Miami Dolphins: Kyler Murray, QB/WR, Oklahoma
NFL teams all soured on Russell Wilson leading up to the 2012 NFL Draft despite the fact that Wilson had more experience and was more accomplished than Kyler Murray over a longer span. While Wilson didn't win the Heisman, he probably would have if he played in the Big XII. Instead, Wilson thrived in two conferences where teams actually play some sort of defense. Despite this, Wilson fell to the third round. Now, just because Wilson has been an exception rather than the rule, Murray is somehow expected to be chosen in the opening round even though he's two inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than Wilson!
None of this makes any sense, especially when factoring in Murray's lack of starting experience, his extremely easy schedule this past season against all of the woeful Big XII defenses, his struggles against Alabama prior to garbage time, and the fact that teams may not be convinced that he's going to dedicate himself to football with baseball being a possibility. All of these things are strikes against Murray, which was relayed to me by an NFC personnel man I spoke to on Friday afternoon. I asked him about Murray, and while he expressed concern about his size, it was his dedication to football that was the major concern.
"Murray should probably go on Day 2, but will probably go in the first round because he's a hot name," the personnel man said. "We assumed he was going into baseball because of Scott Boras, so no one wrote up any reports on him."
Adam Schefter reported that general managers told him that Murray will be a first-round pick. This obviously came from general managers who didn't want Murray; otherwise, they wouldn't have said anything. Quite often, NFL teams don't know what others are going to do. I spoke to an assistant general manager days before the 2017 NFL Draft and asked him what he thought the 49ers would do at No. 2 overall. He said he thought they would take Patrick Mahomes. Last year, Charlie Campbell spoke to a general manager who thought the Giants would go with Sam Darnold with the second pick. Both of these people we spoke to are great talent evaluators, but they simply didn't know what other teams would do. Thus, the general managers Schefter spoke to were just guessing, like the NFC personnel man I spoke to. The possibility of Murray declaring has shocked the league, to say the least.
That said, the general managers Schefter spoke to were doing something else as well. They were building hype for Murray. We've already established that those general managers don't want Murray, so they're trying to raise his value so that some team in front of them takes Murray, causing a better player to fall to them. I coined the phrase, "bad teams make dumb picks" a long time ago, and this is a case where the good teams are trying to bait a bad team to make yet another dumb pick.
I then thought about it.
Who could take Murray in the first round? Well, there's no dumber owner of a bad team in the NFL than Stephen Ross. I'm sure he's smart in real life, but when it comes to managing his football team, Ross has made countless blunders. Ross also loves hype. He constantly invites celebrities no one cares about to games to try to draw a crowd. This would be another instance of Ross trying to draw attention to the Dolphins. He may demand for his next regime to draft Murray because he thinks a 5-foot-9, 190-pound quarterback, who thrived in a conference where zero defense is played, won't get half of his passes batted at the line of scrimmage somehow.
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