brings that. He brings that to our football team and we needed it. It didn’t take the four of us long at all to come to the conclusion that we need to push this fast and by that we mean you can find out pretty quickly when a player is available you’re in the game or you’re not, you’re involved in their decision on you’re not. So we did that and we found out quickly. On why he thinks Owens won’t be disruptive I’ll answer it kind of like I did the first one. I just don’t think that way first of all. I approach every guy that comes here as a unique guy and we’ll have a relationship. And he’ll have a relationship to the team. In terms of this player though, I understand it’s a little bit different because of his and your approach to him. I said this on the radio yesterday morning: If you think that emotional outbursts don’t occur on every sideline every Sunday, you’re sadly mistaken. They do. Between coaches and players, between players and players. To the degree he’s had them? Maybe. Do they get the publicity he gets? No, because of his success as a player, his abilities as a player and obviously to the degree of the disturbance on the sideline at times and how prominent the people that are involved in them are. So, they happen all of the time in our business on the practice field, on gameday, in the locker room and they’re national events when he’s concerned. If and when they arise, and we hope they don’t, we’ll deal with them. We’ll deal with them just like we try to deal with every player when they occur. It’s also been interesting as a side view, it depends on who and how the disturbance is made on the sideline. In some cases, you can have a player and players on your team clearly involved in an exchange. It’s not the most pleasant on the sideline and that’s called leadership. When it occurs with other players it’s called disruption. So, a lot of it can be interpretation too. I am not trying to cover anything up because I have no inside knowledge on any of it and I have no interest in pursuing it any further. As I said, our relationship will grow from when we met in my office this weekend, that was the first time we’ve ever met and talked, from that point on that’s where our relationship started and it’ll develop from there. That’s where his relationship with our organization started. He’ll have a relationship with is teammates and you’ve all read very good and very bad about that. We’ll develop our own. On if he still considers WR Lee Evans his No. 1 receiver and if he does, does he think Terrell Owens will have a problem not being the No. 1 receiver I don’t know that we have to think that way. Well over 50 percent of the time you’ve got three (receivers) on the field, so I don’t feel like you need to number then. The bottom line in our business is that in a normal NFL season you are going to get 1,000 plays on offense. If you’re 50-50, you’re going to throw it 500 times, that’s a lot of throws. And if you are lucky enough to complete 65 percent of those balls there are a lot of completions in there for a lot of players, so if we can spread that ball around for 50-50 and everybody should be satisfied. On what he sees Owens’ role off the field and his leadership Well we encourage that with every player, so it would be in the same in that regard. What we do know about him and what I’ve told him that I know about him is that as a worker, I have heard from everybody that has ever been with him that for the most part, they’ve never been around anybody that works as hard in practice. So right there, you have leadership. That’s quality leadership. Now, we’re a team that prides ourselves on how hard we work anyway, but that’s got to be an improvement even there because here’s a guy that has caught 951 balls and outworks everybody. That’s a good thing. In terms of everything else and I said it Terrell and Drew (Rosenhaus), I don’t know Terrell, I don’t know him yet, so we’ll see. The opportunity for him to be a tremendous asset, leadership-wise, is really unbelievable in our situation and we’re very optimistic and very happy about the whole thing. On if he feels they now have the receiving corps needed to compete in the AFC East I wouldn’t compare us to anybody, certainly New England had such an unbelievable run and they do everything so well. But, I’m really clearly happy with getting Terrell on this squad. You don’t find those guys because there aren’t many of them. You know 951 catches are a lot of catches and again, the number of touchdowns he’s scored is really phenomenal. On what he sees the role for a running back that would be brought in We’re looking for a third guy and he may be on our roster right now, but we wanted to make sure that we covered the bases in free agency. We brought in a couple of really good veteran running backs that we thought would fit us really well. They opted to go other places, but we’d like to have that in place. I’ve talked to John, Russ and Jim and we’ll keep looking. It doesn’t mean we’re dissatisfied with the people that are behind Marshawn (Lynch) and Freddie (Jackson), but we’ll keep our eyes open. We love that combination. We’d like to take a little bit of pressure off of them. On not knowing if Marshawn Lynch will be available for the season opener had anything to do with bringing in running backs for visits It wasn’t in our thinking just getting to training camp, a little more experience in that third spot behind them. Again, not that Xavier (Omon) or Bruce (Hall) are… we have confidence in those guys, but we wanted to find a guy with a little more experience in that third spot. Let them all compete for it. On the outside linebacker position We’ll keep looking. Again, we like that group. Coming back off the injured are John DiGiorgio, of course will be back and is doing really well. Marcus Buggs will be back also. And Alvin Bowen will be back, too. We like those guys and we’ll keep looking there, too. Obviously we liked the guys we’ve had in and visited. When they came through, we were very upfront with them. We told them we didn’t know that we’d do anything immediately. We clearly liked them, that’s why they were here. We liked what they did. We wanted them to get a feel for us and us to get a feel for them face-to-face, so that if down the line here we got back to them, they did know us and we could do something quickly if they wanted to and if we wanted to. So we’ll keep looking. On how many interior linemen they need to add We normally go to camp with around 15 of those guys, so through free agency, then the college draft and then college free agency following the draft we’ll fill that out. On if he talked to any of his friends throughout the league about Terrell Owens and if their views affect his opinion about him I guess the second part of it kind of answers the first. If they have nothing do with how I approach him, I don’t know why I’d call them. That didn’t really answer the first, it kind of did. So I didn’t call them. On if he is giving Terrell Owens a clean slate Absolutely. It’s just like anybody else that comes. On what he likes about Geoff Hangartner at center First of all, he played guard and center last year. We liked him at both. Inside our organization, we agreed that we liked him better at the center position. He’s athletic, experienced, which was important for us because we thought we had to have an experienced guy for what we do and what we want to do and the difficulty of that position. Our position is so tough on centers because of the 3-4 and the quality of the nose tackle in our division. He’s not a giant man but we liked his strength and we liked his athleticism and the experience again to go with that. He played against a lot of quality players. He’s young enough to be around for what we hope will be a long time and a good run. And of the group that was available to us, we really liked him. We got him and again, you want that face to face visit and we thought it all went well. From the night before, where we like to spend more casual time with them and then to the meetings the next day where we really do talk a lot of football, ask a lot of questions, it all went really well. Like all of it, it has to be a lot of feel. How we feel about them and clearly how they feel about us. When the feeling is good then the money people talk and hopefully you can work out a deal. It went really well, so liked him from the beginning to the end. On what his plan is for left guard We’re moving on it. Clearly, Kirk (Chambers) figures in there. Kirk was a good re-sign for us. He’s played multiple positions. We’ll see where it goes as we move along here, too. Demetrius Bell who we really liked, we used him in there in practice a lot last year just to see as we move along. We like him outside, too, so we’ve got some options. And we’ll keep exploring it more as we get through this thing. On Fitzpatrick being a younger backup and if he can be an experienced eye for Trent Edwards As we watched him, and we watched a lot of tape on him, as he played through the year for Cincinnati, we felt almost and not prompted, we didn’t come to the conclusion as a group. We got together afterwards and we came out, but we all thought he improved fairly dramatically as the season went on, game-to-game, got better. We liked that about him and also got a lot of experience playing last year. We like the fact that he is a bright football guy, understands the game, obviously we did some background on him and people know people in our business and we talked to all the people we could. We wanted a guy to, and we hope Trent takes the thing and goes, and that he doesn’t get bruised or banged up, knock on wood. But we also know in our league that the backup plays a good deal of the time or some time almost every year. As I said, hopefully it won’t happen. We like the fact that he was athletic, can move, has a good arm and is smart. We thought he’d understand exactly what we’re doing and move the team if we got to that situation. Now Gibran and Matt are in that challenging for that spot, too. But we liked him for all those reasons. The older backup, as you’re talking about, coaching may be a little less important for us because Alex Van Pelt played a lot of football at the position and Turk (Schonert) played a lot of football at the position. We just thought we could kind of take what we thought was the best guy for the spot and not so much need that guy that you were talking about. On if he expected Owens to be here for the voluntary mini camps and mandatory ones Terrell in the past has not been involved in all of those things. My hope is that he’s here. He knows how important it is for us, particularly in his first year with us, and the relationship with the whole football team for any of our guys. We’re hoping that he’s here. On if he’s been invited on his reality show I didn’t know he had a reality show. I didn’t see any cameras when we were talking. On if he felt he made a bold move like this to secure his future with the franchise No, it’s an interesting question. Only because I’ve heard it from other sources and it quite frankly makes no sense. Why wouldn’t do it every year? Don’t you do that every year? It just made no sense to me.