Jon-Eric Sullivan will be the Dolphins’ new GM. Here are five things to know
Welcome to Miami, Mr. Sullivan.
The Dolphins hired Green Bay Packers vice president of player personnel Jon-Eric Sullivan as their new general manger on Friday, bringing an end to the week-long search for Chris Grier’s replacement.
This news comes a little more than two months after Grier and the Dolphins “mutually agreed” to part ways. With Sullivan now in the building, the Dolphins can now pivot to a coaching search after owner Stephen Ross fired Mike McDaniel on Thursday.
Here are five things to know about the Dolphins’ new GM.
NFL PEDIGREE
Sullivan is the son of longtime NFL receiver coach Jerry Sullivan with more than 40 years of experience. Most notably, the patriarch even worked for the Dolphins during the 2004 season.
In addition to his time in the NFL, the elder Sullivan worked with the 2018 Louisiana State University team that featured both Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase, two of the best receivers in the NFL today.
SCOUTING BACKGROUND
It was heavily reported that the Dolphins wanted someone with a history of scouting.
And that’s exactly how Sullivan came up.
During his 22-year stint with the Packers, he got his start as a scouting intern in 2003. From then, he has held various roles within the team’s football operations department as scouting representative at the NFL Combine, a college scout over both the Central Plains and Southeast regions as well as director of college scouting.
PHILOSOPHY
The Dolphins haven’t had the best success in the NFL Draft as of late.
Outside of De’Von Achane and Patrick Paul, the Dolphins haven’t really been able to draft high-end talent going back to 2022. Enter Sullivan.
“I’ve always been taught that the draft is your lifeblood if you will,” Sullivan told Packers broadcaster Larry McCarren in 2023. “You build through the draft. It’s a young man’s game. You want to make sure that you’re acquiring young, talented players that fit your culture. I think you supplement through free agency.”
This creed can be considered a far cry from what happened toward the end of Grier’s tenure in Miami as the former GM seemingly employed the opposite approach. With the cap constraints that currently plague the Dolphins, the need for good, cheap talent cannot be understated if Miami wants to compete any time soon.
FOUND JORDAN LOVE
It’s virtually impossible to win in today’s NFL without a quarterback.
And when the Packers selected Love with the 26th overall pick in the 2020 Draft despite the presence of future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers, the move was initially heavily criticized. That is, until Rodgers’ apparent decline in 2022 that led to his departure from Green Bay.
Since becoming the full-time starter in 2023, Love has led the Packers to a record of 27-19 and three consecutive playoff appearances. That selection, however, likely wouldn’t have happened without Sullivan’s insistence as he was apparently the scout that first told GM Brian Gutekunst about the 6-foot-4-inch signal caller from Utah State, according to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer.
DONE A BIT OF EVERYTHING
Spend more than two decades at any job, and you likely have done many tasks outside the day-to-day job description.
Sullivan’s former day-to-day job — which he loosely described as being prepared for the NFL Draft and free agency — lends itself more toward talent evaluation. Still, he’s gotten experience that falls more so in the GM realm, per Breer.
“Sullivan’s been involved in the cap too, had a voice in the coaching search that landed Matt LaFleur and even has been looped in on things like player discipline and strength-and-conditioning,” Breer wrote in 2025, calling Sullivan an “exceptional evaluator.”
