Well draft has come and gone and there were times I did not think I was going to survive it. Several things have changed and it has ramped up the melodrama of the event in a serious way! Day one is now the 1st round ONLY, leaving all night to speculate on your pick and what’s going to happen from there. Let me tell you, if that pick didn’t coincide with your vision of what the team is supposed to do, it makes for an extremely long night!

You see, my beloved Dolphins have a new coach this year. One that gives a person enough confidence to go out on a limb and do more than hope, truly believe that we are going to be successful. Coach Philbin has been in the league for a while and coached with some of the very best. He’s a no-nonsense type person and seems to shoot from the hip. From the tweets I can see and the interviews of the players, there seems to be a nice feel in Davie!

He’s pretty much changing the team, meaning he is bringing in a west coast offense, and doing a fairly major overhaul to the defense (hearing he will run both a 4-3 and a 3-4 package). Most of the coaches are new and some glaring inconsistencies on the roster were dealt with quietly, early on. Overall, he seems very level headed and conservative and I would like to think makes moves with several turns (or years) in mind. One thing I am sure of is we will not beat ourselves. Excessive celebrating he frowns on, crazy penalties will get you benched, and stupidity outside of the football field will happen, but I have a feeling you will be playing for the Jets if you do too much of it!

With all of this in mind, I had the PERFECT plan put together and was sure this it was the only way any logical person could begin to rebuild a program. Look at it this way, new coach and a totally new scheme (playbooks, practices, even verbiage is BRAND new), and players that aren’t quite sure what kind of roles they will fill in the new system. The Dolphins are talent rich and have question marks all over the place. I don’t mean question marks as bad, but players and coaches don’t know each other yet and in order to compete and win you have to trust, to KNOW that the person you have out there will do the job. Elite players are created like this because they are allowed to stretch things to see how far they can reach.

A few things have happened that begs to be questioned (Yeremiah Bell is my biggest, even though I don’t agree a safety should lead your team in tackles), but the ONLY thing we are sure of is Jason Taylor is gone. A future Hall of Fame pass rusher is gone, and a damn good pass rusher in Cameron Wake is left alone on the other side. This is a role that begs to be filled, no DEMANDS to be filled. If we don’t have a threat on the other side, then you just throw a double team on Wake and hes negated.

There are other ‘holes’ that need some love (right tackle, possibility a wide receiver, or even a safety) but in my opinion this one was the only glaring situation that needed to be attended to.

Taking all of this into consideration, your first round needs (typically anyone taken here, especially in the top 10, has to have impact immediately! ie .. he should be a starter the very next year) will have priority and of course that will be Coples or Ingram. Either of these gentlemen would take the pressure off of Wake and contribute immediately, then you fill in the rest of the draft with foundational players that will help in you’re rebuilding efforts. This way you give your coaches and players time to move forward and develop on the same page. It was BRILLIANT! I talked about it for weeks, to anyone that would listen, and just knew how things were going to go this weekend.

I forgot to have a conversation with Jeff Ireland though. Who is that you ask? Oh just the guy who’s job it is to develop the team long term and identify and find talent. He has been doing it for a while and is kinda good at it. Mr Ireland is the GM for the Miami Dolphins and after the first round Friday night had me questioning EVERYTHING!