Wide Receiver Darius Slayton
Q. What's your satisfaction or lack of satisfaction right now with the current contract situation?
DARIUS SLAYTON: I'm satisfied. We got what we needed to get done. Just looking forward to getting back to playing ball.
Q. What did you get done?
DARIUS SLAYTON: We just adjusted my contract this year a little bit. Just try to make it a little more lucrative. But business is business, and I'm here.
Q. Are there like incentives?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Yes.
Q. So not necessarily guaranteed money, but to be clear, you probably did want more of
that, right?
DARIUS SLAYTON: I think anybody does, you know. At the end of the day, playing a game I love, a game I dreamed about playing since I was a kid, so happy to be back with my teammates ready to go.
Q. Is the workout bonus still on the table too that was in your existing contract?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Honestly, I don't even know because it's based on like a count of these things. So, I don't even know the percentages of whatever it is. If it is, cool. If not, oh, well.
Q. How did you balance between not allowing that whole process to get too personal? Okay, this is business, I can't take this personally.
DARIUS SLAYTON: Mostly just kind of let my agent do it for real. I just was working out, making sure I was in shape, making sure I was sharp. I think about football primarily. I just kind of let him fill me in on the details here and there, but my primary focus is obviously to play ball and be as good of a player as I can be on the field.
Q. They drafted a lot of young receivers, another one this year. When the season's over, you're still on top of the yardage thing, things like that. Do you kind of -- is it hard for you to look past this year and the handwriting on the wall kind of thing with all these young guys in the room now?
DARIUS SLAYTON: I try to just live in the moment, live in this year, enjoying my time with them, enjoying my time around them. Who knows what the future holds? I can't know it anyway. So I just try to be my best day in and day out.
Q. In the past, 2022, when they gave you a pay cut, you performed at a level that exceeded what your pay was, right? So how much perhaps do you look forward this year to showing with the incentives in the deal like I'm better than what this base pay is?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Sure, I definitely look forward to it, but receivers are a position of opportunity. All I can do is do the best of my ability with the opportunities I get, and hopefully, that will prove again I am who I think I am.
Q. Do you wonder how many opportunities you're going to get? Do you wonder if I'm going to get these opportunities?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Not really. Multiple receivers play at the same time. The ball can go to lots of places.
Q. I was going to ask along those lines, just the idea -- you play a position that's based on opportunity. You can go out there and run X number of routes and the ball doesn't come your way or vice versa. For you, was any part of this looking at how many opportunities am I going to get, or was it really just a business thing and not necessarily related to opportunities?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Of course, but I mean, at the same time, like I said, there are multiple receivers on the field. You've got Tyreek and Jaylen. They both get a thousand. Ja'Marr and Tee. There's a bunch of receiver tandems, even trios in the league, that all have a chance to feed and get the ball. At the end of the day, it's on the coaches to kind of distribute the ball and get it to the guys they feel do the best with it in their hands. My job is to be one of those best guys.
Q. Do you feel adequately appreciated hereafter for how the team and your agent handled this?
DARIUS SLAYTON: I think so as a person. It's been nice to kind of come back, and I see people in the building. They greet me and say, hey, nice to see you. I'm happy you're back, those types of things. It kind of tells me I've been a good person in the building. I've been a good human being since I've been here. There's a lot of good people around here. I'm happy to still be here.
Q. You guys play a hard position. You've got to be mentally tough to be a receiver. Everyone else can do a job individually, but you've got to have a lot of things happen before you get the opportunity to have the football. How do you stay locked in throughout the game as opposed to everyone perceiving you guys as just doing cardio out there?
DARIUS SLAYTON: You've got to be a little delusional. You've got to think the ball is coming all the time, even if it may or may not. Just kind of trick yourself. At the end of the day, you can only measure yourself by when the ball comes your way, did you catch it? If it didn't come your way, were you open? That's kind of the reality of being a receiver.
Q. Do you have early impressions of the No. 1 pick, Nabers?
DARIUS SLAYTON: He's talented. He's definitely talented. Catches the ball well. He's got strong hands. Seems to be pretty smart. I've only been here two days, but he seems to be pretty smart. He seems to be picking up the playbook pretty well. I expect him to be a good player for us.
Q. How about Drew Lock, first impressions of him?
DARIUS SLAYTON: He throws some good balls. Throws a nice ball. Been accurate. Again, only my second day working with him, but from what I've seen so far, he looks good.
Q. You have free agency next off-season, you're 28 years old. You have a chance to get a pretty decent contract if you play well. It's only year six for you, right? Where are you in that?
DARIUS SLAYTON: I'm aware of it, but to be honest, I don't really feel I have the luxury to look that far ahead considering we won four games last year. You kind of got to get over that hump first as a collective and then worry about that type of stuff. My primary focus is getting back here, helping the guys in my room, leading the guys in my room, and trying to get this team back to where we were two years ago.
Q. Darius, what do you think Daniel Jones needs to do this year to be adequately appreciated by this fan base and then just in the NFL as a whole?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Win. I think we all need to win. If you want to be seen as a good player in this league, if you lose, the general consensus is they must all be bad players in they're losing. If you win -- two years ago when we were in the playoffs, there wasn't this negative press. Everybody was like, actually, it was he needs help. We need to get better receivers, and better weapons for him to be better. The narrative comes and goes depending on how your team does. Kind of like I said, it's on me and him and all the rest of the guys we have to get this team going in the right direction.
Q. Is this wide receiver room going to be able to survive SEC Saturdays?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Yeah, we've got a lot now, a lot of rivals now. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.
Q. Do you feel like an elder statesman?
DARIUS SLAYTON: Honestly, no, but ironically, I am probably. Got a good six, or five years of age on these guys now, so I guess I am. I still feel like I'm pretty young.
