Yeah, my problem isn't with Grier's ability to make solid decisions in the top rounds.
I suppose you could disagree with passing up on Sewell and Chase for Waddle, but we did get a future 1st out of it. You could knock Tua as the pick but Herbert was a 2nd-tier QB prospect. You'd have been fired for drafting a tier-2 guy over a guy with tier-1 talent. Meanwhile, Love was a risky developmental guy and Hurts wasn't even a surefire NFL player. The team that drafted him took someone else (a bust WR) in R1, lol.
Okay, you could say everyone kind of knew Igbinoghene was a bad pick at the time...but you had Brian Flores to coach him so there was a reason why a freakish athlete from a big, SEC school wasn't exactly the worst pick there.
In the end, there have been far more pleasant surprises in the top-2 rounds for Miami. Few expected Waddle, Phillips or Holland to be quite as good as they were. Hunt was a huge hit that very few expected, too.
I think most peoples' issue with Grier is that he didn't pick the players they wanted. There were a lot of Kyle Pitts supporters. I probably would've gone Sewell personally. The Dolphins badly needed OL help and I recognized the QB needed protection and could kind of throw to anybody.
There were a lot of people hoping Noah Igbinoghene would be a RB. I was among that crowd but my pick at RB was basically a bust. Some lament the could've-beens like Wilkins > Dexter Lawrence or Waddle > Chase or WR > Sewell or Waddle > Parsons.
Okay, we haven't landed the stud / HoF player that you can build around...I get it, but that's all kind of hindsight. None of those were THE reason to get mad at Grier.
I go to the continued OL issues. It's getting rid of Tunsil (and James). It's passing over Sewell. It's letting Hunt get out the door. It's trusting Isaiah Wynn and Liam Eichenberg for WAY too long.
To me, that's someone Grier absolutely could've done better and it probably wasn't going to fall to anyone else to do it, either.
www.nytimes.com
