NFL draft’s second day begins with a bang for Miami Dolphins but ends without sizzle
It started with something of a burst, because the first thing the Miami Dolphins did on the second day of the NFL draft was reach into the land of crawfish and creole cooking in Lafeyette, LA., and pluck Robert Hunt onto their roster.
In so doing the Dolphins added a 6-foot-5 and 323-pound offensive lineman who might play right tackle or might play right guard, but whatever position he plays, it’s going to be with the disposition of a runaway 20-ton steamroller.
When he’d finished celebrating with his family after hearing from the Dolphins, Hunt got on a video call and said this about that disposition:
“I think I play the game hard,” he said. “I try to strain and I try to finish people. I think I just play this game very hard. I play like it’s my last time playing.”
Finish people?
First time I see this dude, I may try to hug him.
Because that’s the kind of attitude the Dolphins have needed on their offensive line for a long time. That is the type of approach a team such as the Baltimore Ravens have enjoyed for years and teams such as the San Francisco 49ers and Tennessee Titans have added in recent years.
Hunt, you should know, is more than just attitude. He’s gifted. I tell you this not because I’m some student of University of Louisiana at Lafeyette game tape. But because two people that actually are, noticed Miami’s pick and approved.
“Well now,” a text from one source read. “That’s actually a good pick.”
So it seemed like a good day was coming.
And if you ask the Dolphins, they continued on that course with more good work and good players, by adding Alabama defensive tackle Raekwon Davis with their second pick of the second round and Texas defensive back Brandon Jones with their third-round pick, the 70th overall selection.
“We feel really good about the picks,” Dolphins general manager Chris Grier said afterward.
“Agree, with Chris,” head coach Brian Flores added. “Just feel good about Robert, Raekwon, Brandon, all three picks. All tough, physical players. Fundamentally sound. But like all rookies, they got a long way to go and a lot of improvements to make.”
Cool.
But expected.
The truth is none of the now-30 Dolphins drafts I’ve covered have included the words, “We blew it today and we already know it because we didn’t get the players we really wanted.”
Those words, curiously enough, have never been uttered by a Dolphins official or an NFL head coach or general manager anywhere the past three decades that I know of. And yet we know such mistakes have been made.
By other teams in the past. And by the Dolphins in the past.
But now your concern should be that it’s been made by this Dolphins administration of today. On Thursday.
So why should this concern be part of the possibilities as we look at the second and third round work by this team?
Because to the untrained eye there seem to be questions that cannot get asked during a hastily arranged 10-minute zoom conference call between Flores and Grier with reporters, bloggers, and team media.
And these are the questions:
The Dolphins started the day with 12 draft picks. That’s more than twice as many draft picks as wins the team enjoyed last season.
And instead of using some of those abundant second- and third-day picks to move up the draft board and, at the very least, increase chances of picking someone with higher value, the Dolphins stood.
No moves.
Four teams moved up in the second round to pick their guys -- the Colts, Seahawks, Patriots and Panthers.
Three teams moved up in the third round to pick their guys -- the Patriots, Saints and Lions. The Patriots actually moved up three separate times in the third round.
And in the abstract that means virtually nothing because those teams have their needs and their strategies while the Dolphins have different needs.
But when it’s Seattle and New England and New Orleans and even the Colts deciding to make moves despite owning less draft capital than Miami, it vexes me. It turns me into that investor who’s watching somebody’s else’s stock broker find 12 percent return while my broker is coming back with five percent.
So I’m asking, “What’s he doing that you’re not doing?”
If we look at Friday’s second round, one thing the Dolphins decided they weren’t going to do is add a running back.
So between the time the Dolphins picked Hunt at No. 39 and Davis at No. 56, the rest of the NFL selected three running backs -- Wisconsin’s Jonathan Taylor, FSU’s Cam Akers and Ohio State’s JK Dobbins.
Miami wasn’t interested enough in any of these players to trade up to get one.
“We’re calling teams all the time up and down,” Grier said, “(but we weren’t) specifically moving up to go after any real specific player.”
And, I get it, the Dolphins are looking for certain types of players. Maybe those three running backs are not Miami type players. But they were Colts, Rams, and Ravens type players because those are the teams that picked them.
And in at least one instance -- the Ravens -- I wish the Dolphins were that type of team. Because the Ravens were 14-2 last year in what was originally billed as a rebuilding year.
So there you have the case of the great running mystery. It’s curious because the Dolphins have veteran running back Jordan Howard signed for two years. And then not a lot behind him.
The Dolphins have preferred to build more in the trenches so far this draft. They’ve drafted two offensive lineman and a defensive tackle.
Davis is the tackle who said he can play 4-3 defensive tackle, 3-4 defensive end and even 3-4 nose tackle. And I have zero problem with this player. None.
And the Dolphins were excited by the choice so that’s good.
But let’s just be clear what this player seems to be: Davis is a space-eater. Miami picked him, not because he has a grand history of collapsing the pocket or consistently getting in the quarterback’s face from right up the middle of the line.
The Dolphins chose Davis primarily to stop the run and fill space.
You know what that fundamentally makes this player? A run-down player.
A one-down player..
In a passing league.
The Dolphins invested a second-round pick to get a one-down player.
This is the same philosophy that drafted another Raekwon -- Raekwon McMillan -- in 2017.
McMillan is a good player. But he’s primarily a run-down linebacker who was picked in the second round to play in a passing league.
So the second-round is where Miami’s filling needs for run-down players?
Buffalo used the bottom third of the second round (54th overall) to pick a pass rusher in A.J. Epenesa. Same with New England, who selected defensive end Josh Uche with the 60th overall pick.
No one knows if Epenesa or Uche will play longer or produce more than Davis, or vice versa. But philosophically, they’ll play on passing downs when the league’s teams are throwing between 60-70 percent of the time. In Miami, meanwhile, Davis is likely going to be playing 30 percent of the time unless he becomes the next Ndamukong Suh.
And now one thing about Saturday, the final day of the 2020 draft: The Dolphins have nine picks remaining, including two picks in the fourth round and three more in the fifth. That’s a lot.
No one’s going to complain if the Dolphins opt out of the quantity and try for quality.
This story was originally published April 25, 2020 at 3:47 AM.
