Redskins President Bruce Allen addressed some questions about the team's front office and provided more clarity about the draft process of the last couple of months.
Redskins President Bruce Allen went onto ESPN 980 Friday afternoon to discuss the state of the team's front office, explaining that the organization is still looking and evaluating personnel to determine its structure.
"As far as what we are going to do, it hasn't changed since March," Allen said. "We are going to be in the process of looking to see what we need to add to our personnel department to enhance the people that are here. There is some good quality people out there that's available that we are talking to. We are going to put together the right team with the Redskins that is going to help us win."
Allen said in March that the team would look around to consider candidates for the open general manager position, but didn't offer any distinct timetable. Since the NFL Draft last week, nothing has changed on that front.
"No, there has been no decisions made," he said. "The process, we are going to take our time. We want to get it right what we do…There is no submission to the league on a form or anything like that. We are going to keep talking and decide what is the best thing for the Redskins."
Speaking for the first time this week about the team's accomplishments in the NFL Draft – selecting defensive lineman Jonathan Allen with the 17th-overall pick, the first of 10 players taken in total – Allen praised Director of College Scouting Scott Campbell and his staff for working diligently throughout the last couple of months to present all of the grades and evaluations to the group.
"First of all we brought in our college scouts a week earlier than planned and let them know that Scott Campbell was going to run the draft meetings and help set the board," Allen said. "With their input we reassigned a few of the scouts -- I'll leave their names out for the moment -- to do some cross-checkings and serve as a national scout to make sure we had the missing grades we hadn't had of the evaluations of this year's class. This college group did a tremendous job getting prepared."
Allen said the scouting staff met with the coaches to set up their big board, providing some more clarity about the team's draft process.
"We made sure, I said the board was set on Tuesday, then we would break it out in different groups of players that had the same grade and a different position," Allen said. "We went around the room and we discussed the merits of taking this player versus that player who had the same grade and we stacked the players based on that. All of those debates happened prior to Thursday night. It really did help us give us a clear thought what we wanted to do on draft day."
Allen was asked how a split opinion on a player might be decided upon if, per say, he and head coach Jay Gruden were on opposite ends of an argument. Allen said he relied on the scouting staff to provide more tape and their own analysis to find a resolution.
"We had some great debates in it," Allen said. "That's where, once again, the area scouts who know these players better than either one of you do can say did you use the Tennessee game? Did you make sure you watched the Tennessee game? I know you watched these four games but make sure you get a look at this. The tape doesn't lie and that becomes the tie-breaker."
