GM Trent Baalke comments on each of his draft picks

San Francisco 49ers General manager Trent Baalke made his intentions very clear at the 2015 NFL Draft. He was not going to draft for need, but rather the best player available in each round. 

Baalke reiterated that sentiment when he told CSN Bay Area.

"I think it was all about our best player," Baalke said. "When we went into the draft, we were looking at certain criteria that we felt we needed to do. We wanted to stay big. We wanted to get faster. We wanted to get as much football intellect as we could out of each position.

"We wanted healthy guys, guys that had a history of playing and not missing games due to injury. Some guys are injury-prone. We wanted to stay away from that as much as we could. We felt we addressed all of that. And they're good guys. They're going to come in here. They know their role right now."

Here are the comments made about each player Baalke selected:

First round: DL Arik Armstead, Oregon 


"He is unique in the sense that he 6-7. He's 296-plus pounds. He runs (the 40-yard dash) in the five-flat range. He is a tremendous athlete for his size and for that position. Four techniques are hard to find in the National Football League. True four techniques are guys that can two gap, play with leverage, leverage blocks and control the line of scrimmage. That is a big part of what we do here. In any given draft, there are four or five. I'm not sure that we've ever had more than five on our board that we felt were draftable."

Second round: SS Jaquiski Tartt, Samford

“He is an athletic guy at 220 pounds, ran 4.43. He’s big. He’s fast. He’s physical. He’ s a good tackler, very good open-field tackler. He knows how to find the ball. He creates the opportunity for us to match up, as does Jimmie (Ward). Albeit different, they are different sizes, they have different skillsets. They’re both four-down players in our opinion and we like the situation we’re in. And obviously Eric’s (Reid) is back there, Craig Dahl’s back there. There’s going to be a lot of competition. Competition is good, you want competition at every position.”

Third round: OLB Eli Harold, Virginia


“We really liked the person. He is a tremendous young man. He’s a pro’s pro. He takes the game very seriously. He works at it. He’s tirelessly working at his craft. Everybody we spoke to about Eli said nothing but positive things. And that is going back to his high school coach and everybody that’s worked with him at the University of Virginia. We really felt good about him as a person and then you put on the tape and the guy’s had 15, 15.5 sacks the last two years. He went up against Miami this past year and (New York Giants draft pick Ereck) Flowers on that team and performed quite well. I think he had two sacks against him. He’s played big in some big games, so there were a lot of things to like.”

Fourth round: TE Blake Bell, Oklahoma


“We do see him as an emergency quarterback. We do see a guy that we can train up there. That was brought to me by the coaches. The coaches took a look. My hat's off to them because they did the work. They went through and took a look at him last week as a quarterback and kind of gave us a feeling that, you know what, we can get this guy ready to play and be an emergency backup in that situation. But he's definitely been brought in here to be a tight end. That's a good room. There's a lot of talent in that room. So there's going to be a lot of competition going into this offseason and into this training camp.”

Fourth round: RB Mike Davis, South Carolina


“That's a player that the scouts did a tremendous job with getting information, as they always do. He's a guy that's been intriguing for us. Been pretty much in the same place on our board the entire draft process, which is always nice. Sometimes you get guys that move up, move down, based on different information. This is a guy that stayed really in the same spot the whole way through.”

Fourth round: WR DeAndre Smelter, Georgia Tech


“He's big. He's physical. He can block. He can run after the catch. He's got huge hands, size 11 hands. He's a physical wide receiver. One of the things that coach and I talked about through this process is we wanted to get bigger, we wanted to get faster, we wanted to get more competitive. We wanted more four-down players, guys that could go out there and compete on special teams. And we feel we addressed that with most of these guys, if not all of these guys.”

Fifth round: P Bradley Pinion, Clemson


“He does a nice job controlling the ball, pinning it inside the 20. He's been real effective. He's shown the ability to kick off as well, which is always an asset. At the same time, Andy has been here for a long time and he's a heck of a punter. We expect him to come in and continue to compete (with Andy Lee). It's not Bradley's job, it's Andy's job. It's Brad's job to come in and win that job.”

Sixth round: OL Ian Silberman, Boston College


“Guard/tackle combination. He's played both inside and outside. Another guy that has a high football intellect and toughness. That and he's got size and he can run. There's something to work with there. That's what you're looking for the later you get into the draft. You're looking for traits and you’re looking for the intangibles. Because If they have some traits and they've got good intangibles, you know you're going to get as much out of them as they got in them. That's what you're looking for.”

Seventh round: OL Trenton Brown, Florida

“Right now we see him as an offensive lineman. He played offensive tackle in 2013. He played guard and a little bit of tackle in 2014. He's 6-8. He's 350 pounds. He runs a 5.23. He has 36-inch arms. There's something to work there. It's a big piece of clay right now. We got some work to do. But he's played a lot of football at a high level of competition. He's shown versatility. He's shown the ability to learn multiple positions. With that, you got something to work with.”

Seventh round: TE Rory “Busta” Anderson, South Carolina


“He was the highest-rated player on our board. Once again, I keep going back to that, but you never go wrong taking good football players. He was the highest-rated player on our board. It just so happened that Arizona, the pick or two right after us, took a tight end. Maybe that was the guy. If he was the highest-rated tight end and we were able to keep that from happening, more power to us. I'm not saying that Arizona, that was their target either. But you're always looking to take the best player available. If you have him, that means someone else can't get him.”

(h/t CSN Bay Area)