With the Scouting Combine starting on Thursday, San Francisco 49ers general manager Trent Baalke is in attendance to scout potential draft picks for the team. Baalke spoke with the media Thursday morning and the 49ers provided the audio clip of his session with the media.
Here are some key notes from the discussion:
“We want to keep our guys in place,” Baalke said of maintaining the roster. “The locker room is very important.”
Baalke said that the team will keep the same approach as last offseason with free agents. The team will "choose not to be reactionary" as he has plans for every position.
“There’s no guarantees in free agency, whether they’re your own, whether they’re other guys that are available and on the market," he said. "There are no guarantees so you have to be prepared to make decisions on the fly.”
When asked specifically on Alex Smith, Baalke maintained that he wants Smith to remain with the 49ers.
"We're very confident in Alex," he said. "Our confidence in him has not wavered at all."
As the 49ers are working to keep Smith on the roster, finding Smith some offensive weapons will be a tough challenge. The 49ers could try to sign a big name wide receiver from free agency or draft one.
"There are good players at every level of this draft," Baalke said. "Some of those guys at the bottom end are going to end up being good players. You got to find out which of that group at the bottom of those 15 or 20 guys, which three or four are really going to springboard up and improve as a professional? That's why we're all here, to try to find that nugget that's going to lead us to one of those guys."
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Other notes
- Baalke has not watched any replay of the NFC Championship Game or even the Super Bowl. Baalke said maybe during the summer he'll revisit that NFC Championship Game, but since that game, he has been in meetings, scouting trips.
- Aldon Smith, according to Baalke, will have a more permanent full-time role in 2012.
- Baalke said that Justin Smith has remained at team headquarters to work out. He called the Pro Bowler a "pro's pro".
- The franchise tag is something Baalke would like to avoid this offseason but mentioned that if the team has to use it, they will.
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