Randy Mueller on Trent Green

Mueller on Green and Culpepper

"Dolphins GM Randy Mueller addressed several subjects on the Dolphins flagship station 560-WQAM Wednesday night. Mueller wasn’t made available to the media at Trent Green’s introductory press conference."

Here is the station’s released transcript.

“Why Trent Green and why now?”

Randy: “As you know I think it was the worst kept
secret of all. It’s been a long process and sometimes
both sides have to give a little bit and the timing
was right. We felt like if we gave a little bit, the
Chiefs would too. That happened and I give Carl
Peterson and the Chiefs some credit for actually
pulling the trigger. We were able to get it down where
Trent would be here in a couple of weeks and start to
get comfortable with not only our team and his
teammates, and the surroundings and everything else.
We thought it was worth it to get him sooner and not
have to jump through a bunch of hoops later.”

“Is he a better fit than Daunte Culpepper and
this offense?”

Randy: “I’m not sure. I guess time will dictate that.
Obviously Cam has a comfort level because he has spent
time with him. Their paths crossed in Washington many
moons ago and they’ve had a relationship. I do think
the system they ran in Kansas City and in St. Louis
are very similar to what Cam runs here so I do think
there’s a comfort level.”

“How important is to get a quarterback, the
caliber of a Trent Green with this offense, knowing
that you have a defense that was ranked 4th overall
last year and with guys like Zach and Jason that have
hit the 10 year mark in the NFL and you might not have
too many years left with them and you want to get the
offense going?”

Randy: “That’s a great point and to that end it’s hard
to look those veterans in the eyes on defense and to
say you’re going to go with an unproven quarterback or
unproven players anywhere because you’re right, they
don’t have forever and they surely don’t want to talk
about rebuilding. We’ve said from the onset of the
offseason that we are retooling and to be able to get
a guy like Trent Green, I think gives them hope that
the future is now and to also have guys like Cleo
Lemon and John Beck in the fold gives us hope for the
future. I think it’s a good group of guys and I
definitely think it excites the defense. And really
the other veteran players on our team can say, ‘Hey we
have a chance to compete now because there’s a guy
farther along in this system and surely have a lot of
skins on the wall.’

“Where does this leave Daunte and how do you
see this thing playing out.”

Randy: “We met with Daunte today. We had a good
dialogue. We’ve had a pretty good dialogue with him
throughout. We hope that in the next couple of days
things become clearer. We did agree that we would kind
of work together on whatever it may be. Whether it’s
moving him to another team, we don’t know yet. We are
still gathering information. What we kind of said is,
‘Let’s see where the dust settles. We’re not in any
big rush here. See how we feel tomorrow, the next day
and kind of take it day by day.’ I think time will
tell there and hopefully it works out good for our
sides.”

“Is the injury, at this stage of the recovery
period, how big of an impediment is that in the
attempt to move him to another club?”

Randy: “I think it’s definitely an issue. He has not
played for us in a long time, as everyone knows. The
other thing is he makes a pretty good salary and there
are times when the business side super cedes the
business sides. So there are business angles to this
deal that make it hard, there’s no question.”

“Daunte could wind up in the kind of position
that Trent was with Kansas City perhaps dictating
where he wants to play football because of that big
salary?”

Randy: “Definitely if a team wanted him and didn’t
have the cap room they would obviously have to talk to
him about that. I think Daunte is less concerned about
finances and more concerned about the right fit and
playing football in the near future.”

“Back to Trent Green. A lot of discussion about
the concussion last year and I know he addressed that
issue in the press conference. How big of a concern
was it for you and the Dolphins? I know he had the
physical today, where does that stand?”

Randy: “He passed the physical. The trade is official.
I think it was a little bit of an issue early on but
once we had our medical people do the research and do
the checking that we needed to check, there was a
comfort level there. It’s not like Trent Green has
missed a lot of time. He played the games last year
but if you go back 4 or 5 years, it’s 16 games 16
starts, 16 games, 16 starts. He had a pretty good run
and was injury free in Kansas City until last year. We
obviously feel okay about where he is at now and we
don’t think the concussions are going to be lingering
and we think he’s still a really good player if we can
surround him with the right kind of talent.”

“He’s going to be 37 next month, the age factor
certainly plays a role in this, how much does his
ability to help train John Beck play into this at
all?”

Randy: “There’s no secret that has something to do
with it. Obviously we put some trust in John for the
future. We like Cleo as well. Again, it’s not going to
be Trent’s job to teach John Beck and Cleo the
offense. That’s not it at all. But I do think you can
learn a lot from observing the way a guy punches a
clock every day, the way he goes to work, the way he
prepares. I don’t think there’s any substitute for
that. Hopefully that starts something new here that
Cleo, John carry on even beyond Trent’s years.”

“How did this all get done?”

Randy: “We had so many conversations for awhile and it
had been a 3 month ordeal. Everybody had different
agendas and I’ve always been one to try and not get
emotional about any of these kinds of things. I think
we did a good job of that. It definitely gets
frustrating at times. It’s funny the way the deal
ended up coming down. We hadn’t had a lot of dialogue
in a week to 10 days, and in a 10 minute conversation
probably got more done than we had in the previous 10
weeks. It’s crazy sometimes the timing is right on
both sides and you know it. And you’re willing to
budge a little bit and make a deal and although it was
a long process, the end came quickly.”

Harvey Fialkov – Sun Sentinel.