NFL Network's Mike Mayock Conference Call

NFL Network'sMike Mayock conducted a conference call with the national media yesterday, taking questions ahead of next week's draft. Mayock, a former New York Giants safety, has become one of the preeminent draft experts, alayzing team needs and player strengths.

During this Q&A sessiong, Mayock touched on numerous issues, including a few with direct reference to the Miami Dolphins.

First up is the obvious one - Ryan Tannehill:

Q. Tannehill is a guy who seems to be a lot of talk and debate about where he should go. I wanted to get from you the likely scenarios of where he might go and why.

MIKE MAYOCK: Yeah, at this point, I'm leaning heavily towards Cleveland going with Richardson and looking to get wheat on later in the draft.

That's kind of where I think Cleveland -- so if it's not going to be Cleveland at four, the next logical pressure points are Miami at eight or somebody trading up to seven.

And I think Jacksonville would love to get out of seven and trade down. So it opens up the possibility of a Kansas City or a Seattle or whomever to come up to seven and get Tannehill. And if he doesn't go at seven, then he's got his former head coach sitting right there at eight. It's a tough situation for the general manager because he's got to win quickly and this is a quarterback that's at least a year away.

So from Miami's perspective, you have to hope your owner understands what's going on there, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's not ownership pressure there to get a quarterback. So there's an awful lot of different currents going on around there, Cliff, but I think they are the most logical scenarios.

Next up, Mayock talked about first round quarterbacks versus QBs that are selected anywhere else in the league:

Q. A while ago you gave out stats about first round quarterbacks versus second through seventh round quarterbacks. Wonder if you could repeat those, please.

MIKE MAYOCK: In the last eight drafts there's been 23 quarterbacks in the first round and 15 are now starters. In the same time frame, rounds two through seven, there have been 82 quarterbacks with seven (sic) (15) starters.

Obviously that's 22 of the 32 starters around the league.

By the way, Matt Moore would be a college free agent that's now a starter in Miami in addition to that group.

You can read the entire transcript of the Mike Mayock press conference here.