Are Dolphins Fans Destined for a Let Down with the first day-one pick of the McDaniel era?
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By: George Forder
Fans have the tendency to want to fill immediate needs through the NFL Draft. Will Chris Grier oblige this time?
Now that Miami Dolphins’ GM Chris Grier has to extend some of their young nucleus (most notably Tua Tagovailoa), moves in free agency and the draft will come under additional scrutiny. The team will need young, cost-controlled talent over the next couple of seasons. The days of trading first-round draft picks and absorbing fat contracts are likely behind us. We don’t yet know what that will mean for Grier’s draft strategy. Will he be forced to plug holes with draft picks or will he seek out blue chip players at premium positions to save more cap space down the road?
What do fans want?
There is a wide range of opinions among the fan base, but the most common one you’ll see is targeting the offensive line with their first pick in the draft. The name that has caught fire among Dolphins’ Twitter (X) is Jackson Powers-Johnson, the Oregon center. This pick would make a ton of sense, for a few reasons. The Dolphins starting center from the last two seasons (Connor Williams) is currently rehabbing an injury and is no longer under contract with the Miami Dolphins. The player who stepped in and took snaps at center in his absence (Liam Eichenberg) struggled.
Then again, the Dolphins just added Aaron Brewer in free agency who is likely to pencil in as their day one starter at center. That means you would have to move Powers-Johnson to guard (which he has played earlier in college). You would sure up the interior, but taking a guard at twenty-one doesn’t scream “value.”
Grier’s draft history
Chris Grier has been with the Dolphins organization since 2000 and has been the general manager since 2016. Of course, he didn’t have ultimate authority over the team until the 2018/2019 offseason when Mike Tannenbaum was demoted and Adam Gase fired. 2019 was the first draft where he had the final say in any personnel decision. Let’s see how he’s drafted in the first two rounds since then.
Defensive Tackle (1st & 2nd)
Quarterback (1st)
Offensive Tackle (1st & 2nd x2)
Corner Back (1st & 2nd)
Edge (1st)
Safety (2nd)
Wide Receiver (1st)
So his most common selection was an offensive tackle. It is worth noting that two of those tackles (Eichenberg & Hunt) were seen as interior players by many evaluators. Both played tackle during their rookie seasons and eventually moved to the interior. One theory a lot of folks have is that the best offensive linemen tend to get moved to tackle early in their playing careers (high school or early in college). Either way, Grier tends to target tackles with these early selections, not interior college players.
He also went after corner and defensive tackle twice with these early picks. As Dolphins fans are aware Interior defensive line is quickly turning into one of the premium positions in the NFL, while corner has long been one of the more important defensive positions. Some notable positions missing here: tight end, running back, guard, center, and linebacker.
What pick would outrage fans?
The level of outrage will differ from fan to fan, but as far as I can tell, the Dolphins picking a corner in the first round would upset the most folks. Chris Grier commented that they have first-round grades on fewer than 21 players, but they’re confident there will be 1-2 impact guys available at 21. What is serendipitous about this is that one of these top corners is likely to be available at pick 21.
If you look at the NFL consensus big board, there are five corners in the top 24 players. Terrion Arnold, Quinyon Mitchel, Cooper DeJean, Nate Wiggins, and Kool-Aid McKinstry. Now there is a very good chance that Mitchel and Arnold will be gone before Miami selects, but there is a high probability that one or two of the remaining three will be sitting there. The most logical choice would be DeJean as he has a little more versatility and could help at safety/big nickel. Will Grier look for value here and take a corner (that could replace Ramsey or Fuller down the road) or trade back and fill holes elsewhere?
Final Thoughts
One of the biggest mistakes fans can make (myself included) is getting too attached to certain draft selections. When the team inevitably bypasses “your guy,” you feel frustrated, slighted, and like the team is going in the wrong direction. The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which someone who is an amateur in a particular field or topic has an overabundance of confidence in their judgment within that field. Another way to think about it is that you don’t know what you don’t know…. a lack of exposure to a field will leave you clueless about certain processes and make it all the more confusing when certain decisions are made. When this happens, most folks fall back on the idea that (insert executive/GM name), is just clueless and “ if I were in charge,” we would be making the right decisions. Of course, in 99% of situations this is a completely ridiculous notion… but it does feel nice, doesn’t it?
This is all to say that a lot of general managers don’t view the draft as a way to plug immediate holes in the roster, they view it as a way to build the foundation of their team going into the future. It’s my opinion that Chris Grier is one of these general managers and that he is going to target the most talented player from a premium position that happens to be available at pick 21. That could mean filling a pressing need by drafting JC Latham, Brian Thomas, or Byron Murphy in the first round… or it could mean drafting Cooper DeJean or Terrion Arnold. The reality is that we won’t know if a pick was good until a year or two after it’s made, so let’s just sit back and enjoy the bumpy ride that is being a Dolphins fan in late April.
Originally posted on The Phinsider
