Should the Dolphins Pass?

Much has been made about the possibility that Miami will simply let the clock expire and let someone else pick #1 overall. I find this an intriguing option. The sheer amount of guaranteed money that we'd have to give to Chris Long or Jake Long or whoever is insane. An unproven rookie instantly becomes one of the Top 25 paid players in the NFL. I think there is something seriously wrong with the way rookies are getting paid right now.

Letting the Rams pick ahead of us would be optimal. I don't believe the Rams are big on Chris Long and they would rather draft Jake Long or Glenn Dorsey. That way, we could still land the guy we seemingly want and pay him less. Heck, the Falcons might take Matt Ryan next and let us slip down to 3. The Raiders might target Darren McFadden. And so on. The reality is that the top 6 prospects in this draft grade out pretty evenly and Miami shouldn't have a strong preference over any of them. At this point I would rather be the Jets with the #5 pick than the Dolphins with the first.

Even if the guy we want is taken by the time we would hypothetically jump back into the draft, there are still players who can make an impact. Someone like Vernon Gholston might fall all the way down to 6 or 7. I sure as hell would rather draft him then and pay him half of what you would have to if he were the top pick.

The only problem I see with this situation has nothing to do with bad PR. What I foresee is a long holdout for whoever we pick. Remember the Philip Rivers/Eli Manning trade? The Chargers had the #1 pick and traded it for the 4th so they could take Rivers. Philip's agent subsequently argued that the Chargers had effectively rated Rivers #1 overall and demanded Rivers get paid like the #1 pick. I don't believe they got the same deal Manning got, but Rivers was compensated more because of the circumstances.

Any guy we draft will argue that we could have had them at #1 and that they were our target all along, therefore they should be paid as a quasi-#1. It would be hard to argue against that thanks to the precedent set by the Rivers trade. We would end up having to overpay a #2-#5 pick instead of overpaying for a #1. It does save us some money in the long run, because there is no way a #2-#5 pick will get paid the same as the top overall selection, but it's still a bit counterproductive because agents are greedy.