Las Vegas Raiders GM Tom Telesco's Entire Round One Post NFL Draft Press Conference

Las Vegas Raiders General Manager Tom Telesco finished his first day of the NFL Draft leading hte Silver and Black, and we have his entire press conference afterward for you to enjoy.

HENDERSON, Nev.--The Las Vegas Raiders overhauled their leadership this past offseason, and today new General Manager Tom Telesco began his first time selecting for the Silver and Black.

The football world was stunned when Telesco's first pick was Georgia Bulldgo tight end Brock Bowers.

Considered one of the best players in this draft, the Raiders felt like they stole him as they selected him with their thirteenth pick.

You can watch the entire press conference WHEN YOU CLICK RIGHT HERE.

You can also read the entire transcript below:

Post Round 1 Press Conference with General Manager Tom Telesco
Q: You remarked that sometimes the sheer talent of a player isso loud that you kind of can't ignore him when he's sitting there. Was that the case with Brock Bowers?
Telesco: "Yeah, I mean, and also we're looking to add more playmakers to the offense, and they come in all shapes and sizes, in all different positions. And we love Michael Mayer, I love Michael Mayer, and he's a really good player. He's going to take another big jump this year. But you get a chance to add just another dimension to the offensive, whether it's a tight end, hybrid receiver, whatever it is, you need more playmakers on that side of the ball. So, I think he's really going to help us there and I feel like he's a highlevel player in college; a true junior, he's 21 years old, so he's very young still, still developing. But he has some natural football skills, combined with some high-level athletic ability and speed, so yeah, I'm really happy to have him."
Q: How much did you like that he can go vertical with the great hands and speed, but at the point of
attack, he loves to smash people?
Telesco: "He's tough. And when you when you play at Georgia, as a tight end, you have to be able to block. And in the SEC, he's played against some real defenders. ourselves. But he's an athletic move receiving tight end, but he can get down and block a bit on the line of scrimmage, which you're going to have to do at this level, too. So, this kind of shows you what his game's like."
Q: How surprised were you that he was sliding down and how did he factor into your prep and
scenarios?
Telesco: "Yeah, we went through a lot of prep and scenarios and just the way it worked out, we kind of
figured there could be a lot of quarterbacks going early, too, just by looking at the needs of who was there. Because somebody may come down that maybe usually wouldn't, didn't know who it would be, but the fact that it was somebody that can really make some plays on the offensive side of the ball was helpful."
Q: How hard did you try to move up to get a quarterback?
Telesco: "Not particularly hard, not particularly hard. We looked into it like I said in the pre-draft press
conference. We kind of had a plan to do maybe move up if the opportunity was there. It wasn't there,
kept moving."
Q: Were you surprised how many quarterbacks got taken?
Telesco: "Well, no – I mean when you when you look at it with the teams and where their needs were,
not totally surprised."

Q: There's still a bunch of very high quality players on that board that a lot of people give high grades
so for you, to does it make going in, knowing how you set your draft board up, do you sleep good
tonight, or do you go back up, do you have a lot of work to do, how do you handle this?
Telesco: "You kind of see what's left available and then you just kind of start working through it. But you still have to come up with some sort of plan for the second round. And we kind of have it on the board already, but I want to get together tomorrow with AP [Antonio Pierce] and Champ [Kelly] and JoJo [Wooden] and Brandon Yeargan to really kind of discuss what our plan of attack will be. But you're right, there's always – when you come out of first round and see some players you thought would go in the first that didn't, which is why tomorrow there may be a run to try and people trade up to get a couple of those guys. But we'll kind of get a plan together and kind of go from there."
Q: Brock Bowers said that he was shocked that the Raiders made him their pick, how much contact did you guys have with him in the draft process?
Telesco: "The normal amount of contact. That's kind of the way we – we don't like to put up billboards on who we're going to be possibly interested in. But yeah, we did a lot of work on Brock, our scouts had seen him for obviously not his freshmen year, you're not eligible, but he obviously he jumped out as a freshman right away. But yeah, good amount of work through the fall, through the pre-draft process, all the way through it just like everybody else. You do all the work on all these guys because you never know who you're going to be taking in reality. We do cut our board down pretty significantly as we do a lot of work for a smaller group of players, but you have to be prepared for every scenario, so that worked out."
Q: I know you guys said you love Michael Mayer, is there any concern about his injury?
Telesco: "No, no concerns at all with that."
Q: Brock mentioned he was shocked. Were you shocked that he was there at 13?
Telesco: "No, not shocked. I mean, you kind of look at where the top 15 picks are something may be come coming down, so. The draft is unpredictable. It just is. So, we do this for a living, and we can't really 100% dictate who's going to be there, but you have your plans together. I know as a player, you're trying to figure out where they're going to go, where they're going to spend the next, four, five, hopefully 10 years of their lives; what city they're going to go. Our scouts do such a great job in the fall process and then in the winter during the all-star season and then even in the spring. You never feel like we have to all of a sudden last second do all this extra work on a guy. Like, our guys do a great amount of work leading up to it, so we're very prepared."

Q: You've told us about the Keenan Allen draft and kind of how that played out and you drove home
the point about taking the best player available. Pretty much everybody says that going into the draft,
what does it take to actually sort of stick to that philosophy when you're on the clock?
Telesco: "Every situation is a little bit different. But you try and stick to that when you can, sometimes it's
harder than you think sometimes, because you're adding to the football team, and we know where we
are today. But we are looking for today and in the future. But with a player like Brock, just with the
scouting staff, where they had him, what they thought about him, what the coaching staff thought, he
was really pretty a consensus guy. Makes it a little bit easier, fully knowing that we have Michael Mayer,
who is an excellent tight end, but there's no rule in the NFL that you can only play one. We can play two
tight ends; we can move people around. At Notre Dame, Michael was split out sometimes as a receiver.
Brock has been split as a receiver, Brock's even played some running back, and then our receivers can go
inside and outside, so it'll be a nice little group to work with."
Q: Michael Mayer and Brock Bowers played at both Georgia and Notre Dame with multiple tight end
sets and sometimes 13 personnel at both schools. Does that help a little bit, knowing that they know
how to kind of find their way?
Telesco: "I think so. There's just different ways to attack people week to week and the more options we
have available in the tight end room and receiver room, the better."
Q: This week you talked about how not only were you trying to draft a player on the field, but someone
to represent Las Vegas. Just from the work that you've done and your scouts have done, what do you
think about Brock Bowers' demeanor and just his character so far?
Telesco: "It's excellent. I think when he gets here tomorrow and you guys talk to him, you'll get a really
good feel. If you haven't spent any time with him or you guys didn't talk to him at the combine, he's a
pretty special kid, so I think he's going to fit in great in Las Vegas."

Q: Obviously we've seen with his body of work. Did any of your scouts or coaches ever say anything to you that they can really pinpoint what makes him so special?
Telesco: "It's usually what you do off the field, so it's the preparation, the work ethic, the weight room,
the meeting rooms. I think I mentioned it last week, there's just so much that goes into being a really highlevel professional football player that involves more than just talent, and a lot of that is what you do in the weight room, on the field with conditioning. This is a tough league and it's really talented, and no matter how talented you are, you've got to find what that other edge is to get over the top. Certainly with guys like that, we're looking for that. In every round, you're looking for that. But as you talk to him, I think you'll get a feel. I'm sure you guys will reach out to Georgia and whoever else, and I think you're going to hear the same thing about his work ethic, his character and his football intelligence."

Q: At your previous job, you've probably done a little bit of work at least for this upcoming draft. When
you got hired here, how did the process play out when it came to if you had any discrepancies between your big board versus this staff and what they did here? Like how did you kind of pull those things together?
Telesco: "Yeah, it was actually kind of cool, because I kind of had - I already had my thoughts and I also had a lot of what the last team was with at least up until mid December kind of what those guys thought. And then I got here and I got another perspective from another group of scouts. So, that was really cool to kind of blend that all together. It's all very subjective, there's no official listing by position or even overall, so it's more art than science, but it's kind of fun putting the whole process together using two sets of information essentially."
Q: Besides Brock Bowers you had your choice of any defensive player in the country. Were you surprised about that? Did that give you any pause as far as going with Bowers?
Telesco: "I can't really remember a draft that's played out like that. Have they said that at all? I mean, I
can't remember that many offensive players going at one time. No, I don't know, just kind of zeroed in on Brock [Bowers] right there. But yeah, I would say that's got to be an anomaly to have the first defensive player go 15. But when that many quarterbacks go early, which doesn't happen that often, someone's going to get pushed down."
Q: You've done a lot of these, but this was your first as a Raider. Now that it's over, the first round, did
you enjoy it? Were you able to enjoy it? Were you nervous? How did you feel?
Telesco: "The best part was George Atkinson was sitting right across from me and he was telling some great stories when he came out of college and about the process, the draft process he went through. That was the probably the best part of today. So, it was it was good. It was fun. There's a lot of anxiety going in, you don't know how it's going to break, but if you prepare well enough, you have good people in there - it's not like I sit in there by myself, I've got a big staff of people to bounce ideas off of, all the scouts are in there, but it's kind of cool having George in there. Had to have some true Raiders in there, get some Raider history in that draft room."

Q: What are Antonio Pierce's thoughts, just his excitement to coach just such a young talented guy?
Telesco: "Well, I know he's excited about it, but I don't want to speak for him. So, I'll let him kind of talk
about him when he gets up here eventually. But yeah, he's a defensive guy obviously, but now he's the
head coach and does see it with the wide lens. So, offense, defense, whatever he thinks could best help the team. But yeah, he was 100% on board with the pick, and I'll let him explain it in his own way when he gets up here."
Q: So who made the call to Brock Bowers and how did that go?
Telesco: "Well, I talked to him and then AP [Antonio Pierce] talked to him, and typically those calls are
pretty short. I mean, the kid is celebrating, and usually they have no idea who I am. They may know who the head coach is, but they hear Raiders and then after that it's just a lot of yelling in the background. And like you said, he's probably surprised thinking - he didn't know we were one of the teams that were interested. But yeah, I mean, it's a special moment for those kids and their families."

Q: After you've seen the first round play out, do you feel like it sets up some opportunities for you guys on day two?
Telesco: "It should. Yeah, I mean I looked at it really quick. I'll look a little bit tonight, and then I told
everyone to kind of let it marinate tonight and we'll talk again tomorrow morning. But it should. It should play out. I'll do a little more work tonight, but as we kind of went through the first round in our process, we'll look at rounds two and three, like if we do this position, how could it affect others? And I think we should be in good shape."
Q: Was there any discussion about moving back into the first round? Telesco: "Yes, but nothing that we ran with obviously.

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