Note to Dolphins: Picking a Super Bowl QB isn’t really rocket science
The Dolphins will still be looking for their franchise quarterback of the future this coming offseason — likely in the 2020 NFL Draft — and there are worse places they can look for advice than at Super Bowl 54.
The Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers both feel they have clearcut franchise quarterbacks set to the take the field Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium, and both went about finding theirs in a different way. Andy Reid and the Chiefs found theirs through the NFL Draft, just as Reid has often done throughout his career. There are two factors the Kansas City coach looks for when assessing potential franchise quarterbacks, and the first is really simple.
The 49ers went bargain shopping and acquired quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo from the Patriots for a second-round draft pick in 2017.
“In the simplest form,” Reid said, “that they can play the game.”
This was certainly the case with Patrick Mahomes, who was the No. 10 pick in the 2017 NFL Draft and won the NFL Most Valuable Player Award last season. The same goes for Donovan McNabb, whom the Philadelphia Eagles selected third overall in the 1999 NFL Draft shortly after Reid took over as their coach.
It’s only one part of the equation, though. Just as important, Reid said, is the leadership quality a player brings. It’s part of the reason Nick Foles eventually won a Super Bowl MVP with the Eagles even after he was just a third-round pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.
Mahomes has perhaps blended these two attributes better than anyone, and it’s why he’s now the gold standard at the position — exactly the sort of player the Dolphins would ideally like to find in the offseason.
“They’re a leader of men or of people and in our case, because of the guys we’re playing, that they can lead those guys and make everybody around them better,” Reid said. “The great ones do that with their whole organization and make everybody a little bit better, so you try to find out what kind of leadership ability the player has before you bring them in and if they have those qualities.”
Whoever the Dolphins draft might get to follow a similar trajectory to Mahomes, too. Mahomes started just one game as a rookie, sitting behind quarterback Alex Smith, whom the Chiefs traded to the Redskins ahead of last season to clear the way for Mahomes to start.
The Dolphins have Ryan Fitzpatrick locked up through next season. The Dolphins won’t have to rush its next quarterback on to the field with Fitzpatrick more than capable of opening next season as the starter.
“I think I ended up in the perfect place. To have Coach Reid and these coaches around me, to have Alex Smith in front of me for a year and be able to learn from him,” Mahomes said. “I ended up being able to win a lot of football games early in my career.”
MCCOY NEARLY A CANE
LeSean McCoy wanted to play for the Hurricanes for the same reasons so many players from out of state think they might want to.
“What’d I like about Miami? I was just a 17-, 18-year-old kid — everything,” McCoy said at the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa in Aventura, just about 25 miles north of where he once thought he would attend school. “Nice views, the weather, the women — everything about Miami.”
McCoy orally committed to the Hurricanes out of Bishop McDevitt High
School in Harrisburg, Pa., on National Signing Day in 2006, but didn’t sign because of academic requirements. He headed to Milford Academy in New Berlin, N.Y., for a post-graduate year. As a senior at Bishop McDevitt, McCoy broke his ankle and a few months later the Hurricanes fired coach Larry Coker. The new Hurricanes coaching staff didn’t stay on McCoy the same way, so the running back headed to the Pittsburgh Panthers after his year at Milford.
“Coach Coker got fired or left, so that kind of changed my mind up,” said McCoy, who will play at the Hurricanes’ home stadium Sunday when he suits up for the Chiefs at Hard Rock Stadium. “They didn’t recruit me as hard, so I decommitted.”
Before he changed his mind, McCoy was sold by UM’s legacy at his position. He grew up watching former running backs Clinton Portis, Willis McGahee and Frank Gore all dominate for the Hurricanes, and then in the NFL. McCoy even went to Gore’s house when he took his official visit to Coral Gables.
“They had so many lines of running backs, from Portis to McGahee to Frank,” McCoy said. “To kind of be part of that trio would’ve been amazing, so when you’re young you think about that.”