Jay Fiedler. Ray Lucas. Damon Huard. Sage Rosenfels. Brian Griese. A.J. Feeley. Gus Frerotte. Daunte Culpepper. Joey Harrington. Chet Lemon.
These are the 10 signal-callers who have started games for the Miami Dolphins since the greatest quarterback of all-time, Dan Marino, retired in 1999. Old, young, strong-armed, feeble-armed, Hebrew, Gentile, white, black, and yellow, the ‘Fins choices to run offenses have run the gamut. So as the NFL Draft unfolded on Saturday and it appeared more and more likely that somehow, some way, Notre Dame passer Brady Quinn was sliding Miami’s way, one look at that shudder-inducing list above will make you understand why Dolphins Nation was ecstatic about the possibility of addressing the position seriously, once and for all.
As a result, you can then understand why Dolphins Nation performed a nationwide, unanimous, simultaneous dry heave when Miami picked Ohio State wide receiver/return man Ted Ginn Jr. with the ninth overall selection of the draft instead of Quinn. The illegitimate son of first-round receiving bust Yatil Green, the second cousin of failed first-rounder Randal “No Thrill” Hill, the daddy baby of first-round disaster John Avery, Ginn runs fast and squeals when teammates jump on him. With a possible franchise quarterback staring them in the face, the Dolphins picked an injured special-teamer. They selected a three-route wide receiver who takes seven months to come back from a sprained ankle. They chose a 175-pound track athlete trying to play football on one leg.
It felt like Jimmy Johnson and Dave “The ‘Stache” Wannstedt, who conspired to take down the Miami franchise a dozen years ago, got banged up on Heinies, stormed the Miami war room, kidnapped general manager Randy Mueller, and forced him to take the player with the most bust potential of the entire draft. It didn’t help matters when Mueller faced the media and declared Ginn “80 to 85 percent” healthy and new coach Cam Cameron said Dolphins fans would love him “as a returner.” You’re telling me that you used a top-10 pick on an injury-prone lightweight so you can use him on the kamikaze special teams? Further infuriating the Miami faithful, Mueller also said that the ‘Fins medical staff had spent a lot of time evaluating Ginn’s ankle and deemed it to be not a concern. So you’re telling me that the same medical staff that green-lighted trading for Daunte Culpepper, who is still three months away from being able to participate in team activities, and decided that free-agent Drew Brees, who led New Orleans to the NFC Championship Game, was too injured to contribute in 2006, was involved in this decision? That’s about 80- to 85-percent fucking logical.
I’m not even saying Quinn is a sure thing at quarterback; far from it. However, Miami hadn’t invested anything higher than a sixth-round pick on a signal-caller since Marino retired, and an unlikely sequence of events had taken place that allowed the Dolphins to draft a consensus top-seven player with the ninth overall choice. The NFL Draft is all about value, and Quinn represented the best value that Miami could possibly have found in the top 10 (NOTE: I do think that Quinn is a cocky type of player who might benefit from being knocked down a peg or two. Plus, the fluffy hair helmet he was sporting at the draft admittedly made me wonder if a Dolphins offensive lineman wouldn’t have taken one look at him and proceeded to beat the christ out of him). I understand if Quinn’s not your choice at that spot; if you want to get younger at defensive tackle (Amobi Okoye) or address the secondary (Leon Hall), by all means, pull the trigger. If you’ve decided that Ginn is your guy and nothing can stand in your way, then trade back and choose him at a spot that makes sense value-wise. In six mock drafts found on NFL.com and ESPN Insider—and yes, I know that mock drafts are worth exactly the paper they are not printed on—Ginn had been predicted to be picked in the top 15 by only one (No. 11 to San Francisco). In fact, the average spot that Ginn was chosen in these mock drafts was 19.1. Theoretically, this means that Miami could have traded back 10 spots and still grabbed their guy. Going by the widely accepted trade chart used by NFL franchises, trading back from No. 9 to No. 19 would have netted the Dolphins the No. 19 selection, plus a second-rounder, a fourth-rounder and a sixth-rounder. So if he’s your guy, all else be damned, trade the christ back and give yourself more ammunition later in the draft! Picking the wrong player at the wrong position is bad enough; choosing that player much higher than he should have been selected is a double-whammy and the type of decision that sets your franchise back years.
That’s why the NFL Draft has been like Groundhog Day for the Dolphins in recent years. Five straight years out of the playoffs has meant that Miami has had respectable draft positions time after time, yet the team seems to invest in projects, ‘tweeners and reaches every single year. How many years in a row do you take a question mark in the first round? You need a sure thing with a top-10 pick, a no-brainer starter ... not a player who would have walked up to the podium on crutches if he had even been at Radio City Music Hall for the draft. As if this selection wasn’t nonsensical enough, wide receiver is actually one of the few positions of relative strength on the entire team. Chris Chambers and Marty Booker—who is maybe the league’s most underrated receiver—have both been to Pro Bowls, and the team spent a third-round pick in last year’s draft on Derek Hagans, another wideout. The healthy status of the receiving corps makes any wideout choice a luxury pick, and you can’t spend a top-10 pick on a luxury position when the cards finally fell your way and the guy you should have taken miraculously dropped to you. What is the only common denominator holding these players back from putting up big numbers? A goddam quarterback. That’s why drafting another wide receiver is like having a BMW with a busted engine and deciding to spend the money you had allocated for the engine on a gold-plated spare baby tire.
Incomprehensibly, the team’s alleged No. 1 receiver, Chambers, lobbied the Dolphins braintrust to tab Ginn with the first-round selection. Every other No. 1 receiver in the NFL is constantly begging and demanding that more footballs be thrown his way; Miami’s pleads with the decision-makers to pick another wideout to be the No. 1. Amazing. Would any other No. 1 wideout in the National Football League ask his team to pick another wide receiver in the first round?! If I was Mueller, I would have patiently listened to Chambers make the case for picking Ginn, then I would have politely and immediately asked for his signing bonus back; you know, the one he got so he could be paid on a level with the elite receivers in the league and be compensated as the team’s top receiving threat.
Another philosophy is that fortifying the offensive line would give the Miami signal-caller a better chance of succeeding; if that’s the decision, trade down near the bottom of the first round, select tackle Joe Staley out of Central Michigan, then use a couple of the three or four picks you get in return on a quarterback and a return man, if you’re dead-set on getting one. Making matters worse, the Dolphins later spent a third-rounder on running back Lorenzo Booker of Florida State. What are his selling points? He’s a versatile, speedy athlete capable of playing tailback and slot receiver in addition to returning kicks. Hello … paging the Department of Redundancy Department? Not to mention that Miami signed admittedly well-traveled receiver/return man Az Hakim—and deep threat Kelly Campbell—in the offseason. Yes, Hakim isn’t exactly a youngster anymore and he’s far from a polished wide receiver … but is the difference in return abilities between he and Ginn anywhere close to a gap justifying the use of a top-10 draft pick? Hell no.
The selection of Ginn represents a classic example of a team falling in love with a specific player and then ignoring every red flag and every change in circumstance along the way to picking him. It appeared as if the Miami decision-makers had no contingency plan for Quinn being available, panicked, and simply chose Ginn without pursuing or exploring any other options. Such mistakes in preparation can destroy an entire offseason’s worth of positive moves, turn the rest of your draft philosophy upside down, and destroy any credibility or optimism the fanbase has mustered up on your behalf. Mueller and Cameron became enamored with Ginn’s speed and game-breaking potential, but this isn’t a track meet, it’s a fucking football game. That’s why the Dolphins were faced with only three possibilities when the ninth overall pick came around: spend exactly three seconds to take Quinn, take your time and decide between Okoye or Hall, or use the entire 15 minutes to field trade requests and move back in the first round and still get Ginn. Any other decision or course of action was and is completely unacceptable.
The choice of Ted Ginn Jr. totally deflated all Dolphins fans, lending credence to the perception that the names who fuck up the franchise seem to change every couple of years, but the jackass decisions remain the same.
