The 2019 NFL Draft is in the books, and general manager Jason Licht selected seven new players on the roster. After the final pick was done, Licht went to the podium and answered questions from the Tampa Bay media regarding the choices he made in this year’s draft.

Here is the full press conference from Jason Licht with his comments:

On selecting another kicker, this time with Matt Gay
“Well, he’s a big guy with a big leg and he’s also accurate, so those are a lot of good things that we like about him. He kicks at Utah but he’s also good at Sea level, kicks it far at sea level as well. We liked him as a person, we think he’s a very confident guy, and we’ve exhausted everything we can to try to find a kicker, we’ll continue to like every other position. We’ve drafted one, we’ve signed free agents, UFA’s, street free agents, gone to Denmark, so, we like this guy, and like I said, like all positions, we’ll continue to do what we can to try and find the guy we liked.”

On if his accuracy from 40 plus yards was a selling point to him
“That’s a big selling point, and he’s got a strong leg. Usually the strong legged guys that can kick it from far distance usually have some accuracy issues. This guy does not so far.”

On how much stock does he put in experience kicking in bigger moments
“You’d like to see guys to make big kicks in big moments, obviously. Kicker’s a very important position. It’s one of the most important positions on the team. Right now we have a coach that really believes in kicker and the importance of it and stresses it. He’s got a kicking background with his son Jake, who’s a good friend of mine that was a kicker. When Bruce was hired we had several discussions about what we’re going to refine the ways that we do things in terms of finding a good kicker. We still like Cairo, we think Cairo’s been really improving so far in the offseason here. We hired Chris Buono, and Chris is a very good swing doctor in terms of his experience as a kicker and as a coach in the college and the NFL. Keith Armstrong is an awesome special teams coach as well as Amos JOnes, obviously I’m trying to tell you that we put a lot of stress into the importance of all special teams, but especially kicker.

On if there was a particular moment or game of Matt Gay’s that stood out to him
“We’ve watched every kick. Chris, Keith, Amos, we’ve watched them all, it’s just like we do with every position. We watch every game, there’s a lot of different moments out of every kick, he’s had some misses, he’s had a lot of makes, so, we like him. We like his technique, we like everything about him, so right now, he’s been successful in college.”

On if this changes the game plan of having punter Bradley Pinion do the kickoffs and the kickers just kick field goals, if Matt Gay can do kickoffs, and if it’s an open competition
“Well, right now it is. You take any position in the fifth round, it’s not an automatic, you’re saying he’s automatically made the team. We want to bring in great competition for Cairo, we’ll let them kick it out through the preseason, and may the best man win. If Matt happens to win it, we’ve got Bradley who’s an elite kickoff guy in the NFL, has proven that, I don’t see why we would stop using him in that role. It saves wear and tear on a kickers leg when you have that.”

On if the opportunity to draft a kicker there superseded their chance of getting someone on the right side of the offensive line
“Right, but when sometimes the board way it is, you may not see somebody that can do that. We’ve drafted some other good players, by the way.”

On adding more defensive players on day three
“Yeah, so, with Anthony, we had him ranked pretty high on our board, we’ve liked him for a while. Big, six-foot-seven, 275 pound guy with long arms and all that stuff. I’ve seen the comparisons to Car (Nassib), no two players are exactly the same, so it’s unfair to do that, but in his mold I guess in terms of his body type. He plays very hard, he’s a good athletes, he bends very well, he has good speed to power, he’s got really good instincts, he’s a really, really smart guy and he’s been really well coached by Kirk Ferentz. Productive guy, one of the more productive guys in the draft, and there’s some versatility to him, we’ll probably play him a little bit in the outside linebacker role, we’ll put his hand down in sub. We’ll see if he can rush inside, we’ll have plenty of 4-3 looks in our defense, it’s not just a base 3-4 all the time. We like the versatility and you have to be intelligent to do all those things with Todd, so he fits thats mold.”

On if there’s a chance he can play a 5-technique defensive end in the 3-4
“Absolutely, we’ll see. We know that he can russ the passer, we know he can line up in a base 4-3. We think he’s certainly athletic to do some of the things that we ask outside linebacker to do in a 3-4, so that’s the beauty of him. He’s got a versatile like we keep saying.”

On the process of discovering WR Scotty Miller and if he’ll replace Adam Humphries
“So Scotty, our scouts did a great job with him. Bowling Green didn’t have a rated prospect going into the season by a ny publication. When you go into a school that doesn’t, you try to find a sleeper, and scouts weren’t going through Bowling Green this year because of that. We did, I know some other teams did, you see a productive that’s really fast so you try to keep him under the radar as long as you can, I know we were in contact with him quite often during the spring here making sure nobody else was talking to him. And then when we found out a couple teams did and brought him in, we went there and worked him out and had a private workout with im. Our receivers coach went there and spent time with him. We just felt very comfortable in going ahead and drafting him in the sixth round, so he’s very fast. To say he’s Adam Humphries, it’s tough to do that right now, he’s got to fight to make the team. He’s different, he’s not as big, he’s more of a speed guy, in fact, he’s very very fast. I think he’s one of the faster guys in the draft, so it’s going to be fun having him out here and see what he can do.”

On if Scotty Miller is considered a deep threat with his speed
“Well, anybody that runs 4.3 is probably a deep threat. So, yeah, he is a deep threat.”

On if Scotty Miller can return kicks
“Limited, very limited experience returning kicks. We’ll give him a shot, though.”

On why he’s had more success with undrafted free agents recently than with day three picks he’s made
“That’s a good question because a loot of those players that we sign and we give those signing bonus money too, they kind of came from the same pool as those late draftable guys. You draft guys that are off your board obviously and the guys that we sign and we go after hard are still on our draft board, for whatever reason. Maybe I should of drafted the guys that we signed as free agents and signed the guys that we drafted, they’re basically this close to each other on the draft board.”

On Terry Beckner Jr.
“So, Terry went through some adversity there early in his career with his knee injuries, one on each side and he’s played I think 26 consecutive games now, two years in a row. He’s really tough, love the kid, love the grit that he has where he’s grown up in East St. Louis, it’d be tough for me to walk a day in his shoes for some of the things he’s had to go through. He’s an awesome kid, smart, incisive player, like I said, strong, I like the way he plays. He’s going to compete, I know, and he’s got a good chance to make this football team if he plays the way he did at Missouri and the way we evaluated him.”

On his thoughts about the offensive line as it stands right now, knowing he didn’t pick any players in the draft
“Stood pat so far. I say time and time again, we’re not lining up tomorrow to play regular season week one, so, we still have time. We’re working with the guys, I know that the coaches are happy with the development of Alex (Cappa), I know that Caleb (Benenoch) has been doing some good things, and he has in the past for us lining up at tackle. These guys are young, they do have an opportunity to get better, and we like the progress that they’ve made so far, but we still have time to make some additions if we have to. You can’t address every position that you may have some concerns, whether they vary from big concern to small concern, it’s just impossible, but to do it in a small amount of time during free agency or the draft. We have through August to do what we can.”

On with Roberto Aguayo facing a lot of pressure three years ago after being picked in the second round, if it gives Jason Licht any pause when selecting another kicker in the draft 
“Yeah if he made it to free agency. I know he had a lot of interest, it’s hard to say if he would have gone in the fifth round, there was another kicker taken. Maybe he’d of went in the sixth, seventh. To me and to us and to Bruce, it was a small price to pay to get a kicker. You wouldn’t say the same thing for a receiver, if a receiver didn’t work out a couple years ago that you took in the second round would you be afraid to take a receiver in the fifth round? No. It’s a very important position.”

On how he evaluates the mental toughness at kicker
“Well we spend a lot of time with them. We talk to everybody that they know, we watch their games. We have a lot of different things that we use in our scouting process to a lot of different people that we use, a lot of different tests to try to find a way that we do it. There’s no magic way to do that, but we continue just like every other team to find that resource or a few resources or many resources that we can to measure things that in a lot of cases aren’t measurable, but we continue to try.”

On if the hallmark of this draft for Bruce Arians and him is versatility and speed
“ Versatility, you’ve heard us say that, he and I and a lot of different people thousands of times I’m sure, ut it really was something that he stresses, that we stress. We love speed, when I called Scotty and told him we we were going to pick him, I said ‘We got the need for speed, and I’ve got the coach right here that wants to talk to you.’ So, fast guys that can play on special teams one way or another is very important to us, but also guys that, the guys like Devin (White). You’ve seen Devin now, the way Devin carries himself, the way Sean (Bunting) carries himself, all of these guys that we have this year, one thing we’re just really excited about is just their passion, their energy that they’re going to infuse the locker room with. It’s going to be a great thing I think.”

On how involved were coordinator Byron Leftwich and Todd Bowles in the draft process
“We leaned on them very heavily. Todd, Todd’s got a great way of communicating what he’s going to do, so you can picture the type of guy that he wants. He’s also got a great sense of people like I’ve talked about Bruce, he can walk out of a room after spending five minutes with somebody and kind of say ‘this is my impression.’ This is exactly what our impressions were that we had too, he’s very quick with that. Byron was very excited about the opportunity here and he likes players that play hard, that play fast, and were instivitce. Byron’s not afraid to give you his opinion, and I like that.