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2018 NFL Draft: Doug Williams answers questions about the Redskins, free agency, the draft, and more

Doug Williams takes questions for the Redskins annual pre-draft presser

By Scott Jennings

We are only two days away from the 2018 NFL Draft, and Redskins Senior Vice President of Player Personnel Doug Williams is here to tell us all of Washington's secrets. The Redskins currently have 8 picks in this year's draft, and their first pick will be #13 on Thursday night.

Williams, and Head Coach Jay Gruden, have talked about areas the team would like to upgrade like WR, RB, and DL during the offseason. Only WR was addressed in free agency, and it could be looked at again in the draft with a later pick. RB and DL seem to be popular projections early.

What does Doug Williams have to add to the discussion today?

Team effort:

Best Player Available:

Character of draft prospects:

2017 Draft Class:

Injuries:

Trent Williams and Morgan Moses:

Building the team:

Free agency:

Strength of the draft class:

Left guard:

Alex Smith trade:

Dan Snyder/Bruce Allen involvement:

Trading up/down this year:

“Well, let me say this, the chances of trading up might be a little slimmer than trading down, but at the same time, you’ve got to have somebody to trade with, and I don’t think you go into it saying, ‘I’m going to trade down.’ And we’re not trying to recoup the third-round pick. I just said we had the best third-round pick in the draft, that third-round with Alex. I think at the same time, we’ve got phones that are in that room, if they ring, you’ve got guys calling all the time and want to know, ‘Do you want to come up or do you want to go back?’ But it all depends on who’s there when they’re calling you. They don’t just call you to ask you. There might be a player that they want at that particular time that they’re afraid that somebody else is going to pick and they might call you to ask you, ‘Do you want to move back?’ But we would have to call somebody to say we want to move up. At this point, I think where we are, if we [weren’t] in the quarterback business, which that’s what this league is all about, if we [were] in the heavy quarterback business, we’d talk about moving up, but at this time, we just sit back and find out what’s going to come to us if we stay at 13. But if we move back, it’s because somebody called us to ask do we want to move back.”

Mock drafts:

“We do just like you do. You all have got mock drafts. We look at them and we sit there and we talk to other teams, we talk to the Pro Directors, we do a lot of conversation. We talk to other people and we kind of project what they need, who they’re looking for to try to figure out who might and might not be there… Then, draft day, everything gets thrown out the window.”

Su’a Cravens trade:

Vernon Davis:

Jordan Reed:

Improving running game:

“Well, I feel pretty good about the running backs. We didn’t do exactly the way we wanted to, and, yes, everybody wants to upgrade. We want to upgrade everywhere we could. Running back is place that we always say we need a little more help. But if everybody is healthy and these guys coming back… [Samaje] Perine for his second year, Rob Kelley healthy and Chris Thompson is by far the guy that we need to be healthy to make this a great corps of running backs. But at the same time, if during the draft there’s a player that we feel like can come in and plug in who’s going to help us, we have no problem with that.”

Nose tackles:

“Well, you know, like we said early on, we’ve got to improve in the run game and it starts up front. I think all the guys coming back healthy, we’ve got a pretty good start. Phil Taylor was starting nose tackle last year. He got hurt on the first play of the game, and that kind of set us back. Then Jonathan [Allen] went out. So the defensive line went down quickly. I think if we start off healthy, whether we get one in the draft or not, I think we’ll be pretty good. And like I say, there’s a second wave of free agents out there. You never know what can happen after the draft is over.”

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