Phinsider Question Of The Day 03/09/2021

The NFL draft is a funny thing. We all get sucked into the whole mock draft thing (Except for Bill who is downright hostile towards those along with fantasy football...old people! But he’s our Bill so we just let it slide!), which at times does actually nail the player certain teams will grab but of course, cannot take into account draft day trades or intentional “smokescreens” that teams create to try and get other teams to believe that they are going to pick one player when they actually have their sights set on another player the entire time. Our very own Miami Dolphins are famous for the “smokescreen” over the years and I personally think that’s a great strategy. Never, ever talk up a guy that you hope falls to you thus creating a situation where another team will pick him knowing that he will not be there when they pick next or maybe cause a team to leapfrog you via trade to pick that player if you just show your hand to the world.

Another thing that goes into the drafting of players before the actual NFL draft is the spending of a lot of time and money by the teams and the NFL head office itself. This involves evaluating every player expected to possibly be drafted from the NFL doing all sorts of background checks on each player to the teams scouting players in person and via video and also running their own background checks in an attempt to weed out those guys that are just going to be too much of a headache or perhaps not worth the high pick that their talent would otherwise warrant. Then there are the workouts and the physicals, which during the time of Covid are being done differently than before if at all, in certain cases, but will for sure return once all of this mess ends for good. Either way, the interesting thing about the draft is despite all this work and money that goes into it before it even takes place is that it still misses certain things.

What's missing? Well, what’s missing is we never, ever know what each player will become. No matter how sure-fire a player seems it doesn’t mean a thing until they show up in the NFL and prove it. There are even drafts where maybe the top player from that draft did go in the first round as is usually the fact but the rest of the top ten can easily be spread across several rounds and sometimes, somehow even includes undrafted free agents. A full 30 percent of all the players in the NFL at this time are undrafted. That’s amazing, nearly one in three players were not even considered good enough to be drafted but still made an NFL roster. Some have very short careers and others manage to eke out nice long careers and even Hall Of Fame careers. This just goes to show that no matter how much time or money you spend you can never ever get it just right. You can never go out and draft and sign a bunch of guys and have them all be what you hoped they were when drafted. Not even the hoodie can pull that off. Our own former head coach Jimmy Johnson was known as one of the best talent evaluators to ever coach in the NFL but look at some of the busts that he picked in his few years in Miami. Sure he had some amazing players that he grabbed but damn, some of those picks still haunt me.

So where is James going will all of this yet again? Well, my point is that the talent is spread across the draft and not really all at the top of the draft with the talent diminishing as the rounds go deeper. The reason for this is most likely countless but the truth is still the truth. As such many of us have a player that we would kill to see be drafted by the Miami Dolphins. Some of them are just guys that you know about because you follow college ball as a whole and others are just guys that you know about that few others may know about due to your fandom and following of one of the lesser-known programs in this country. Either way your favorite player in the draft is not always going to be the top guy the team takes or even a player they will pick in the first round and you know that going in.

So tonight’s Phinsider Question Of The Day is who is your favorite player in this entire upcoming draft? He does not have to be one of the top picks or even a guy graded to be picked near the top of the draft. I want to know who is your favorite player that has declared for the 2021 draft, period! Also please tell us about the guy and what makes him stand out and a great fit for our still rebuilding Dolphins. Maybe we will even find a new favorite guy via someone else’s little know knowledge of a player.

As this is a nightly post (when there is not a live game thread) also feel free to not only discuss the question/topic of the day but to use this as a live thread where the rules are pretty wide open, and you can discuss nearly anything so long as your continue to follow the site rules. Speaking of site rules the three rules that come with a zero-tolerance policy are that we do not allow ANY personal attacks against your fellow ‘Phins fan or even a troll from another site. Flag it and walk away, do not get yourself banned over another’s stupidity. Beyond that, there is no discussion or even references to anything remotely religious or political. There are plenty of sites for those discussions elsewhere but this is not and never will be one of them.