The transcript of Wednesday morning's press conference with Bill Belichick, courtesy of the New England Patriots:

BB: Good morning. I think we're kind of sailing along here, a normal type of offseason. We had a little bit of transition on our team with players and some of the coaches. We have everybody back. The offseason program is in full swing. We have a lot of guys back here working hard. We're in the team-building stage, as we always are at this point in the year - looking at the players in the NFL, looking at college players. Approaching the college draft, it's always an exciting time of year for all organizations - coaches, scouts, personnel people. You start putting it together and trying to familiarize yourself and learn about all the new players who are coming into the draft, and just try to be prepared for whatever draft scenarios that can take place next weekend. Really, there is no set formula on it. I think the best thing is just do your homework, be prepared, and be ready to deal with whatever the situations are. I think no matter where you are in the draft board, at least it seems like it's this way for us, but even in talking to other people in the league, if you're at 10, you'd rather be at 5; if you're at 20, you'd rather be at 10; if you're at 30, you'd rather be at 20. So it doesn't really matter where you are. We're at 21, and when we look up there, we could probably find another place we'd rather be. And if we were there, we'd want to be somewhere else. That's just one of the mind games that you play going into the draft. In the end, it just comes back to being prepared, doing your homework, and trying to understand where the players fit in your system when it's your turn to either pick or trade. So that's pretty much where we are. We've gone through the board pretty thoroughly and now it's a lot of last minute tie-up things, and trying to make some evaluations of players relative to different positions, or different scenarios. One thing about this draft that I think is a little bit different than some of the other ones - not totally unique - but there are just more players who I would say are more in the developmental stage for one reason or another. Either they didn't play a lot last year, or they're fairly young in their career, and there just isn't as much exposure on them as maybe what we've had in the past. In terms of from a broad picture, there are always juniors entering, there are always guys that haven't played a lot of football that are circumstantially behind. Not that they aren't good players, there just isn't enough exposure on them. It seems like there are more of them this year - one-year starters, half-year starters, guys coming out early, guys who were hurt, stuff like that. That's the way it goes. We're all looking at the same players. We just try to do the best we can with the information that we have available. That's where we are. Anything on the draft, that type of thing, I'd be happy to talk about. From a team-building standpoint, what's happened has happened and we're just going to try to take advantage of every opportunity we have to put the best team we can on the field this year. That's the same thing we do every year in March, April, May, June, July, that's what we do.

Q: As someone who likes to see production and likes to see some type of real activity and reaction from a player, is it difficult to have those guys who for one reason or another haven't been seen a lot?
BB: Exactly. You're working on a lot less tape. You want to go back and see, 'Well how did the guy matchup against this type of player in this situation,' and it's just not there. But again, everybody is working with the same information so you just have to evaluate what you can from a workout, from personal contact, from the film that is available, from what the scout saw when they watched practice, that type of thing. You're just going on less information. Like I said, we're all in the same boat on that. Would you love to see more? Sure, but it's not always there.

Q: Does that really make you hesitant to go with a guy who you otherwise might have been thinking about earlier?
BB: Well, again, relative to other years, where you go back a couple of years ago, at the bottom of the first round and you're looking at Kevin Jones and Steven Jackson and Vince Wilfork and [Benjamin] Watson and guys like that, I don't know that at the end of the first round this year, you're going to be looking at that same type of player, and maybe that year was an aberration, I don't know. It is what it is. I don't know that this year you're going to be looking at guys that you have as much history. I'm not saying they're not as good a player, but there's just not as much college history on them. Again, most of it is circumstantial. It's not anybody's fault, it's just the way it is.

Q: How is this group of linebackers?
BB: Yes, I would say there are more guys this year at the linebacker position. Again, we're a team with inside and outside linebackers. We're just a little more wider spread for us than with some teams. But, for us, there's probably more linebackers than we've had the last couple of years. Some of those guys have had a lot of production, have had a lot of playing time, guys that have been three or four years starters in top programs that are rushers, that can play the run, that have some position flexibility. Yes, I would say there is more in depth in that group than what we've seen the last few years. Yes.

Q: It seems like there's a pretty big group of corner/safety combination guys. Has there been a development in the college game that has guys playing both sides and how attractive with that type of player be?
BB: I think that's pretty common. I think that every year there's four, five, six guys that fall into that category, that were safeties in college that are being projected to corner, that are corners in college and maybe could play safety or that have been used in both spots. Sometimes guys get played out of position in college because they don't have enough depth there, so they take maybe their best player who really should be a safety in the NFL but at that level he's their best cover guy so they move him out to corner. I think you see that every year with a certain number of guys. Certainly there are guys this year in that category that have done both, whether they can do both and again, depending on what kind of system they played defensively, they may or may not be able to play both spots. I think a lot of it depends on how you play those, what your overall system requires, how easily those guys can adapt to it.

Q: Could there be more value in a guy like that?
BB: Yes, assuming he could do it. Sure. Exactly. But again, I think with some of those players, some teams will see it as flexibility, other teams will see it as, 'He can only do this for us,' or, 'He can only do that for us,' again depending on what their system is.

Q: I think the earliest you've ever taken a linebacker was in the fifth round last year with Ryan Claridge. What is it about what you're looking for that makes you more of a team that's prone to having linebackers who assimilate into the program from defensive end?
BB: Well, I don't think there's anything special about where we've taken them or haven't taken them. It just worked out that way. It's not with any intent to take them or not take them. It's kind of how the draft falls, in that particular year, in that particular round. I think if you look at most of the 3-4 teams that a lot of those outside linebackers are going to be college defensive ends. That's pretty much where they end up. If those guys are the 240, 250, 260, kind of guys in college that most people aren't standing them up, putting them in coverage, they're putting them down and rushing them. Most college teams play a four-man line. There are only a few college teams that I think really play a system similar to ours - Virginia, probably being the main one. That's just the nature of the college game.

Q: Are you seeing more guys this year who actually played some linebacker at the college level who might be interesting to you and can assimilate quickly into your program?
BB: Well, again, for us, most of the guys who have played linebacker in college, to play linebacker, are really going to have to play inside. And most guys that play outside, most of them in our system, are guys that have played down or played defensive end. I think if you look at a team like Dallas, San Diego, with [Shawne] Merriman last year or [DeMarcus] Ware last year, guys like that, Pittsburgh, teams that are 3-4 teams that most of the outside linebackers that they've drafted have been college ends, primarily rush guys.

Q: And if it's a college linebacker who comes out of say Iowa State, he's probably going to have to play inside linebacker a 3-4 system?
BB: I would say most likely yes.

Q: Does that make outside linebacker in the 3-4 the hardest position to scout for you guys?
BB: Well, certainly it's a hard one in terms of projection, yes. It is. Because a lot of guys you're looking at in college haven't played on their feet and on first and second down that's probably where they would be playing for us. Even though guys play the same position in college, what they're asked to do and what they're playing against a lot of times is quite a bit different than what we see, particularly in the passing game. But, it is. We're looking at projecting guys who were down, to projecting them up to playing on their feet. That's definitely a conversion. Now, a lot of those guys have some kind of a background in it, a lot of them do, as they grew, maybe they played on their feet in high school or as a freshman or sophomore in college and then they got bigger and went down. Sometimes there is something to go back on there. Not always, but occasionally.

Q: The wide receiver position this year, is it as thin as some are saying?
BB: Well, you know, the last couple of years we've had a lot of guys go in the first round at receiver, mostly bigger receivers, and there has certainly been a trend and a little bit of a stampede to get those kind of guys. It seems like there are fewer of them this year. I'm not saying that they're better or worse, but there are other guys this year that are maybe higher on the board that don't have that 6'2, 215 stature that a lot of them had coming out last couple of years. I don't know if it is thinner or not thinner. I think there are good receivers in this draft. I think there were good receivers in other drafts, but is it seems like there is not as much of a league frenzy to get to the guys that don't have the kind of size that we've seen in the past couple of drafts at that position.

Q: So the depth may not be as bad as it seems?
BB: I think there are good receivers in this class, but again, there are fewer guys that are in that bigger receiver category like we've seen in the past couple of years.

Q: Now that you have changed your kicker, does that make it more likely that you might draft someone at some point?
BB: We drafted a kicker a couple of years ago. We'll draft players at any position that we think can be competitive for a spot on this roster. That's across the board. It doesn't matter what position they're at.

Q: Is this kicking group similar to those in past draft classes?
BB: I think there are good players at every position in this draft, including all of the specialist positions. At what point that becomes attractive, who knows?

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the process of the departure of Adam Vinatieri and how it took place? Was it financial? Can you give a little insight on that?
BB: Not really. There is going to be transition on every team. Every team in the league has that. We've had players come. We've had players go. That's the way it is. In terms of individual negotiations and all of that, no. I think it's a lot longer story. Is it worth telling? It doesn't make any difference. He's not here. We're going to do what we do every year, every spring, is build our team, try to make it as competitive as we can heading into training camp and into the regular season in the fall. The goes for every position, every player across the board.

Q: Have your free agent losses this offseason changed your thought process at all in terms of drafting where you might have drafted something else?
BB: No, I don't think so. I don't think you can do it that way. I really don't. You can't create players. You have to draft the board based on what your options are and as soon as you start taking players truly based on need, if they can't fill that need, then you have to come back the next year or the next pick and you're drafting again for the same spot and you haven't filled anything other than putting a name on a piece of cardboard and putting it up on the depth chart. You really don't have anything if the player can't fulfill that expectation or that role that you think you drafted him for. I think you're a lot better off drafting players that can perform on your team in a role that you need or in a role that gives some value to the team. Sometimes players aren't there at the position you want them, but you can't manufacture them. You just have to take the player that helps your team the most at that point, even if it's at a position that may not be necessarily the top need. Again, to go back to when I was with the Giants. We drafted Lawrence Taylor and we had Lawrence Taylor and Brad VanPelt and we took Carl Banks and nobody liked that pick. That was a pretty stupid pick, why would you take Banks when you have VanPelt and Taylor? It turned out to be probably one of our best picks at the Giants. I think you have to take guys that you think are good football players. Putting the team together that's certainly a process you have to go through. But to try to manufacture somebody, 'We need this position,' and then take a guy and he doesn't end up being able to do the job, then you still need that position.

Q: How are the rehabs of Matt Light, Dan Koppen and Rodney Harrison impacting any of your plans for this draft if at all?
BB: Again, I don't think they really do. You draft based on what you have to select from at that point in time on the board and what your options are, whether it's to trade or take whatever the choices of players are that you've identified. I don't think you're really thinking at that point about anything other than who is up there and what they can do for your team. You can't worry too much about other guys on your team and what their situation is because you can go out there the first day of training camp and that could change on one play. I don't feel like we can look at it that way. And we don't.

Q: LenDale White tore his hamstring. If he was a player that you were interested in at 21, how much effect would that injury have on your decision to draft him?
BB: I think when you look at college players, depending on what the injury is, you can go back to examples of guys like Willis McGahee, who was coming off an ACL, that most people thought he wasn't going to play his rookie year. Once the guy has an injury that you don't think is going to heal, that's one thing. We go through injuries with players all the time and they missed some time and then they come back and they play and they've been able to play effectively. As long as the injury is going to heal, I think for the most part, it's not like we have again next week, a player can play and be ready to go at some point in time even if it's not right at the beginning of the season. When you go to the draft you're looking at a longer time frame than the first game. Again, taking the McGahee example, the guy started playing his second year and has played fairly well. Now if it affects your evaluation then that throws it up in the air. If you feel like you needed a workout to evaluate the player and now you don't have one, then that may affect what your grade or rating on the player is because you haven't really seen the player work out and there's a question as to whether or not he can perform certain skills then that might affect what grade you can put on the guy.

Q: So if he wasn't ready for training camp that wouldn't affect whether or or not you would draft a player?
BB: I don't think it necessarily would, no. Again, if you're drafting a guy, especially if you're drafting him high, you would like to think that he'd be around a little bit longer than the first day of training camp. We've had players every year that weren't ready for their first day of training camp, that didn't mean they weren't good players and that didn't mean that they didn't contribute a lot to the team that year. I don't think that's the final evaluation.

Q: How is the running back class this year?
BB: I think it's fairly typical. There are a lot of good players in there. There are guys that have different skill sets. Some guys that are probably primarily third-down backs, some guys that are primarily first and second down backs, Some guys that probably can play on all three downs, some guys that are returners that can fit into the fourth down equation. It depends on kind of what you're looking for and how well you think they can do those certain skills. Again, there are some players that are really good in certain situations and not as good in other situations and other guys that are probably pretty good in a lot of different situation but not as good as somebody else on first down or on third down or as a returner. There are a lot of different combinations of skills at that position. Again, depending on how well you think those players perform the skill, then that will affect the grade on them. I'd imagine if you went and polled the 32 teams and went to the running back board, you'd probably see a lot of different ordering of those same players, again, depending on how the team's valued, not whether or not they could play, but how much they value their ability in certain situations, is an every down player versus as a specialist, first down, or returner or whatever it was, how much value they put on those.

Q: The main two running backs you've had here over the last couple of years, Antowain Smith and Corey Dillon, they're both big guys who appear to be able to get those tough yards. Is their makeup, size, etc, is that just coincidence or is that you're ideal type of running back?
BB: I think every team in the league would like to have at every position big, fast, tough, productive players.

Q: But as opposed to smaller types of backs.
BB: We have other players that aren't... Kevin Faulk has been very productive for us. We've had other players. The player is what he is. You can't take a 5'8, 200-pound guy and make him 6'2, 240. But if he's productive in his style of play and his physical stature, whatever it is, I think he can have value for you. There's plenty of good backs, Hall of Fame backs, the Walter Paytons of the world and guys like that, Barry Sanders, who weren't 6'2, 235, but they were great players. I wouldn't rule out anybody. Reggie Bush. I'm sure he could play for us. I wouldn't rule anybody out.

Q: When you stack running backs, you don't say which guy is better between them, but do you give them a first down, second down or third down type of value?
BB: Well, we kind of have a grading scale that reflects those things, but clearly they're different players. You might have two players with the same grade on them and one guy is a third-down punt return guy and another guy is the first and second down guy that is a good runner but you probably don't want him out there on third down and he's not a returner. But again, they could have the same grade but they bring a different skill set to you. At that point in time that it came down between those two players, even though they had the same grade, you would make a decision based on which type of player you wanted. Just like you could have a tackle who had that same grade too, do you want to tackle or do you want a third-down back based on not just their skill but all the other things that come with it? Their toughness, their leadership, all the intangibles; all that stuff too.

Q: Do you feel like you have a lot of flexibility this year in terms of moving around?
BB: Yes, I think this year we have quite a bit of flexibility in the draft from a draft strategy standpoint. Last year we went into the draft with no third round pick. It was a compensatory pick and it was not tradeable. I felt like we didn't have too much flexibility. This year, we have an extra third and an extra fourth from last year's trades. Our two sixth round picks are compensatory and they can't be traded. So they're not really a factor in terms of draft strategy. But having those extra mid-round picks in a full draft does certainly give you flexibility to move up in rounds. Again, there's only so far you can move in that first round. From 21 you're not going to be able to get into the top 10, but you could move up a couple of spots, but then from that point on, you would have pretty good flexibility if you wanted to move forward, if you wanted to package picks together. And that's a little bit different from the kind of the situation heading into last year's draft. Again, we know from our draft history, we're not afraid to trade them, moving up, moving down, or like we did last year, just sit there and take them when our turn comes up. There's no way to predict that. It's good to have the flexibility to do it, but there's really no way to predict it. You just how to evaluate the situations as they come along and then when the phone rings, answer it and see what the options are and then decide whether or not that's something that organizationally we feel is a positive and productive move.

Q: Does groundwork help with that process?
BB: There's always that whole process of kind of establishing the lines of communication with the various teams maybe what teams are looking to do or not to, just to kind of expedite the process. Teams, for the most part, are reluctant to make draft choice trades prior to the draft. When I was in Cleveland, I made one with Jimmy Johnson and we swapped spots in the second round for some picks down the line and we both kind of wanted to know what we had to work with rather than getting into the draft and doing that and trying to figure it out on the fly. We both liked going into the draft, 'Okay, this is a fair trade. You want to move back. We want to move up. Great.' It's funny because Jimmy and I have talked about that, but most teams don't like to do it that way. They kind of want to wait and see what's there and decide if the value is there and don't want to move down because they want to take a look and see what is there if they stay. I don't think it's anything good or bad, it's just kind of a difference of philosophy. You don't see too much of that anymore in the NFL. The Atlanta/Denver trade on [John] Abraham. That was to do the deal with the Jets. That was a very specific trade, but just the general movement of draft choices before the draft, there is a lot less of that than compared to what there is on draft day. Sometimes you see in the top five or top 10 if you're hoping for a specific player, but that's really a player trade. You can say it's trading draft picks, but you are really moving to get to a certain spot to get a certain player and that's really a true player trade, you just haven't filled in the name yet.

Q: Can you speak to how important it is to stockpile depth on the defensive line in your system?
BB: Depth is important at every position on the football team. You never know where you're going to need it and as I've said many times before, depth in May is a lot different from depth in November and that's the only time it really matters. You try to get as many good football players as you can on your team. Part of that is to give yourself depth during the season and part of it is to create competition in training camp and heading into the season. I think that competition is good for everybody and it also hopes to develop some flexibility on the roster in terms of teaching guys multiple positions and being able to build your own depth, where one guy can do multiple jobs rather than having two or three different guys to do that because that's a very realistic situation that will occur during the regular season. But it's great to have depth on the defensive line but really you want that at every position. I don't think any team ever has the kind of depth they want. You're always looking for an upgrade and that's one of the things that the draft gives you. Usually there are some quality players at the top of the draft that you can see maybe helping your team sooner, but then there are also selections later on that can give you that kind of depth that you're talking about where guys can grow into the position in time, in a year or however long it takes, for them to kind of get the system down that they can create depth at those other spots. It's a good opportunity to strengthen your team if you can hit on the right guys.

Q: Speaking to depth, what is your overall thought on the depth of this year's draft?
BB: I think every draft has good players in it and again a lot of it is system oriented. I'm sure we have a lot of guys on our board that other teams don't really think that much of and I'm sure that other teams have guys on their board that don't really fit that well for us. I think there are enough players to help our football team and I would imagine that other teams think that too. Some positions have a few more than others, but again, to me the thing about this draft is there are more guys that have less production, less history at this point, particularly early, some of the higher-rated players. They just haven't had the opportunity, for one reason or another, to perform as much or as long as I think historically what you've seen in most of the drafts relative to those grade levels. Like I said, we're all working off the same board and we all have the same challenge.