With the Miami Dolphins boasting multiple picks in each of the first few rounds of the 2021 NFL Draft, fan speculation regarding Miami’s possible interest in the 2020 Supplemental Draft steadily rose over the course of the past few months. With the coronavirus pandemic ongoing and possibly threatening college football this fall, many felt as though the NFL could see a large influx of talent via the annual Supplemental Draft — which is designed to give players facing unexpected hardship a path to the NFL.
Franchises who make picks in the Supplemental Draft forfeit the upcoming year’s NFL Draft selection in the designated round of where a player is picked in order to acquire his services — so Miami could have taken advantage of a Supplemental Draft filled with prominent college players pushed to the pros due to the uncertainty of college football without mortgaging their entire draft class.
But that will not come into reality, we learned yesterday. Because, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the NFL will not be holding a Supplemental Draft in 2020.
The NFL just informed clubs it will not conduct a supplemental draft this year, per source.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) July 1, 2020
The league has the jurisdiction to hold or not hold the event each year — and it seems as though the league didn’t want to deal with the gray area that will come from college players making a decision based on the current health crisis and pandemic. If the league were to get inundated with applications, the league would then have to make the decision on whether or not to credit the coronavirus pandemic as a legitimate hardship. And once the first application is granted, a flood of additional ones would have been sure to follow.
Instead, the league has opted to avoid the messy situation all together. For the Dolphins, that means the team is still scheduled to hold two picks in each of the first two rounds of the 2021 NFL Draft — with half of those assets coming courtesy of the Houston Texans in the swap for OT Laremy Tunsil. Yesterday’s news brings clarity on multiple fronts for Dolphins fans: no, the Dolphins won’t be aggressive this summer with the Supplemental Draft and yes, we’re all still rooting against the Texans in 2021.