The month of June is always a tough stretch for football fans. There is no free agent frenzy. There is no NFL Draft to look forward to and there’s no games to be played. This is the ultimate dead period of the NFL offseason — although the league seems aligned for training camps to open on time and fill the void next month. But in the meantime, the summer stretch allows for some different exercises to assess the league as a whole. One such example? ESPN’s 32-team fantasy draft. The beat reporter for each team served as the de facto general manager — and drafted players from a pool that consisted of every talent on every team for a 4-round draft.
The draft order was established using the 2020 NFL Draft order — and the draft format was set to a snake format; so whoever picked first in the first round (Cincinnati) picked last in the second round and so on. The only other stipulation? Each team had to draft at least quarterback, a non-QB offensive player and a defensive player.
For the Miami Dolphins, representation was achieved in the top-32 picks of the 128 pick exercise as rookie quarterback Tua Tagovailoa drafted 30th overall by the Green Bay Packers. Interestingly enough, Tagovailoa was drafted after the likes of Drew Lock (15th to Denver), Teddy Bridgewater (18th to Pittsburgh) and, ironically enough, Ryan Tannehill (25th to Minnesota).
But Tagovailoa was the only Dolphins player on the list — a bit of a surprise given Miami’s possession of CB Byron Jones; who plays a premium position and most certainly is one of the league’s top 128 players. A total of 8 cornerbacks were selected in the exercise:
Patrick Peterson, Marshon Lattimore, Jaire Alexander, Darius Slay, Tre’Davious White, Jalen Ramsey, Stephon Gilmore and 2020 rookie Jeff Okudah.
We’ll take our chances with Jones, thank you very much!
As far as the Dolphins as a whole, Dolphins beat reporter Cameron Wolfe assembled the following squad with his four selections:
Round 1 (5): Aaron Donald, DT
Round 2 (60): Ezekiel Elliott, RB
Round 3 (69): Kirk Cousins, QB
Round 4 (124): Kevin Byard, S