What’s been missing from Grier’s draft classes, and how it could hold Dolphins back
On New Year’s Eve 2018, Stephen Ross and Chris Grier spelled out their long-term blueprint for the Miami Dolphins, and it’s instructive to return to those comments now to get a sense of what must happen next to realize that championship vision.
They pledged to build something sustainable, using the draft to not only build the roster but ensure the Dolphins are positioned to be in the mix every year.
“The decision was really made as I looked at it and seeing that today, we’re no further along than when I really bought the team,” Ross said 25 months ago. “We’ve been operating under a philosophy that we had a good young roster and it needed maybe free agents and draft choices and we’d be very competitive. To keep operating under that philosophy would be like the definition of insanity: doing the same thing and really expecting a different result. So I thought it was time for the organization to take a different approach, much like when I do in my business.
“If you look back, look what we’ve done every year since I’ve been here,” he continued, alluding to the team’s past patchwork roster building approach. “If we keep doing that, where are we going to be? We’ll be anywhere from 6-10 to 10-6. That’s not good enough.”
The Dolphins went 10-6 last year. That was a big improvement over 2019, when they lost 11 of 16 games after detonating their roster.
Since Grier was given the keys to the organization, he has followed his plan. He jettisoned underachieving veterans with bloated salaries, weathered some short-term pain for what he believed to be long-term benefit, and has maneuvered to land nine top-60 picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts.
And so, Year 3 should be rocket-launch time for the franchise.
But that’s not a given for one important reason: Draft picks are only valuable if you hit on them.
And it’s far from guaranteed that the players the Dolphins selected to replace those high-priced free agents are appreciably better than the players jettisoned during the 2019 offseason.
Put another way, the Dolphins have swapped out many of those older B or C players with younger, albeit cheaper, B or C players.
To win a title, the Dolphins are going to need A, and even A-plus players. That’s the blueprint followed by this past season’s conference champions.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl with homegrown stars Mike Evans, Devin White, Ronald Jones II, Vita Vea and Antoine Winfield Jr.
The Kansas City Chiefs had seven Pro Bowlers in 2020. Five of those were drafted by the organization.
But since Grier became the Dolphins’ general manager in 2016, he’s selected just three players who have made the Pro Bowl, and two of those three — Laremy Tunsil and Minkah Fitzpatrick — were traded away in 2019’s fire sale.
That’s not to say Grier’s drafts have been misses. They’ve been solid (aside from 2017, which was well below average).
His best draft pick has been Xavien Howard, who was an All-Pro in 2020 and received consideration for defensive player of the year.
Mike Gesicki, Jerome Baker, Andrew Van Ginkel and Raekwon Davis are legit building blocks. Jakeem Grant and Jason Sanders are among the league’s best specialists.
But a roster full of solid players is just good enough to get a team to 10-6. The Dolphins will have a hard ceiling until they start acquiring and developing special players. And so far, Grier hasn’t drafted enough of those.
Football might be the toughest sport to quantify a player’s value. It’s the ultimate team game, so even quarterback stats are dependent on the players around them. Plus, independent tape-crunchers do not know the assignments on any given play.
So Pro Football Focus’ player rankings should not be taken as gospel. But they can be a useful tool. If the website ranked someone in the top 10 in his position, it’s a fair bet that that player had an excellent season.
And how do the Dolphins stack up? Not great.
They had just two top-10 players in 2020: Howard (who graded out second among 100 qualifying NFL corners) and Gesicki (eighth among 71 tight ends).
What’s more, just two other Dolphins draft picks were in the top third at their position: Van Ginkel (12th out of 100 edge defenders) and DeVante Parker (29th out of 127 wide receivers). Myles Gaskin finished just outside of that threshold (26th out of 70 running backs).
In fairness, Davis (37th of 100) and Christian Wilkins (47th) were slightly above-average defensive tackles in 2020, and Baker was in the top half of linebackers (37th of 83).
But that’s where the good news ends.
The Dolphins’ drafted offensive linemen, including 18th overall pick Austin Jackson, all received poor grades. Their safeties were all below average. First-round cornerback Noah Igbinoghene barely saw the field. And Tua Tagovailoa, the No. 5 pick in the 2020 draft, was 21st out of 38 qualifying quarterbacks.
(It should be said that NFL players make their biggest leaps between Years 1 and 2, so it’s way premature to make any sweeping conclusions about Tagovailoa or any other member of last year’s draft class.)
Grier, in his only comments to reporters since last April, acknowledged last month the obvious: The Dolphins simply weren’t dynamic enough in 2020.
“We always talk about — Brian and I, Brandon [Shore] and the scouts and coaches — competition makes everyone better, and we always talk about upgrading the roster in all areas,” he said. “There’s places that we want to upgrade at all parts of the roster and obviously having playmakers on offense and defense is what the great teams have and we’ll keep doing that here in trying to address issues on both sides of the ball.”
With four top-50 picks this year, he will soon have another chance to do just that. The Dolphins’ blueprint might depend on it.
This story was originally published February 10, 2021 at 10:28 AM.
