phinsforlife
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Grading The Draft
For this one I am not going to provide much in the way of framework, but I will give two rules:
-Grade on an absolute basis. This poll is not about how Grier and the Dolphins did relative to the low expectations many had. It is how do you think the Dolphins did in an absolute sense, irrespective of who was running the draft.
-I am using a 1-5 scale. 1 being it sucked, 5 being it was great. Think about this in absolute terms as well. As opposed to the grading system the pundits use, where no team seems to get lower than a B grade, which I just do not understand.
I graded the draft below average, even though I liked the first two players they picked. Those two picks matter the most too. So how did I get to below average even though I liked the players they drafted with the two most important picks? I was on the fence between below average and average but I settled on below because I think they left the draft with too many unfilled holes.
Everyone is going to think about it differently, and I am not going to tell anyone how they should think about it.
I hold it against them that they went into the draft with such a desperate need on the interior OL and DL that their hand was forced in the draft. In my view, what a team does prior to the draft is part of the draft. I understand if people think about it differently, and want to look at the draft in isolation.
Related to this point, it irks me that we drafted to replace what we already had here in Wilkins and Hunt, and decided to let go. In expectation the guys we just drafted will not be as good as Wilkins or Hunt either, that is just the law of averages. Making this even more painful, we let Wilkins and Hunt go because we thought the money was better off spent going to the combination of the Ramsey, Tyreek, Waddle and Tua, amongst others. So far, it seems like we decided to put the money in a lot of the wrong places. Some may not want to look backwards, but I do because these decisions impacted our draft.
Then as far as the draft itself was concerned, I look at the mosaic of the entire draft, and do not think we came out of it filling enough of the holes we had. In my view, Grier continues to have little mastery of the draft board:
-I like Grant, but I was on record before the draft not wanting him at 13. I think we should have been able to trade back, accumulate more capital to use on other needs, and still taken the player later, or traded back and gotten the equivalent player on the OL later in round 1, and then dealt with the DT in round 2 without needing to trade up, or with having more capital acquired in a round 1 trade back to utilize to move up. Of course I do not know this for certain.
-I like Jonah too. He is the other side of the coin. But I do not feel we needed to trade up to get him. And I think we should not have put ourself in the position where we were so desperate we needed to burn capital to trade up for a guard (one other option was taking the guard round 1 and the DT round 2 without trading up). I was on record before the draft saying I did not want Grier trading up and burning capital. No offensive lineman was taken from the point we took him, to where our original pick was at 48. Of course I do not know this for certain either. But the draft could have been managed in a way by the Dolphins that they did not have to trade up in round 2 for the guard if they behaved differently in round 1 (or traded back and accumulated capital to use for round 2).
-Both picks were used on replacing guys that were just here. Neither player was the BPA when we picked. Both picks were pretty big reaches based on the pundit rankings at least (I know the pundits are far from right all of theime). We had to reach because we had such big holes at both positions, and you never want to be in that spot going into a draft where your hand is forced so much, and you can’t go BPA. In the case of one we probably could have traded back, in the case of the other, we traded up and burned capital when we might not have needed to.
-Then when we finally get to our next pick, Grier then decides to trade back. Yes, that trade won us draft value points. But since we gave away draft picks already for Jonah, we needed to start filling some holes in the higher rounds (secondary for example) with guys that might be able to help now, and I do not think we did that.
-I think everything after that was just noise, we are looking at special teams players, backups, and guys that won’t make the team. These players, despite the hype they will receive, more often than not, turn out to be noise. People love to fantasize about the later round picks. To each their own I guess. Occasionally players are found in the later rounds, but more often than not, they are largely irrelevant. You want to be excited about a 6th round RB like Ollie Gordon, fine. Just remember, everyone was totally fired up about the 4th round RB that we traded up for last year (at the expense of this year which hurt), and Wright did absolutely nothing to move the needle last year. He barely even played.
In summary, we went into the draft with a lot of needs that we should have addressed prior to the draft in order to not force our hand, and I feel like we left the draft with only two players that will really help in any material fashion. I think we should have been able to do a fair bit better than what we did, even though I acknowledge we did fill two needs with two players that seem like they should be able to help right away.
I also think for those who were hoping we were going to be pretty good this year, they needed to knock the ball out of the park this draft, and sadly they did not do that. Average to above average for our 2025 season alone is not enough given the spot we are in. If anyone thinks they did knock the ball out of the park this draft, and it made the team materially better than they were last year, please explain in the comments.
It will be interesting how Finheaven grades the Dolphins draft in compare to the grades assigned by national pundits that we get to see tomorrow. The national pundits are not perfect, and we won’t really know until a year or two passes. But the national pundits are the best we have right now, and at least they are disinterested third parties, that should be more objective than most of us are, because they don’t have a dog in the fight for lack of a better term. The tough thing is comparing the grades, because this poll is on a different system. But the way they grade, B and B- grades put you in the bottom half to bottom third of their inflated grading system and those grades pretty much imply they thought the draft was not great. You also need their textual color along with their grades to get a sense for what they really think.
For this one I am not going to provide much in the way of framework, but I will give two rules:
-Grade on an absolute basis. This poll is not about how Grier and the Dolphins did relative to the low expectations many had. It is how do you think the Dolphins did in an absolute sense, irrespective of who was running the draft.
-I am using a 1-5 scale. 1 being it sucked, 5 being it was great. Think about this in absolute terms as well. As opposed to the grading system the pundits use, where no team seems to get lower than a B grade, which I just do not understand.
I graded the draft below average, even though I liked the first two players they picked. Those two picks matter the most too. So how did I get to below average even though I liked the players they drafted with the two most important picks? I was on the fence between below average and average but I settled on below because I think they left the draft with too many unfilled holes.
Everyone is going to think about it differently, and I am not going to tell anyone how they should think about it.
I hold it against them that they went into the draft with such a desperate need on the interior OL and DL that their hand was forced in the draft. In my view, what a team does prior to the draft is part of the draft. I understand if people think about it differently, and want to look at the draft in isolation.
Related to this point, it irks me that we drafted to replace what we already had here in Wilkins and Hunt, and decided to let go. In expectation the guys we just drafted will not be as good as Wilkins or Hunt either, that is just the law of averages. Making this even more painful, we let Wilkins and Hunt go because we thought the money was better off spent going to the combination of the Ramsey, Tyreek, Waddle and Tua, amongst others. So far, it seems like we decided to put the money in a lot of the wrong places. Some may not want to look backwards, but I do because these decisions impacted our draft.
Then as far as the draft itself was concerned, I look at the mosaic of the entire draft, and do not think we came out of it filling enough of the holes we had. In my view, Grier continues to have little mastery of the draft board:
-I like Grant, but I was on record before the draft not wanting him at 13. I think we should have been able to trade back, accumulate more capital to use on other needs, and still taken the player later, or traded back and gotten the equivalent player on the OL later in round 1, and then dealt with the DT in round 2 without needing to trade up, or with having more capital acquired in a round 1 trade back to utilize to move up. Of course I do not know this for certain.
-I like Jonah too. He is the other side of the coin. But I do not feel we needed to trade up to get him. And I think we should not have put ourself in the position where we were so desperate we needed to burn capital to trade up for a guard (one other option was taking the guard round 1 and the DT round 2 without trading up). I was on record before the draft saying I did not want Grier trading up and burning capital. No offensive lineman was taken from the point we took him, to where our original pick was at 48. Of course I do not know this for certain either. But the draft could have been managed in a way by the Dolphins that they did not have to trade up in round 2 for the guard if they behaved differently in round 1 (or traded back and accumulated capital to use for round 2).
-Both picks were used on replacing guys that were just here. Neither player was the BPA when we picked. Both picks were pretty big reaches based on the pundit rankings at least (I know the pundits are far from right all of theime). We had to reach because we had such big holes at both positions, and you never want to be in that spot going into a draft where your hand is forced so much, and you can’t go BPA. In the case of one we probably could have traded back, in the case of the other, we traded up and burned capital when we might not have needed to.
-Then when we finally get to our next pick, Grier then decides to trade back. Yes, that trade won us draft value points. But since we gave away draft picks already for Jonah, we needed to start filling some holes in the higher rounds (secondary for example) with guys that might be able to help now, and I do not think we did that.
-I think everything after that was just noise, we are looking at special teams players, backups, and guys that won’t make the team. These players, despite the hype they will receive, more often than not, turn out to be noise. People love to fantasize about the later round picks. To each their own I guess. Occasionally players are found in the later rounds, but more often than not, they are largely irrelevant. You want to be excited about a 6th round RB like Ollie Gordon, fine. Just remember, everyone was totally fired up about the 4th round RB that we traded up for last year (at the expense of this year which hurt), and Wright did absolutely nothing to move the needle last year. He barely even played.
In summary, we went into the draft with a lot of needs that we should have addressed prior to the draft in order to not force our hand, and I feel like we left the draft with only two players that will really help in any material fashion. I think we should have been able to do a fair bit better than what we did, even though I acknowledge we did fill two needs with two players that seem like they should be able to help right away.
I also think for those who were hoping we were going to be pretty good this year, they needed to knock the ball out of the park this draft, and sadly they did not do that. Average to above average for our 2025 season alone is not enough given the spot we are in. If anyone thinks they did knock the ball out of the park this draft, and it made the team materially better than they were last year, please explain in the comments.
It will be interesting how Finheaven grades the Dolphins draft in compare to the grades assigned by national pundits that we get to see tomorrow. The national pundits are not perfect, and we won’t really know until a year or two passes. But the national pundits are the best we have right now, and at least they are disinterested third parties, that should be more objective than most of us are, because they don’t have a dog in the fight for lack of a better term. The tough thing is comparing the grades, because this poll is on a different system. But the way they grade, B and B- grades put you in the bottom half to bottom third of their inflated grading system and those grades pretty much imply they thought the draft was not great. You also need their textual color along with their grades to get a sense for what they really think.
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