Reese ‘not panicking about getting a receiver

Jerry Reese met the media on Thursday afternoon for a predraft press conference. While the major news story of the day was covered in our previous post, here are a few additional Reese quotes on other key topics.

Reese on the possibility of trading for Anquan Boldin: “Well, for the right player you do whatever you can to make it happen. But we will do what is best for the Giants. And I don’t know if that is the best thing for us to do – to package up a deal that valuable. We like our draft picks. We like developing players. And we want – I think somebody said are you trying to force anything – we won’t force anything.”

Reese on his current crop of WRs: “We like Mario (Manningham). We like Steve Smith. We like (Domenik) Hixon. We like our tight end. So we have guys – I think people are panicked a little bit about the receiver. I don’t think we are panicked about it. We are not panicking about getting a receiver. We have good players that we can win football games with; we have pro football receivers on our team right now. So we are going to try to improve it. But sometimes if you can’t do that, you go with what you have. You win with the hand that you are dealt and don’t look back.”

Reese on Mario Manningham: “We still have high hopes for him. He was hurt early on (and) through the preseason, so he got a late start. So we expect him to know what pro football is all about now and come into the offseason stuff and make a big improvement. So the jury is still out on him but we still like him. And hopefully he will improve.”

Reese on RBs: “We like the running backs that we have. Brandon (Jacobs) is Brandon and (Ahmad) Bradshaw, obviously, he will get more touches now. So he is champing at the bit to touch the ball more. So he will start out as number two, but he has got to earn the number two spot. Danny Ware is a guy who we think has a lot of potential. Obviously there are good players in the draft as well. So we feel good about our running backs.”

Reese on picking away from a ‘need’ position: “We picked a defensive end a couple of years ago (Mathias Kiwanuka) and we had a Hall of Famer (Michael Strahan) and a Pro Bowler (Osi Umenyiora). And a future Pro Bowler as the third guy (Justin Tuck) and we still picked a defensive end. So if the guy is a good player, we will still pick him.”

Reese on his phone ringing off the hook due to Giants’ 10 picks: “There are always a lot (of calls). Everybody is jockeying, saying ‘Would you guys – do you want to move up, do you want to move down, are you interested in taking our spots?’ So we get phone calls like that every day, all of the way to the draft. So we have a list of who wants to do what. And if something fits us, we will say, ‘let’s call so and so and see if they want to move down or want to move up’ or, ‘they said they want to move out of this spot.’ So there is a lot of that going on right now.”