Dolphins Mock Draft Roundup: Two Names Emerging
Mock draft season is in full swing, and the projections for the Miami Dolphins with their two first-round picks appear to be coming into clearer focus.
At least that's what one could gather from the national mock drafts that have surfaced since the Dolphins pulled off their dual trades with the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles that saw them go from third to 12th to sixth in the pecking order.
We surveyed 10 mock drafts from national outlets ranging from NFL.com (Lance Zierlein and Chad Reuter) to CBSSports.com (Ryan Wilson, Josh Edwards) to several in between, and have come up with three popular names when it comes to projecting first-round picks to the Dolphins.
Those three names are: Ja'Marr Chase, Kyle Pitts and Kwity Paye.
We'll start with the last player, the University of Michigan edge defender who was the runaway choice at number 18 among the 10 mock drafts with five mentions when nobody else had more than one.
Paye certainly would make sense because edge defender just might have become the Dolphins' top priority after the team released Kyle Van Noy and traded Shaq Lawson to Houston.
So it it's Paye, it's easy to see the Dolphins taking another edge defender, whether it be Azeez Ojulari from Georgia, Jayson Oweh from Penn State, or one of the two highly rated University of Miami pass rushers, Jaelan Phillips or Gregory Rousseau.
Interestingly, though, only one of the mocks that didn't have Paye at 18 had another edge rusher, and that was the mock that longtime NFL writer John Clayton did for The Washington Post, which had Oweh as the choice.
The other projections for 18 were Virginia Tech offensive lineman Christian Darrisaw, Alabama running back Najee Harris, USC offensive lineman Alijah Vera-Tucker and Alabama cornerback Patrick Surtain II, who we profiled Monday.
Now let's move to the number 6, and the irony that it's actually clearer what the Dolphins might do there than it was when they were at number 3.
Based on the mock drafts we surveyed, it looks like it's going to be an offensive playmaker for the Dolphins at that spot, which only makes sense after their trade as we previously examined.
The top choice, based on four votes out of 10, was Chase, the LSU wide receiver, followed by Pitts, the uber athletic tight end from the University of Florida.
There also were two votes for Alabama wide receiver Jaylen Waddle and one for Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons from Ric Serritella of NFL Draft Bible, a sister site on the SI Fan Nation network.
One of the Waddle projections came from SB Nation writer James Dator, who predicted a trade down from 6 to 8 with the Carolina Panthers that would give the Dolphins an extra second-round pick.
We certainly could see the Dolphins being willing to move back for an additional premium pick, but only a few spots, so this scenario with Carolina makes sense if there's indeed a prospect (in this case Trey Lance) for whom a team like the Panthers would want to move up.
