The Miami Dolphins’ team may have a big opportunity lying ahead of them in January — a chance to greatly assist in their scouting efforts ahead of the 2020 NFL Draft in April. Every year, the NFL descends upon a small town on the Gulf of Mexico to meet the greatest senior prospects in the country at the Reese’s Senior Bowl.
Hosted in Mobile, Alabama, the event pits two NFL coaching staffs against one another for the week — coaching up all-star rosters of the best seniors in the country for a week of practice before culminating in an exhibition game at the end of the week. How is a team picked to have their coaching staff run one of the teams for the week?
Here’s what the Senior Bowl’s website states:
“National Football League coaching staffs coach the two Senior Bowl teams each year. The staffs are determined in cooperation with the NFL. The teams with the lowest winning percentage that season usually get the first opportunity to coach in the game, but only if a majority of their staff – and head coach – are intact.”
The caveat that teams must have the majority of their coaching staffs intact is critical, because no matter what happens from here on out in 2019, the Miami Dolphins are now on the short list to run a team for the week — as pointed out by the Senior Bowl’s executive director, Jim Nagy.
Pivotal (and clutch) loss by the #Dolphins today. That much closer to locking up a @seniorbowl coaching spot.
— Jim Nagy (@JimNagy_SB) December 15, 2019
The New York Giants are facing significant changes — including potentially firing head coach Pat Shurmur at the end of the year. The Washington Redskins have already fired head coach Jay Gruden this year and will be undergoing a new coaching search. That leaves the Cincinnati Bengals, the Detroit Lions and the Miami Dolphins as teams likely to pick in the top-5 of the NFL Draft order that will have intact head coaching staffs at their disposal and hence be eligible for selection.
For the Dolphins, this would be a big boost to the team’s efforts to evaluate players, because it gives Miami a week of being hands on in a football setting with more than 50 NFL Draft prospects. That level of closeness will inevitably give the Dolphins more clarity on which senior prospects might happen to be the ones Miami wants to get into their building.
With two losses in two weeks, Miami almost ensures they’ll be in position to get the offer — as Washington and New York play one another this weekend and the Lions are facing another potential win as well as they visit Denver to play the Broncos for a winnable game.
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