What will Dolphins do in the draft? History, logistics provide clues of Grier’s plan
Chaos is not just possible, but expected in this wildest of NFL drafts.
Even with safeguards in place, technological glitches could muck up the league’s first ever virtual player selection meeting, which begins Thursday. Old-school football people will have to navigate technology designed for Gen Z.
But for all the coronavirus-caused weirdness surrounding this year’s draft, many believe this could end up being a relatively straight-forward affair.
Yes, general managerChris Grier will be calling in the Dolphins’ picks sequestered in his own home, after discussions via video conference with coach Brian Flores, his top lieutenant Marvin Allen and the organization’s numbers whiz, Brandon Shore.
But as for the players Grier actually selects? They on balance will probably be more, not less, predictable than ever.
NFL general managers are risk adverse by nature, and that’s when they’re in their comfort zone.
They will be nowhere near that safe space next weekend, with owners, coaches and scouts scattered throughout the country, relying on WiFi connections and computer reliability to carry out conversations that usually are done face-to-face.
So when considering all the things that could go wrong next weekend, expect Grier to rely on what has gone right in the past:
Major conference studs from the Southeast and Midwest with prototypical measurements. And decisions made mostly in advance using input from reliable sources.
“I do think you’ll see general managers who really trust an area scout’s [opinion] are going to go back to that area a little more frequently,” said Mark Dominik, the former Buccaneers general manager who is now a host on SiriusXM.
Dolphins’ familiar scouts
For those of us on the outside, it’s too bad Grier promoted Matt Winston to assistant director of scouting last year. If Winston were still serving as an area scout, he would probably be Grier’s go-to guy. It was Winston who helped convinced Grier to take Laremy Tunsil and Xavien Howard in 2016, the cornerstones of Grier’s best draft as GM.
But it’s not like the Dolphins had a bunch of rookies scouring the country for talent this past fall.
Terry Bradway, the team’s senior scout who covers the East Coast, is a football lifer and a former general manager of the New York Jets. Chase Leshin, the Dolphins’ Southeast point man, has been with the organization for 12 seasons.
But when asked to single one out for praise during a video conference with local reporters, Grier wisely demurred.
“I think we have a really, really good group of guys,” Grier said. “I think they’re all very talented. We rely on all of them because we have a lot of really good scouts. The area scouts are really the ones that know the players the best. They’ve seen them the most. They spend the most time around the players, so with Marvin and the national scouts and Adam [Engroff] and Matt and [Ron Brockington] and Reggie [McKenzie] — those guys for us and like myself, we go into schools, you come in for a day and you work where area scouts go to those schools and they’ve been to their area schools three or four times at least and have been around the kids the most.
“So you really have to rely on all your guys,” Grier added. “We spend time; we listen to them. We’ve had a lot of meetings. We’ve spent a lot of time just going over the backgrounds, the character and what they saw, especially on the player’s tape this year. It’s not any different than any other year. The tape really tells you what the player is and then the Combine and all of the other stuff maybe gives you a little bit clearer picture, but at the end of the day, it’s what the guys do on film.”
The film Grier values the most is how players fare against the best competition. Of his 28 picks since 2016, all but four have come from Power 5 schools.
In Grier’s first four drafts as GM, he’s taken eight players from the Big Ten (including three Ohio State Buckeyes) and six from the SEC (three in the first round).
An important name to remember: Grant Wallace, an Ivy League-educated, St. Louis-based personnel evaluator assigned to the Midwest who helped convince Grier to take three players from the Big Ten last spring.
Mocked NFL drafts
That’s not to say there will be no surprises, even if technology cooperates. Those mock drafts everyone loves reading (and debating) are more worthless than normal, says NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah, a former scout for several NFL teams.
“I believe we’ll see less group-think in the draft this year,” Jeremiah wrote on Twitter. “At pro days, coaches & scouts (from diff teams) spend so much time around each other & they end up forming a consensus on players. Not the case this year. Some will be shocked at how high/low these guys go.”
So maybe Tua Tagovailoa really will fall out of the top 10, as many around the league think is not only possible, but increasingly likely. Maybe Jordan Love, a second-round pick for some, will be the third quarterback off the board.
(About the only sure thing is the Bengals taking Joe Burrow No. 1. Not even a pandemic could disrupt that supply chain.)
But the players hurt the most by the pandemic — which has shut down all in-person predraft meetings (including pro days) — are players who weren’t invited to the NFL Scouting Combine or were not healthy enough to participate.
“The non-Combine players where you didn’t get a chance to get medical, where you didn’t get a chance to visit with them, it’s going to penalize them a little bit, unfortunately, and it’s going to be the benefit of the guys that were big school players or guys that have been to the Combine,” Jeremiah said.
He added: “The medical is the biggest hangup on these guys because the last thing you want to do is assume you’ve got a healthy player and you spend a fourth-round pick on him and he comes to your building and you find out, this guy has got an arthritic knee or some other type of an issue. So not having a chance to get your own medical on those players is going to be tough.”
That’s what could ultimately knock Tagovailoa from the top 10. Yes, he has provided glowing reports from his own doctors, but teams will always have some degree of skepticism and apprehension without their own people examining him.
Fewer trades expected
One more way in which 2020 will likely play out differently than in years past: The negotiation and execution of trades.
Time is always short, with just 10 minutes granted per team to make a pick in Round 1, seven in Round 2, five in Rounds 3-6 and four in Round 7.
But those windows will seem to fly by even faster with all the moving parts involved with a virtual draft.
So expect fewer trades, especially after the first round, than in years past, Dominik said.
Some work can be done in advance — Grier said Thursday that “every team calls every team” in the days leading up to the draft to discuss contingencies — but many decisions have to be made on the fly.
Which brings us back to the original point: Safe, not sorry, might be the M.O. of Grier and the 31 other decision-makers around the league.
“The difference is obviously we’re not in the same room, but we did a lot of work in December starting on the draft, with all of the picks we had coming into this draft, and the coaching staff and the scouts have all done a tremendous job of evaluation all the way through December and all the way through the spring until now,” he said. “Little tweaks here and there. Obviously we’re not in the same room, but we’ve done a lot of meetings, a lot of video conferencing with the technology mediums and we feel really good about our process, and we’re ready to go.”
DRAFT INFORMATION
▪ Round 1: Thursday, 8 p.m., ABC, ESPN, NFL Network, ESPN Deportes.
▪ Rounds 2-3: Friday, 7 p.m., ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, NFL Network, ESPN Deportes.
▪ Rounds 4-7: Saturday, 12 p.m., ABC, ESPN, NFL Network, ESPN Deportes.
DOLPHINS’ 2020 PICKS
▪ Round 1: Picks 5, 18, 26.
▪ Round 2: Picks 39, 56
▪ Round 3: Pick 70
▪ Round 4: Pick 141
▪ Round 5: Picks 153, 154, 173
▪ Round 6: Pick 185
▪ Round 7: Picks 227, 246, 251
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 2:58 PM.
