Dolphins’ Chris Grier, Chiefs’ Andy Reid elaborate more on the Tyreek Hill trade
A six-pack of Miami Dolphins notes on a Tuesday:
▪ Fans know about new Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill’s elite speed. But Chiefs coach Andy Reid says that’s hardly the only quality that makes Hill special.
“He can run all the routes. He’s good at all of them. There’s not one he’s not good at,” Reid told me in a hallway at The Breakers in Palm Beach, during this week’s NFL owners meetings.
“He’s a heck of a player,” Reid said. “Great person. Loving kid. He’ll do a tremendous job for the Dolphins. He’s smart.”
And oh, yes: “He can run fast,” Reid said, one of the NFL’s best coaches stating the obvious in an endearing way.
Reid believed Hill also will help second-year receiver Jaylen Waddle.
“They’ll do a nice job,” Reid said. “He’ll work with Waddle, too. Waddle is a young guy. Tyreek is a veteran player. They’ll work well together.”
It wasn’t easy for the Chiefs to give up a player who has made the Pro Bowl in all six of his NFL seasons and caught 56 touchdowns.
But Kansas City was pleased with the return from Miami — the 29th and 50th picks in this month’s draft, fourth-rounders this April and next April and a sixth-rounder next April.
And ultimately, Kansas City didn’t want to pay Hill’s asking price after agent Drew Rosenhaus saw the wide receiver market explode (including Davante Adams’ new deal) and asked the Chiefs for a new deal. There were several millions dollars separating the Dolphins’ and Chiefs’ final offers.
“The deal ended up being good for the Dolphins and good for us,” Reid said. “There’s a yin and a yang to everything.
“You can handle it any way you want to handle it. We felt like Tyreek deserved an opportunity. We came in aggressive and then after we got to a point, we just said, ‘Hey, listen, in this day and age, you have issues that you have to deal with with the cap,’ so we felt like it was better to allow him to go ahead and be traded. You can go different routes. You can play hard ball with a player and do that, or you can kind of go about the way I did. Or we did.”
Reid told reporters that “the cap never gets far away from your thought process, because you’re always dealing with it. So [Chiefs general manager] Brett Veach has got to sit in there and manage that with his guys and if you want to keep consistency throughout years you’ve got to be able to do that and still stay at a high level. So I love Tyreek Hill.
“There was no rift between Tyreek Hill and myself. I thought he deserved an opportunity if that’s where he wanted to go. He’s a family man with a few kids, and he’s got to be able to support them now and down the road and this gives him an opportunity to do that. Put him a place where he has a home, and at the same time, it gave us great compensation.”
▪ Hours later, in an outdoor terrace at The Breakers, Dolphins general manager Chris Grier explained the team’s decision to make Hill the NFL’s highest-paid receiver:
“As other moves were being made around the league and you start seeing the structures of those contracts, it was about adding a player with such a unique talent,” Grier said.
“And for what Mike [McDaniel] and I were talking about for what we need in our offense. A dynamic catch and run [guy], with [Jaylen] Waddle and Cedrick Wilson. Arguably Tyreek is the best run-after-the-catch receiver in the league.
“So the opportunity to add to the offense, what he does, the skill set we were looking for, we couldn’t pass on [that]. When you do a deal like that you talk to ownership and [president] Tom [Garfinkel] and they were fantastic in terms of what we were looking for and [team executive/contract specialist Brandon Shore] did a great job of working through the deal.”
▪ Grier, on having just five draft picks in this draft and none until No. 102: “We’ve been building here for the past two years. The chance to get aggressive and add a talented top player at his position [Hill] is something we felt was too good to pass up [even though it came at the expenses of three picks in this draft and two next year].
“We feel good about the players we’ve drafted. It’s been exciting to watch those guys all offseason working and they pop by the office. They’re young guys and they all want to keep working to get better.”
▪ Grier reflected on how the Laremy Tunsil trade is still paying dividends, three years later:
“I still remember the day we traded him; I was crying,” Grier said. “We both were because he’s such a good guy. Every once in awhile he’ll text me me and say, ‘Hey, you know.’‘ In terms of the return, I never would have guessed it would have led to all of this. Somebody told me the other day what we ended up acquiring based on it.”
It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
▪ We hear the Dolphins initially had interest in re-signing free agent running back Duke Johnson, but ultimately decided against it because McDaniel thought there were better fits for his zone running scheme. Johnson signed with Buffalo.
▪ The Breakers isn’t far from one of Dolphins owner Stephen Ross’ homes. So Ross took the opportunity to invite his top football people — including coach Mike McDaniel and his wife — to dinner at his home on Monday night.
Ross has spoken to reporters at past owners meetings but didn’t this time around.
This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 2:04 PM.
