Anne Donovan Quotes

You pick guys in the first round - whenever you pick guys - you pick them for a reason.

I had talked to a lot of people in Golden State's front offices before the draft. They said they liked me, but they had a lot of guards, so I didn't think that I would end up there.

You can't draft for need. You draft for need, you get fired. Draft the best player, and if you've got two of them now you've got three of them. Just take the best players available for you.

You go to the draft board and think, 'Here's a nose tackle. Who needs a nose tackle?' Well, eight teams in front of you need a nose tackle, and there's two nose tackles. It's something you have to figure out where you can get the players to play in your system.

It's hard to change a roster around. You've got to hit your draft picks right, you've gotta hit free agency right, and a team's got to fit together.

When the draft comes and goes, there's a certain set of players you acquire and there's a whole bunch of others you had interest in acquiring. That doesn't die.

When you get a draft pick right, you should be given full credit.

Unfortunately, when we had a No. 1 draft pick, there wasn't an Andrew Luck out there. A lot of that's pure luck.

Obviously, drafts sometimes are good ones, or bad ones; I think you can get a good, quality player late in the lottery.

In 1969, we decided we had to do certain things technically to win, and we decided to do them then, even though we knew some of the personnel couldn't do it. In other words, instead of adapting the system to the players, we just installed our system. Then we set out to fill our team through the draft.

I remember players talking to Willie Brown in my presence. Receivers asking, 'Is this who you drafted? I can't believe this is who you drafted.' I was hearing it from my defensive backs: 'Man, you got a long way to go.'

Whether it's drafting or player development, the ultimate is putting a team together.

A personnel guy always wants to get his pick right. We live that every year. We want to make sure the pick is right.

At the end of the day you never know what team still wants what player. You just never know with the draft.

You put together the best team that you can with the players you've got, and replace those who aren't good enough.

In real football, I wouldn't want Terrell Owens anywhere near my team. But you're nuts if you don't take him in fantasy.

It's all about putting the best team together - not just in the front office but the players on the field.

We draft mostly high school kids and we have one of the finest, if not the finest, player development programs and coaching staffs and we teach our players the right way to play. We also have a game plan in scouting, and there are certain types of players that we look for.

If you can have a really good coaching staff, and you can have a really good young quarterback and do a really good job in player personnel and string together multiple successful drafts, your window is not small in the NFL because of the quarterback.

The important thing is to get the right players on the team so Mike can be successful.

Draft day is a hectic day, especially for draftees and, more or less, for management.

One of the things I noticed more in this draft than in any recent drafts was the importance of the character issue. Players who had baggage, like Justice, fell much farther than his talent dictated. But a lot of coaches didn't want to take the chance.

I've always thought that having an attractive free agent is better than a guy who was picked in the seventh round.

I think I have the skills. I'm a great judge of talent. I just know basketball.

All of us that have teams want to pick the right people. I've thought a lot about that. In the NFL, we've got 13 scouts traveling the country. We're trying to pick 22 year-olds coming out of college who will be successful in the NFL. It's very hard to do. What I've learned is it's always character first.