Dolphins have to go big during draft
Loose lips sink drafts, so don’t expect Miami Dolphins vice president of football operations Mike Tannenbaum and general manager Chris Grier to reveal much leading up to next week’s draft.
The Dolphins’ executives will likely throw out a few smoke screens during Wednesday’s mandatory pre-draft press conference. And that’s the way they should handle it seeing as how secrecy and deception could provide the team an advantage during the draft.
Why reveal your cards when the NFL draft is a game within a game?
However, if you have a keen eye it isn’t hard to see the hand the that the Dolphins have dealt themselves this offseason.
The vision for the 2017 season is to build on last year’s 10-6 playoff team in Year 2 of Adam Gase’s reign as head coach.
This offseason’s moves, which featured starters Kenny Stills, Kiko Alonso, Andre Branch, Jermon Bushrod and Michael Thomas being re-signed, the addition of tight ends Julius Thomas and Anthony Fasano, offensive lineman Ted Larsen, defensive end William Hayes, linebacker Lawrence Timmons and safeties Nate Allen and T.J. McDonald, should help if all those veterans can stay healthy.
But the main weakness of last year’s Dolphins was that they repeatedly got beat up at the line of scrimmage.
Despite the team’s impressive 4.5 yards per carry average, Miami’s offense only rushed for 100 or more yards in six games last season. The Dolphins averaged 64 rushing yards in their six regular-season losses.
The defense gave up a ton of rushing yards — for the third consecutive season — allowing 140 per game.
What’s troubling is that more has left on both of those lines than what got added this offseason.
Branden Albert, a Pro Bowl left tackle, got traded to Jacksonville for a 2018 seventh-round pick in a salary dump. While Laremy Tunsil moves from left guard to left tackle, returning to the position he played in college, the best Miami has to offer as his replacement at guard is Larsen, a 29-year-old career journeyman who has started 65 NFL games.
The Dolphins could use a younger, more athletic option to start at guard.
It would be hypocritical to act like any of the defensive linemen — Mario Williams, Earl Mitchell, Jason Jones and Dion Jordan — that the Dolphins waived weren’t part of the team’s problems in the trenches.
However, the Dolphins haven’t replaced them with a talent worth mentioning, and Miami desperately needs to add a defensive end and two defensive tackles to its eight-man rotation.
So that brings the Dolphins’ list of draft needs to one viable starting guard, two run-stuffing defensive tackles and a defensive end who can set the edge.
That’s a lot to accomplish in one draft, but that’s the position Tannenbaum, Grier and Gase have put themselves in heading into next Thursday’s start of the draft.
The Dolphins hope to build off continuity on offense and defense, and change a few things on defense under new coordinator Matt Burke, who replaces Vance Joseph, who was named the Denver Broncos head coach this offseason.
“We’re going to make some adjustments. Obviously that would be bad ball on our part if we didn’t make any adjustments,” Gase said this offseason, specifically talking about Miami’s defensive front. “There are some things we know we need to do different and we’ll make those adjustments throughout the spring and training camp. There are some things we think we can lean on to help out guys a little better based on what we’ve learned going through last season.”
But without the proper pieces, without adding a few 300-pounders who can serve as pillars of granite at the line of scrimmage, we could be looking at another season where the Dolphins get pushed around.
This draft is Miami’s best chance to address the lineof-scrimmage issues with an all-in approach, and producing a big, unsexy draft in 2017 is the only way.