INDIANAPOLIS — The Patriots have never been about making a big splash at the annual NFL Scouting Combine.

There are some coaches, GMs and players you can’t help but notice. On Friday afternoon, new Redskins coach Mike Shanahan had a sizable entourage around him when he entered, while Florida quarterback Tim Tebow touched off a small riot when he arrived for his session with the media.

But late Friday morning, Patriots Director of Player Personnel Nick Caserio was so unassuming in his arrival for a Q&A, most national media didn’t know he had even been in the building until after he had left. His 30-minute session with a handful of New England media — which took place next to an ATM on an out-of-the-way concourse at Lucas Oil Stadium — touched on a wide variety of topics, including his thoughts on some of the deepest areas of this year’s draft. (For a transcript of the entire session, click here.)

Caserio pointed to the safeties, as well as the offensive and defensive tackles, as being a particularly deep group this year. But more than anything else, he says this is a good year for what he calls the “conversion players.”

“The defensive end/outside linebackers, I’d say that’s a pretty deep group this year,” Caserio said.

That should mean good things for the Patriots, who have traditionally gone after those kinds of players and used them (or tried to use them) as edge rushers. But many of those guys available this year are not the type of classic conversion players whom New England traditionally covets — taller types in the mold of Willie McGinest (6-foot-5, 270 pounds).

While the Patriots have swung and missed on those types of outside guys in recent years, shorter, stouter players like Elvis Dumervil (5-foot-11, 260 pounds, 17 sacks in 2009) and James Harrison (6 feet, 242 pounds, 16 sacks in 2008) have flourished at that spot … after being passed over by the Patriots in the draft.

That being said — and with conversion types at the combine like Michigan’s Brandon Graham (6-foot-2, 263 pounds) who may not be classic New England-style hybrids but had great success in college with 20 sacks in two years — is this the year the Patriots tweak their approach when it comes to looking for edge rushers?

“I think that’s an interesting point, because the reality is that pool of players, the 6-4, 260-pound guys that run 4.6, there's not many of them,” Caserio said. “Some of the small guys … like, I think Dumervil is a great example. A 5-11, 260-pound guy … maybe he's not the prototypical outside linebacker type, but he can rush the passer.

“There’s different ways to skin a cat. You’re looking for this ideal. The reality is that sometimes that ideal is hard to find.”

One of the reasons those ideals are so hard to find these days — no matter the body type — is that more and more teams are playing a 3-4 defense these days. Caserio estimated that “half the league is employing some 3-4 type of configuration.”

“It is becoming more challenging,” he said, “because there are more teams that are essentially looking at the same pool of players, so it kind of limits your opportunities, because you realize you’re really competing really with the rest of the league on that front.”