With the 2016 NFL Draft starting up tomorrow night, Redskins general manger Scot McCloughan is ready to added talented pieces to a strong core.
Scot McCloughan remains dedicated to using the NFL Draft as his primary roster building tool. That hasn't changed even with the massive free agent acquisition of Josh Norman.
Starting tomorrow and extending into Saturday afternoon, McCloughan – whose first draft with the organization has been considered a success -- and the rest of the Washington Redskins' personnel staff will assemble to add quality youth to a team coming off an NFC East championship.
"It doesn't really change," McCloughan said when asked how the Norman signing impacts his philosophy. "The thing that's cool about it is that it gives us another good football player on the field. You can never have enough corners… ever. As you're well aware, I want to build through the draft, and I want to build with young guys. So no, it doesn't hold us back, because you can never have enough."
Last year, Kyshoen Jarrett, a sixth-round pick, played 602 defensive snaps despite not being expected to contribute so much so early. Even running back Matt Jones, a third-round pick, played only 47 less snaps than established starter Alfred Morris.
"There's injuries that happen, and there's trades that happen," McCloughan said. "Stuff like that happens. You can't just say, 'OK, we're great there. Let's just forget about it.' No, I've been in situations like that. All of a sudden a guy gets hurt or two guys get hurt, and you're like, 'Son of a gun, we had that really good player that we passed on because of a need.' We're going to take a football player. A corner? We'd love to."
The Redskins currently hold eight picks in this year's draft, but McCloughan admitted in March he'd like to get to 12 picks if possible.
So far they haven't heard from other teams about potential trades, though.
"I would love to have more picks, every year I would," McCloughan said. "It's going to be a draft day thing like it was last year."
This year's crop of prospects is highlighted by the overall depth and talent of the defensive linemen, but McCloughan believes it is a strong draft "on both sides of the ball."
"My personal opinion, there will be a handful of guys in the first round but also second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh that are football players and there's a value for each one of them," McCloughan said. "It gets lesser and lesser, but I'll take the lesser height/weight/speed guy for the more consistent football player, that you know exactly character-wise, toughness, competitiveness that they bring to the Redskins."
While safety, linebacker and even wide receiver have been listed as some of the bigger needs for the Redskins early, Washington could take a quarterback at some point, too.
Ideally, the team would like add a third quarterback alongside Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy. Whether or not that happens in the draft is one of many storylines to follow.
"There's never too many quarterbacks," McCloughan said. "Not saying first round, fifth round, seventh round, a college free agent… Who knows? The thing that we're going to do is identify, have a value for that position and that player, and that's when we're going to take him."
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