If I were Jeff Ireland……….Part 3 (Who to draft)

Jan. 24 Opinion 3 comments ---Bill

Alright Dolphins fans, this is the third and final installment of our offseason plan.  The Dolphins haven’t even gotten to the point where they have resigned any of their own free agents and we’re about to finish our full offseason plan.  Can you tell we’re anxious for the offseason to get underway?!  If you missed Part 1 or Part 2 of our plans, you can click on here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.

Some Dolphins have posed some good questions regarding our plan, most notably about our desire to sign Jermichael Finley.  It’s a risk, I’ll admit that.  However, if he is released and will only cost money, I think the potential upside far outweighs the downside.  Besides, how many other seam threat tight ends are out there?

Photo Courtesy of Dolphins.com

Photo Courtesy of Dolphins.com

Part 3 – Which players to draft

Alright, so we’ve made it this far in our offseason plan.  We’ve added some speed and explosiveness on offense, adding Mike Wallace and Jermichael Finley, while resigning Reggie Bush.  On defense, we’ve resigned Sean Smith and Randy Starks, but there are two big needs remaining as we enter the draft.  We need to find a starting cornerback and a defensive end that can provide some pass rush opposite Cameron Wake.  We will also be looking for a QB for depth and a young receiver to add to the mix.  The rest of the draft will focus on depth.

For the purposes of this post, we have used Drafttek.com because they offer a full 7 round mock draft.  We will make the picks for the Dolphins based on who is still on the board at the time the Dolphins pick.  They just updated their mock today, but that will obviously change between now and the actual draft which is 3 months away.  We still have to go through the combine and see how big and fast these guys actually are.  But we’re formulating our plan based on what we know today.   So…………..

With the 12th pick in the 2013 NFL Draft, the Miami Dolphins select: Johnthan Banks, CB Mississippi State.  Banks is 6’1″ , 185 lbs and was given the 2012 Jim Thorpe Award (best CB in college football).  We wrote a piece a few weeks ago about how rarely Jeff Ireland has drafted SEC players.  Well, MY philosophy is that if the SEC has the best talent, the players in the conference can be judged more accurately based on how they will perform in the NFL.  Banks had 4 interceptions in 2012, but don’t let that stat fool you into thinking he can’t create turnovers.  The fact is, opponents usually stayed away from Banks’ side of the field.  So (hopefully) we just crossed the need for a #1/2 cornerback off of our list. (cont’d on page 2, click below)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Pages: 1 2 3
  • SingleSpeeder

    I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Banks pic! I’m a D guy though. Overall I like most of your plan. If we can get Glennon where you think, it would be the best draft the ‘Fins have had in a long time. I am a little scared of Wallace. He’s a great player but a head case. What happens if RT can’t get him the ball enough? If he doesn’t ‘diva’ it up, it’d be a great signing.

  • SingleSpeeder

    I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Banks pic! I’m a D guy though. Overall I like most of your plan. If we can get Glennon where you think, it would be the best draft the ‘Fins have had in a long time. I am a little scared of Wallace. He’s a great player but a head case. What happens if RT can’t get him the ball enough? If he doesn’t ‘diva’ it up, it’d be a great signing.

  • http://twitter.com/Iam305Jules Miami Jules (Julian)

    I’m still in post-season mode, and this weekend I will get a taste of the letdown and boredom the off-season brings every year… then, during the late winter/early spring, and for only the 2nd year, I will go into full draft analysis mode… I hope you don’t totally disappear during the off season because that would make it all the more unbareble. I can’t comment on most of your picks because, in some cases, I only know what you wrote about them.
    I will express this though (when don’t I), I’d like to use the draft to focus heavily on corners and O line (WR’s in a combination of draft and F/A), the latter almost not being a factor because Philbin favors smaller speedsters over more massive players. so what I’d like would never happen anyway, so that’s that and I would’ve picked Watson (LOVE him) anywayso that’s that on top of that too. I don’t have a problem with the 1st round pick at this point either and don’t know a thing about Patton except what I read above BUT, just based on that, I LOVED what I read.
    I hope you do some kind of revised update on this 3rd part when we’re closer to the draft, so I can contribute, because at this point I can only comment on positions I’d like to fill or add to as opposed to having actual players in mind. My rookie year of draft analysis had me picking Russell Wilson as a back up to Matt Moore in latter rounds, so I am with you on latter round QB picks, not being a total waste, and a certain WR named T Y Hilton… I only expect to get better… then again, maybe I’ll suck… we’ll see.