Super Bowl Sunday Dolphins Mailbag

Part 2 of the Super Bowl LIX weekend Miami Dolphins On SI mailbag:

From Common Reader:

Given that they're gone if they don't win, how much damage will everyone's favorite nanny, Mike McSoft, and Chris "No Accountability" Grier do this off-season, running up more debt and tossing away draft picks to obtain aging, oft-injured vets?

Man, not holding back here, are you? Your harsh words aside — and I get the frustration — I don’t think it’s fair to assume Grier and McDaniel will be sacrificing the future to a large degree for better short-term success. But to dismiss the possibility also would be foolish human nature being what it is.

From Mark Lever:

What player would you like the Dolphins to draft in the first round of the draft? Any chance we take a quarterback in the first three rounds?

Hey Mark, without having done a ton of homework yet on the draft prospects, I’m on board with drafting someone like Kelvin Banks Jr. from Texas, who I’ve seen mocked to the Dolphins, or Tyler Books from Alabama. Those are two interior offensive linemen. I’ve written recently that if everything is close to equal, I’d want the Dolphins to go big because they need to reinforce the trenches.

From Thee Dolphins Dum Dum:

Please explain to us how the same people who voted Lamar Jackson 1st team all-pro, voted Josh Allen MVP?

Hey Dana, this actually is a pretty easy one. First-team All-Pro is strictly based on who had the better season, but MVP goes beyond that to who was deemed most valuable to their team, and those two aren’t always the same. While I think Lamar Jackson had a better season than Josh Allen, I voted for Allen in the PFWA MVP voting because I felt he was responsible for Buffalo being 13-4 to a slightly larger degree than Jackson was responsible for Baltimore being 12-5. For one thing, Baltimore had 12 players besides Jackson getting All-Pro votes in 2024; Buffalo had four players besides Allen, and one of them was their long-snapper (Reid Ferguson). Look, I don’t have an issue with anybody disagreeing with Allen getting the nod over Jackson, but to suggest it’s ridiculous is … well … ridiculous.

From Matt Edmunds:

Other teams seem to be overcoming injuries better than the Dolphins. What change in player development or selection is the team going to make for improvement. Is it player selection, or depth? We know it’s both, but which one will they focus on more?

Hey Matt, it all boils down to finding good secondary players (and I don’t mean defensive backs, but good non-elite players) and the Dolphins simply haven’t been good enough at doing that. There’s no really quick fix to solving the problem other than starting to hit on draft picks on a regular basis, something the Dolphins haven’t done well enough in recent years — particularly considering how much draft capital they’ve sacrificed in trades.

From Robb:

Do you think Tyler Warren is a legitimate possibility for the Dolphins at 13? If so, what do you envision the offense looking like with Warren and Jonnu playing together?

Hey Robb, I think the idea of the Dolphins drafting Warren is a long shot … and it should be a long shot. This is a team with a lot of needs, and that starts with the trenches. There’s no way to me you can justify taking Warren at 13 unless there’s no worthy O-lineman or D-lineman at that spot and you have a conviction that Warren will be another Brock Bowers. And even then cornerback would be a much more pressing need than tight end.

From Luis Rodriguez:

Hi Poup, how much does the constant coaching change (every 3.5 years) affect the results of our drafting? Do you think the ‘21 draft plays out the same if McD was the coach instead of Flores?

Hey Luis, it’s an interesting question, one that we’ll never have a clear answer to, but here’s what I would say: Jaylen Waddle strikes me as way more of a Mike McDaniel type of player than a Brian Flores type, so I’m thinking this was a pick where Chris Grier was the biggest influence and not Flores (though I don’t know that for a fact). So it could be that the pick would have been exactly the same with McDaniel, though maybe the second first-round pick would have been somebody other than Jaelan Phillips, who absolutely does look like a Flores type of player.

From Bubba:

Do you believe Grier and company are finally going to focus on our trench players, the big boys? We can never have too many, right?

Hey Bubba, that’s the hope, right? I’d like to believe the Dolphins have finally come to realize they need more front-line players on the offensive line and the defensive line as well. If not, then I just don’t know what to say.

From Free2Talk:

What is the main reason Dolphins are not in the SB? Please don't say Tua missing games. His record was not that much better when he played.

Indeed, it’s way too easy to say it was about Tua missing games because the Dolphins were a pedestrian 6-5 in the games he started. I do think Miami likely would have made the playoffs with him playing 17 games but doubt they’d have gotten very far in the playoffs. So why aren’t the Dolphins in the Super Bowl? Beyond the obvious of they’re simply not good enough? You can start with lack of toughness, which manifests itself most in short-yardage situations on offense. Then we can go to lack of takeaways on defense, the inability to close games on defense this season, the lack of a consistent pass rush, the lack of big plays on offense. It’s quite a list actually.

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