New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was a guest on the Fox Business Network on Friday morning, and here are a few sound bites from his interview with Maria Bartiromo:
Super Bowl ring in the works. “We’re in the process now, a number of companies are working on design of the ring and we’ll have a big party in my backyard in June and present them, and hopefully have a lot of fun with that. You never know if it’s going to happen again, so you like to make it special.”
Still basking in Super Bowl. “It’s so much hard work and so many little things go into it and you never know if it’s going to happen. We got close a couple of times and right near the end it got snapped away. The difference, all of a sudden, boom! When you win, I’m still elated and carrying a good smile.”
His view of free agency. “The good players are in great demand and fortunately we have quite a few good players who are now free agents and we’ll do our best to keep them. At the same time, the lifeblood of the NFL is the draft and the college players. … Our head coach, the staff and all the scouts are working very, very hard at this point.”
Wooing talent as the champs. “It goes both ways. Everyone is after your talent to weaken you. But in some cases, some of the more veteran players who have gotten paid a lot of money want to come into an environment where they feel they have a good chance of winning. In our 21 years, we’ve had the privilege of going to 10 conference championships. You get pretty good bonuses when you get into the playoffs. So the players who want their legacy and want to try to achieve going to Super Bowls, they might take a little less, some of them, to come to us. On the other hand, you have a lot of people going after our best players, which is a real challenge.”