The Miami Dolphins are less than one week away from being on the clock. With the challenges that have come from remotely finalizing the team’s draft plans, Miami general manager Chris Grier oozed confidence in the team’s ability during his pre-draft press conference via Zoom yesterday with the South Florida media. Grier held court with the media for 20 minutes on Thursday and throughout his time he praised the Dolphins’ scouting department and coaching staff for their constant communication and hard work — which is the foundation that Grier expects will ensure the Dolphins overcome the challenges that come with a remote draft in 2020.
Even the overhauled coaching staff isn’t something Grier expects to be a problem. When asked specifically about new offensive coordinator Chan Gailey and his status in the Dolphins’ pre-draft plans, Grier provided affirmation that the desired traits and skills that will be needed to make this offense tick have been clearly established.
“I think it’s been a process working with (Offensive Coordinator) Chan (Gailey) coming in, and it’s been really good. The communication’s been great,” said Grier.
“We’ve spent a lot of time talking through the different qualities that we’re looking for in the players that we’ve talked about. From our end, it’s been pretty smooth and we haven’t set our final board yet. We’ll do that probably late this weekend or early next week, but a lot of really good discussions on what we feel is best for the Miami Dolphins.”
The transparency of the coaching staff to communicate amongst themselves and to the scouting staff is an important variable for successful drafts — getting a player that fits the plan from both sides of the team’s leadership is essential to ensuring success. There’s too many examples in NFL Draft history of a player that the general manager wanted but the coaches weren’t prepared to cater to on the field — the end result in those instances is almost always a “bust”. Miami’s deliberate approach to setting their 2020 Draft board was always going to be predicated around communication, but the team has used almost all of their possible time to ensure they’re all on the same page and ready to rumble next week.