Charley Casserly Quotations

We're going to take the best player available. We have enough needs. We did a good job I thought in free agency. But we still have areas where we can use depth. It won't be hard for players that we pick to come in and contribute this year.

We're going to get offers for this pick. We've already had discussions with teams. I think there's value in our pick.

Yes I've been told that's inaccurate by a source good enough for me to stand up here to quote it. Otherwise, I wouldn't get up here and say it.

We were confident we could reach a deal with Reggie Bush too.

Obviously, this gives us more room to operate. We had two plans in place in case the deal didn't get done. We were prepared to move forward both ways.

Nobody would believe me when I said to people that we were seriously considering . If people were shocked, they never listened to me.

I have him rated higher than Peppers. If Reggie Bush wasn't in this draft, Mario Williams would be head and shoulders the first pick.

He's coming off a knee injury, but the bottom line is he's going to be here and he's going to play, so you've got a player already there that's proven.

We're probably younger than we have been, but we still believe we have made improvements.

We're pleased to have acquired him. The reason we targeted him on the first day of free agency was because we thought he was a good young talent.

He's a great athlete who's been very productive. He's a tremendous runner. The thing he's got going is that leadership and competitiveness.

His rehab from the knee has gone along excellent, ... He's running now, and we'll continue to monitor the situation.

There aren't a lot of options still out there. But it's like any other position. You're going to keep evaluating it every day. We're a long ways from being a complete football team. So we're liable to add players on any day at any position throughout training camp.

I think that if Reggie Bush wasn't in this draft, Mario Williams would be head and shoulders the first pick in this draft. What you have ... is a pass rusher who has unique size and speed for the position. He's almost 6-foot-7 and runs a 4.7 (40-yard dash). Vertical jump is exactly the same as Reggie Bush and he's 90 pounds heavier.

Jay did a nice job for us, ... You can't keep everybody in this system. He got hurt at the end of last year. So we decided to move on, and that's it.

People have asked me to think of a comparable situation. I can't think of one.

Mario Williams is a better fit for us. It was strictly about a football decision.

I was told that's an inaccurate report from a very good source.

I think if people had just listened to what we had said, they would have seen that we were serious about Mario Williams. Once we brought him in here our statements never changed that we were seriously considering him for the first pick in the draft and I understand that people didn't believe it, but we always said it and we believed it.

I think it will probably be April before this thing gets serious.

We've talked to teams about the pick, and we're willing to move.

We need a lot of things. I think we've got a nucleus. I don't think we're as bad as our record, but we're not a playoff team. We can make a jump here if things are hit right between free agency and the draft.

We don't have a cap problem. But, obviously, our activity in free agency would be significantly affected by whether there's a deal or not.

We had made progress in each of our first three years, and we had a better team coming back this year. But the injuries to key people have really hurt.

We could have 30 days notice at any time, and then he's gone,

We've been given no indication of anything changing.

When you're on this side of the table, the only thing that counts is winning. You've got to do what you think is the best way to win, so you've got to eliminate all of those outside influences ... because at the end of the day all anybody cares about is the score on Sunday. We didn't think it was the right decision to win the most games for us.

When David has time to throw, he does a good job. Offensive tackle is a hard position to solve unless you use a high draft pick, and we've used those picks on other positions. Good tackles aren't sitting there in free agency.

We asked him and his attorney the different allegations and both of the denied them. Both of them said that Reggie didn't do anything wrong so we obviously took him at his word which is what we should do. But none of that had anything to do with that. We told them this was strictly a football decision. We wanted to get a defensive end.

We arrived at this decision a short time back that these are the two players that we would pick from to make our first round pick.

We didn't feel it was appropriate for him to be playing for the league minimum. This shows that if a player comes in and performs better than expected, we're willing to tear up the contract and pay him what he's worth. This puts him up there with the good starting running backs in the league.

The player is one of the better receivers in the league. He got market. Obviously, everyone knows the issues with the guy, but if he goes out and plays on the field and shows up every day, he is one of the top receivers in football.

We all know this is a guessing game. It's humans evaluating humans, and you know what? We're not infallible, and they're not infallible either. If there's one thing you can say about those of us who do this for a living, it's that we know we don't know.

This was a football decision. It's harder to find a defensive end than running backs. When we looked at our team, we've got to get better on offense, but we've got to get better on defense, too. In eight games, we lost the lead in the second half because we couldn't rush the passer.

We spent a couple of hours with him, and you get a little more read on his personality, more than a 15-minute interview in Indianapolis. I think he's a class individual, well-spoken, genuine.

We're very happy to have Eric with us. He gives us a proven receiver to go along with Andre Johnson. Now we can line up and we have two first class wide receivers and we feel very fortunate about that.

You focus nothing on the media coverage of the ups and downs. You make your own evaluation. It's totally ignored.

There's no gloom and doom here. All of us have been through tough times before.

I've been told it was inaccurate by a source good enough for me to quote it.

Right now we have nobody interested in that first pick, so we have gone ahead and begun negotiations with two players.

On Thursday, we made a decision to go with Mario, and we said that if we could get him, then let's sign him. We were confident we could have worked a deal with Bush, too, but we made the decision to go with defense over offense because our pass rush hasn't been what it needed to be.

You?re a competitive person. Once the game starts, you want to win.

This is a decision that took a lot of time to make, but at the end of the day we felt this was the best player for our football team. Both players, Reggie Bush and Mario Williams, are going to, I think, be great pros. We made the decision to go with defense.

There never was any shift because we never made a decision. It was the media that said we made a decision. We never made a decision. We talked about it and met on it, and finally in the last 24 hours we decided this was where it was going and then we intensified the negotiations and finished the deal. We like Bush and he's deserving of the first pick, but we just wanted to go defense. That's all it was. We just wanted to go defense.

They're both great players. Young's an excellent athlete, a winner and a leader. I think he'll be a fine quarterback.

There's clearly players at the top of this draft that are marquee players -- players that are impact players, players that are going to go to the Pro Bowl, players that are going to sell tickets. We're going to get offers for this pick.

It's kind of an auction where you have to see what price you get and do it a little bit on feel whether you think the deal is worth it. Every year is different because of the difference in players and how good they are. I know that a lot of teams go by the value chart. We don't.

It's just we were never going to tell anybody that. We weren't going to deny it, but nobody asked the question and I understand why they wouldn't ask the question early on.

It's good to get this done because it won't be a distraction in July. He can come to Houston and focus on playing and not have to worry about getting a deal done.

It's good when you can keep a player that has played the amount of snaps Chester has and remain as consistent as he's been. You try to keep young players with this amount of playing experience with you for years to come.

Davis, through hard work, has improved his play from the first day he arrived with the Texans, and we feel confident he will continue to flourish in the years to come.

David's a good player and a class individual. We had a great visit with him. We'd love to have him. We made him an offer, but they declined it.

The number really doesn't mean anything to us because we go through a process of four or five other ways to evaluate it. The number's insignificant to us in the end. It's the other areas that we put more weight on.

It's not going to play a role in what we do. I've talked to Reggie, and I've talked to his mom. We haven't found anything to influence our decision.

The best thing for this football team was to use the first pick in this draft to add a premier player at another position. Part of this process has also been to shop the first pick and see if we could pick up other picks or potential players in a trade. Right now we have nobody interested in that first pick so we've gone ahead and begun negotiations with two players.

It's not because we haven't called people. Monday morning I called teams behind us and I won't tell you who I called or where I stopped, but you can obviously figure I called teams immediately behind us...and there was no interest.

I hope this young man realizes before the draft that he needs to run. Or I hope he's made a deal with a team that's going to take him in the first round.

I'm under contract, and I'm happy to be coming back. Like everyone else, I'm disappointed at what happened this season, but I'm already excited about next season.

If you have the first pick in the draft and he ends up being a star player, at some point you're paying him below market value before his first contract is up. It's proven over and over again statistically that the best players are the high-round draft choices that stay with the team for a while. Obviously, you need a core of star players.

If you're a team, how do you take a running back who doesn't run a 40-yard dash? At some point, you've got to find out how fast somebody is.

If you're a team, how do you take a running back that doesn't run a 40-yard dash? At some point you gotta find out how fast somebody is, so I hope this young man realizes before the draft he needs to run or I hope he has made a deal with a team that's gonna take him in the first round.

I haven't spoken with him yet, but I will.

Being able to take the best players available is the way to have your best draft. Based on what we've been able to do so far, that's the way we're headed right now.

Gary was tremendous to work with. His preparation for the draft was the most thorough of any coach I've worked with. Gary had a good feel for personnel on offense and defense. He communicated clearly what he wanted at each position. The scouts had a clear picture of what he wanted, and don't underestimate how important that is going into a draft.

You've got to pick a No. 1 pick which certainly is important, but you've got a whole other draft to run and we've got to get players out of those other positions in the draft.