Joe Thomas Quotes

The quarterbacks who are picked in the first round and are declared - and I don't like the word - busts, it's not that the scouts were wrong about their ability or their potential. But commitment is such a huge part of it.

You go to the draft board and think, 'Here's a nose tackle. Who needs a nose tackle?' Well, eight teams in front of you need a nose tackle, and there's two nose tackles. It's something you have to figure out where you can get the players to play in your system.

You see a lot of smaller-school guys go to the NFL and have success: Carson Wentz, Derek Carr for example.

From watching the draft and following the NFL closely, anything can happen in the draft. But to me, it's not where I get drafted that matters to me, to be completely honest.

No one's taking quarterbacks, for the most part, in the first round that haven't had a lot of success.

The only model to me that correlates with big success in the NFL is having a Hall of Fame franchise quarterback.

The draft is one of my favorite events because it is about football. People are focused on how their teams improve. It's a celebration of football. And most importantly, it represents a very important time in the lives of these men who are entering the NFL, and their families.

We've seen a lot of average college players turn into great NFL players. We've seen great college players turn into great NFL players. We've seen great college players turn into terrible NFL players.

First of all, I want to thank the Buccaneers for giving me the opportunity and for picking me in the draft. This is the nature of the beast, though, and this is a new start for me. I wish them the best of luck, and I am just glad to be a Bear.

Draft day is a hectic day, especially for draftees and, more or less, for management.

I just don't think you pass on a great quarterback if you have the opportunity. If need be, you can trade it away.

If you look around, there are very few really super quarterbacks. There are just very few. If you're lucky enough to have one, lucky enough that one of these Andrew Lucks is available when you have the top pick, then that's just a matter of luck. You can't attribute that to anything else.

So, there's no guarantee in the NFL that if you've got the No. 1 pick or you've got a top-five pick, that you're going to be able to draft a franchise quarterback.

The Draft is about the re-generation of hope and excitement for teams. Every pick your team makes could be the next Tom Brady. He could be the guy who turns around the fortune of the franchise.

To a lot of people, I might just be the guy who went No. 1 in the draft. Or the guy who lost his job to Colin Kaepernick. Or the guy who helped turn a 2-14 Chiefs team into a back-to-back division champ... but then couldn't put them over the top.

I was fortunate enough to do a docu-series throughout the draft process, but I did that to show the behind-the-scenes stuff.

You have to take certain truths. One truth is that to have championship success in the NFL you have to learn to deliver the ball from the pocket.

I had all kinds of different quarterbacks. But we never drafted a first-rounder.

I remember players talking to Willie Brown in my presence. Receivers asking, 'Is this who you drafted? I can't believe this is who you drafted.' I was hearing it from my defensive backs: 'Man, you got a long way to go.'

It's hard to win with rookie quarterbacks, as I know.

To be honest, after the draft, I'm always excited.

When the draft comes and goes, there's a certain set of players you acquire and there's a whole bunch of others you had interest in acquiring. That doesn't die.

I talk about the NFL Draft on a daily basis because this is the sport I cover - this is the show I do - and I talk about everything that's taking place every single day.

Prior to the draft I met with the Vikings about four or five times.

We just have fun with our NFL Draft coverage because we understand that it's a long process, and there can be technical glitches that we don't profess to ignore. During our late coverage of the Draft, we sometimes get slap-happy and distort the heads of our analysts.