Dolphin Media Joins Chorus of Boos

[Tailgun]

After watching MVN on DirecTV this morning and hearing Adam Schein totally rip into Miami's top picks as the worst blunder of the draft, it struck me just how unanimous the disgust is around the league with the Dolphin front office and their incompetence yesterday.

Some other samples, with links and excerpts, below:

To fans, Dolphins fumbled big time
BY DAN LE BATARD

..the Dolphins did on this Saturday what they haven't been able to do on Sundays since Dan Marino retired. They passed. They passed on Brady Quinn, the second-best quarterback in the draft who surprisingly plummeted to their spot, the ninth overall selection. Quinn is supposed to be as golden as the helmet he wore at Notre Dame. And the Dolphins today are viewed as having had a suitcase full of cash fall out of the sky at their feet but stepping over it in their zeal to get to a discounted sugary snack that had also fallen nearby.

and

Miami is one of only four NFL teams not to make the playoffs any of the past five years. The Detroit Lions, Arizona Cardinals and Buffalo Bills are the only others. They're all punch lines, and they all have one thing in common: None of them has had the kind of quarterback that a lot of people think Quinn might be. He's just about the best chance Miami has had to draft high enough to get The Next Marino -- someone who can make sure you are good and competitive for the next 10 years.

and

Quarterback is the most important position in the sport. And Miami has been borrowing used-up and discarded QBs from other teams for the past decade, the franchise standing like a Statue of Liberty for the unwanted and giving home to poor and huddled masses yearning to throw interceptions. Quinn wasn't supposed to be a possibility for Miami. He was supposed to be taken much earlier. But he slipped Saturday. And then, many Dolphin fans believe, so did the franchise.

Dolphins bypass Brady Quinn to select WR Ted Ginn Jr.
BY ARMANDO SALGUERO

It was all coming together so nicely, just as if Randy Mueller himself had scripted the first eight picks of Saturday's NFL Draft, and then the Dolphins did something no one predicted and practically no one outside the team's brain trust embraced.They passed on Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn.

and

''In a word, ridiculous,'' ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper said. ``[Quinn] falls into your lap and you're the Miami Dolphins, you don't have to trade up for him, he's there at nine.
``You get a chance to get Brady Quinn at No. 9 and you pass on him for Ted Ginn, coming off a foot injury -- not real polished as a wide receiver -- you got to be kidding me.''

This pick was a personal foul against the fans
BY GREG COTE

This was bizarre, awkward and unprecedented in the long, proud history of South Florida's flagship sports franchise. A Dolphins head coach walked into a crowded, angry room of fans on draft day and got booed for a No. 1 pick made -- rather, not made -- just minutes earlier. The sound was visceral, spiked with catcalls.
Quite a combustible ****tail, this was. Nearly a decade of inability to find the next great quarterback and five consecutive seasons out of the playoffs, chased now by a first-round draft decision that was stunning. Dumbfounding.

and

Ted Ginn Jr.
An Ohio State receiver expected to be picked much later in the round. Nursing a four-month-old foot injury still not fully healed. Going to a team that already has a No. 1 receiver in Chris Chambers. Playing a position Miami could have easily filled in Round 2. A receiver for the most desperately QB-needy team in the league.

and

Team owner Wayne Huizenga stood grimly off to the side as Cameron addressed the hostile constituency, arms folded across his chest.
Asked earlier if Cameron and GM Randy Mueller were right in choosing Ginn over Quinn, the owner had said tersely, ``They better be right.''

and

Why did Quinn fall at all? Some called him over-hyped (as any Notre Dame quarterback who looks like Mr. All-American Pretty Boy is bound to be) and some questioned his accuracy.
Hmm. This kid threw 67 touchdown passes against 14 interceptions the past two seasons. Inaccurate? He topped 60 percent both of those years. Draftniks rave about his poise and potential, about how coming from a pro-style college offense makes him NFL-ready. The admirers include quarterback experts like Steve Young.

and

Bottom line: The Dolphins had a chance to satisfy their priority and most pressing need with a first-round QB, and opted instead for an injured receiver.
You can spin that any way you wish. It's an extremely odd pick at best.
The necessary caveat of course is that none of us knows on draft day how good any player will be in a year or three. (Unfortunately, my deadline on this column was last night, not 2010).
You can say Quinn might be a bust, another Rick Mirer, as easily as you can say Ginn might disappoint too. It should go without saying there are no guarantees.
So you start by measuring need. And quarterback clearly was a bigger one.
And then you measure upside -- what might be.
Ginn could be another Santana Moss, a fast receiver who also returns kicks.
Quinn could be another Tom Brady.
Which of those possibilities would you prefer?
Which enticing maybe was the smarter gamble for Miami?
You know the answer today, even if the Dolphins didn't on Saturday.
Nobody is saying Quinn is The Next Dan Marino.
The thing, he might be.
The second-round selection of BYU quarterback John Beck only partly mitigates the error in bypassing the much greater prospect in Quinn.
At some point this franchise needs to stop relying on a continuing series of mediocre stopgaps like Jay Fiedler, Gus Frerotte and now, presumably, Trent Green.
At some point this franchise needs to roll dice in the draft on a franchise QB, on a long-term future at this most vital position.
Saturday was that chance.
It was fumbled.
It felt like a very big mistake, one Miami might regret for a long time.

Entourage of QB perplexed by snub
BY JEFF DARLINGTON

Sounds like Quinn's girlfriend should play special teams for us:

She had been sitting all day, painfully waiting for an NFL team to call her boyfriend's name. Like the rest of Brady Quinn's friends and family, Lindy Slinger had plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to boil. Plenty of time to fume.''I cannot wait until he gets to play the Dolphins,'' said Slinger, Quinn's girlfriend of five years, who spent all afternoon at his side.

and

''I think he was insulted,'' Quinn's father said. ``He was taken back by it. It was shock. He liked everything about the place. We thought it was the perfect scenario. And then Teddy Ginn? Are you kidding me?''
After the Dolphins passed on Quinn, even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell realized the significance of the snub. He saw Quinn in a hallway near the green room and suggested he take his family to the commissioner's private area to get away from the television cameras.

and

''It's like they just pulled another Wannstedt,'' said Mike Brautman, a Dolphins fan from Pembroke Pines who traveled to New York for the event.
Dave Wannstedt, of course, is a former Dolphins coach often criticized for years of draft-day blunders that have continued to resonate in Miami.
In a section at Radio City Music Hall, fans began to bubble with anticipation as Goodell walked across the stage to read Miami's pick. Shortly after, they began to boil with irritation.
''All of the fans here, we were expecting Quinn for sure,'' said Mike Band, a Dolphins fan from Maryland. ``We were going nuts . . . we finally got our first future quarterback since Marino. We felt like we finally had our guy.''

and

Quinn will have the chance to use that chip as his motivation Oct. 14, when the Dolphins travel to Cleveland. Green Bay Packers linebacker A.J. Hawk, who is married to Quinn's sister, said he knows that's the type of situation that will further fuel his career.
''You never could have predicted what happened [Saturday],'' said Hawk, who also spent the long day with Quinn's family. ``He'll always remember the draft day, for sure. He'll always keep it in his mind, but he'll handle it well.''

I wondered whether we'd be facing him this coming season. It's likely by mid-October that Quinn will be starting. I wonder if Green will have been knocked out by that point or will still be our starter. I'm sure many Dolfans will want to see how our prized kick returner and 2nd rd QB pick looks against Cleveland on that day...

 

[MDFinFan06]

are there sites and quotes of people and draft pros praising our moves? any at all? i want to read them...not this pile of bull$hit. i am upset we passed on quinn but id like to believe its for the better. lets as a franchise and team move on and work with the roster, which is improved from last year, and fight to not be embarassed as a team and franchise, lets get back to the playoffs. but i must admit i think we need to improve our secondary especially if we want to continue upsetting the patriots.

 

[armyfinfan]

Our team is gonna suck for years to come because of this. Fire Mueller and Cam NOW!!!

 

[TarHeelFinFan]

are there sites and quotes of people and draft pros praising our moves? any at all? i want to read them...not this pile of bull$hit. i am upset we passed on quinn but id like to believe its for the better. lets as a franchise and team move on and work with the roster, which is improved from last year, and fight to not be embarassed as a team and franchise, lets get back to the playoffs. but i must admit i think we need to improve our secondary especially if we want to continue upsetting the patriots.

No there aren't any positive ones because it was one of the dumbest moves in the history of the franchise and everyone knows it.

 

[BJinGainesville]

are there sites and quotes of people and draft pros praising our moves? any at all? i want to read them...not this pile of bull$hit. i am upset we passed on quinn but id like to believe its for the better. lets as a franchise and team move on and work with the roster, which is improved from last year, and fight to not be embarassed as a team and franchise, lets get back to the playoffs. but i must admit i think we need to improve our secondary especially if we want to continue upsetting the patriots.

Um, no. Unless you count the guys on this forum who've drank the proverbial kool-aid. They love the pick, and wouldn't have said anything if the FO missed their pick like MN did...

All I needed to hear was Wayne say "they better be right..." after they announced the pick to the chorus of boos.

 

[esc097]

After watching MVN on DirecTV this morning and hearing Adam Schein totally rip into Miami's top picks as the worst blunder of the draft, it struck me just how unanimous the disgust is around the league with the Dolphin front office and their incompetence yesterday.

Some other samples, with links and excerpts, below:

To fans, Dolphins fumbled big time
BY DAN LE BATARD

and

and



Dolphins bypass Brady Quinn to select WR Ted Ginn Jr.
BY ARMANDO SALGUERO

and

This pick was a personal foul against the fans
BY GREG COTE

and

and

and

and

Entourage of QB perplexed by snub
BY JEFF DARLINGTON

Sounds like Quinn's girlfriend should play special teams for us:
and

and

and

I wondered whether we'd be facing him this coming season. It's likely by mid-October that Quinn will be starting. I wonder if Green will have been knocked out by that point or will still be our starter. I'm sure many Dolfans will want to see how our prized kick returner and 2nd rd QB pick looks against Cleveland on that day...

GREAT POST !

You really did your homework. I'm happy finheaven has members like you who include solid points and overwhelming opinion to support their post. Most people just rant with nothing to back them up.

Unfortunetly, I am really down about this draft. I want to so bad root for another football team, i just cant make myself do it, because it would be pretending. I wish we had two football teams like new york with the jets and the giants.

My motivation for next season is gone. I'm more excited about my fantasy team next year then I am about the dolphins. Brady Quinn wasn't going to add any wins to our record next year, because i understand rookie qbs take time to develop. But at least I woulda had hope for the future.

 

[Tailgun]

I decided to wander over to NFL.com to see what some others in the non-Miami media are writing. The word isn't much better there:

Ginn a project at WR - and who's throwing him the ball?
By Clark Judge

Ginn is not a wide receiver. Not yet. He's more of a return specialist and, yeah, I know what Devin Hester did for Chicago last year. But he was a second-round pick, people. He was not the ninth player off the board, he was the 57th.

I also know all about Ginn's speed and how he can be a blur at wide receiver. But he's not the finished product. Which means, in essence, you're gambling that he will become something he's not.

And if he misses, you just bought yourself the world's most expensive kick/punt returner.

That's what I'd call a gamble, and you don't gamble with a top 10 pick.

Look, I thought Ginn could go as high as the 14th pick, but an NFC scout told me to be cautious. Among other things, he said, was that Ginn was a work in progress at wide receiver. He's not a slot receiver who catches the ball over the middle but strictly a straight-line, down-the-field speed receiver.

and

Look, I don't know why the Dolphins passed on Brady Quinn, either, but I think more of Brady Quinn as a quarterback than John Beck or Cleo Lemon. No question, Beck is a talent. But he's not one of the top five players in the draft. Quinn was, and no need to remind Ginn. Contacted by Miami reporters on Saturday, he admitted surprise that it was he, not Quinn, whom the Dolphins took first.

"I guess the coaches have seen something in me they liked and ran with it," he said.

Translation: They may have stepped out on a limb.

Pete Prisco's 1st Round Grades
By Pete Prisco

Dolphins: Grade D

Ginn's a good player, but how the heck can they pass on Quinn? That makes no sense. Who's their quarterback of the future? Cleo Lemon?

I don't see anything else at the moment. On draft coverage on both ESPN and the NFL Network, Mike Mayock, Ron Jaworski, Steve Young, Mike May, and Mel Kiper all roundly ripped the Dolphins front office for their choices.

 

[DuderinoN703]

I've seen some pretty nutty posts since yesterday but this thread is by far the absolute worst.

2 things I found hilarious.

#1. Why would Quinn's "girlfriend" get interviewed? What does she have to do with anything? And what exactly does this broad know about football?
Now that Quinn is in the NFL, good luck to this "girlfriend". Now that's he's out of college he's fair game. Sure I think she's hot but hell just wait until he becomes a starter. This dame he's with now will just get replaced by someone better.

She can't wait until he plays us? Why? Revenge? What does she really care?

#2. When we go to Cleveland we should be scared b/c Quinn is mad at us for not drafting him.

LOL

As if Zach, JT, Porter, Crowder, Holliday and Co. give a rat's ***. Are we just going to bow down and let Quinn win the game? Are we not going to try and win the game just b/c he's mad we didn't draft him?

Is he going to concentrate on his passes more in this game b/c he wants to beat us? Will he play harder?

Oh who the hell cares. If he's playing in October it's b/c the team sucks. Screw Quinn. Screw his temporary girl toy. Screw Quinn's old man. Screw Cleveland. And screw all the naysayers.

That's about it from me

 

[insomnia411]

Absolutely, all of those articles hit the nail right on the head. This franchise has been and now will continue to be mired in mediocrity because of awful personell moves like this one. The thing is that the rest of our draft went very well as I especially liked our next three picks after John Beck. The bottomline is that we should have Brady Quinn and Dwayne Jarrett (or Quinn and Ugoh, maybe Chris Houston etc) but had we taken the much better prospect with Quinn in the first we would not have been obligated to take Beck in the 2nd. Does Beck have potential? Sure, but not nearly as much as Quinn and the pick of Ted Ginn is just mind boggling.
I hope that I am wrong and Ginn becomes Marvin Harrison and Beck becomes Drew Brees but I seriously doubt it. We were so much better off with Quinn and Jarrett that it isn't even funny.

 

[DuderinoN703]

I decided to wander over to NFL.com to see what some others in the non-Miami media are writing. The word isn't much better there:

Ginn a project at WR - and who's throwing him the ball?
By Clark Judge


and

Pete Prisco's 1st Round Grades
By Pete Prisco

Dolphins: Grade D



I don't see anything else at the moment. On draft coverage on both ESPN and the NFL Network, Mike Mayock, Ron Jaworski, Steve Young, Mike May, and Mel Kiper all roundly ripped the Dolphins front office for their choices.

Said it before and will say it again. You can find the positive remarks from folks and you can find the negative. I mean hell I just read a thread that says Jaworski said we were one of the good teams who had a good draft and that Beck/Ginn will solidify our offense for years.

And now in this thread, it leads us to believe Jaworski didn't like our draft.

What's the point?

 

[Tailgun]

SpurzN703, really? That's the best response you could manage? All that thoughtful reasonable analysis and all you can do is isolate the girlfriend part?

I believe I indicated by my little note the girlfriend part was mostly amusing (I joked she should try out for our special teams). But it was just one of many articles in the Herald today.

Is that Kool Aid yummy? I hear the FO have Jay Fiedler on Line 1. Don't worry, he was Cam Cameron's paperboy's cousin's ex-plumber. And his family is really nice...

 

[DearbornDolfan]

See, the thing nobody's saying is that they ripped the Fins during the first round. Second round came around and we drafted Beck, all the sudden it made sense. I was watching SportsCenter this morning and they were talking about first winners and losers. Guess what? Fins weren't mentioned in either category. That's good, IMO, it means nobody is quite sure what to make of Beck but they aren't prepared to say Quinn's going to be better.

 

[DoctorFeelgood]

She had been sitting all day, painfully waiting for an NFL team to call her boyfriend's name. Like the rest of Brady Quinn's friends and family, Lindy Slinger had plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to boil. Plenty of time to fume.''I cannot wait until he gets to play the Dolphins,'' said Slinger, Quinn's girlfriend of five years, who spent all afternoon at his side.

With all due respect (which is to say, none), who cares what Brady Quinn's skanky gold-digger of a girlfriend thinks??? What in the he-double chopsticks does she - or her opinion - have to do with the Miami Dolphins???

 

[Tailgun]

See, the thing nobody's saying is that they ripped the Fins during the first round. Second round came around and we drafted Beck, all the sudden it made sense. I was watching SportsCenter this morning and they were talking about first winners and losers. Guess what? Fins weren't mentioned in either category. That's good, IMO, it means nobody is quite sure what to make of Beck but they aren't prepared to say Quinn's going to be better.

I believe if you check those excerpts, you'll find both Judge and Cote acknowledge the Beck pick partially mitigates the Quinn pass. But all agree that Quinn was unquestionably the better prospect, by all reasonable analysis.

Some have defended the Miami move. Last night, Jamie Dukes tried to argue the picks were good, but hardly anyone else agreed. Jaws has softened his position as well, but that's also a reflection of both network's desire to try and soothe incipient fan unrest. Both ESPN and NFL Network generally shy away from really hammering teams' front offices. It's alienating and not good for business.

 

[DoctorFeelgood]

GREAT POST !

You really did your homework. I'm happy finheaven has members like you who include solid points and overwhelming opinion to support their post. Most people just rant with nothing to back them up.

Unfortunetly, I am really down about this draft. I want to so bad root for another football team, i just cant make myself do it, because it would be pretending. I wish we had two football teams like new york with the jets and the giants.

My motivation for next season is gone. I'm more excited about my fantasy team next year then I am about the dolphins. Brady Quinn wasn't going to add any wins to our record next year, because i understand rookie qbs take time to develop. But at least I woulda had hope for the future.

Dude, why not just go ahead and slit your wrists now? If all you're going to do is whine and spout negativity, just end it now and quit trying to drag the rest of us down to your level, ok?

Jesus H. Christ, you people amaze me... like anybody here has anyway of knowing if Brady Quinn is the next Peyton Manning, or the next (Ryan Leaf | Akili Smith | Joey Harrington | Gino Toretta | etc. ). And it's not like we didn't turn around and draft a QB with our 2nd pick, who some observers (including, apparently, our own Front Office) thought was *better* than Brady Quinn.

People get too wrapped up in anointing one guy "the savior" when that guy hasn't proven anything in the NFL yet... this is farking ridiculous.