Dolphins GM Chris Grier proving willing to strike when price is right
There’s no room for fear in football. You can’t play scared. You can’t coach scared. And, one thing we now know for certain about Miami Dolphins general manager Chris Grier is that he won’t manage scared. Grier has been serving as the Miami Dolphins’ general manager since 2016 — but he only really took over full administrative control of the Dolphins last year when Miami decided to hit the reset button. In the time that has passed since, Grier has shown us on a number of occasions that he’s not going to timidly build a team.
No. Grier’s going to swing the bat and he’s going to look to make splash additions.
That doesn’t mean Grier is going to be reckless with it either — there were no egregiously bad contracts given out by Grier in free agency and the team wasn’t suckered into trading up in the 2020 NFL Draft for no reason. But make no mistake about it: Grier is going to take risks.
Trading for Josh Rosen was a risk. Trading Laremy Tunsil was a risk. And now, Miami’s latest trade serves as another tip of Grier’s hand. The Miami Dolphins traded the Las Vegas Raiders a 4th-round draft selection (the same one Miami received a week earlier for trading LB Raekwon McMillan) for 2020 3rd-round rookie Lynn Bowden Jr. The rookie talent comes to Miami less than six months after the Raiders made him the 80th overall pick in the draft. Why was Bowden Jr. even available? That’s where Grier’s risk comes into play. The rookie apparently has looked bad in camp and there are some reported concerns that he’s been distracted in Las Vegas.
But for Grier, the price was right. And that is becoming the tell-tale sign of when a Chris Grier splash might be coming down the chute. Trading for Rosen, one year removed from being a top-10 pick, for the 62nd overall pick in the draft (and a replacement 2nd-round pick on hand the following year) was the right price. Trading away Tunsil for a quarterback-sized haul with multiple 1st-round picks in year one of a rebuild was the right price. Drafting Tua Tagovailoa, despite the concerns of durability, at No. 5 overall was the right price. And trading for Bowden by using the assets that came from a recently traded player that Miami had clearly seen enough of and wasn’t likely to resign this offseason anyway was the right price.
This is a risk, make no mistake about it. If Bowden was indeed distracted in Las Vegas, playing in close proximity to South Beach won’t help him keep his nose in the playbook. But you don’t build a winning team by playing small-ball: you’ve got to swing for the fences from time to time. It would be unreasonable to expect every risk you take to cash out, too. But that’s why the Dolphins have adopted a draft pick by volume mentality. The more picks you have, the more swings of the bat you get. And law of averages suggests that eventually, those teams with more picks will eventually outpace the teams who make less by getting more output thanks to volume.
This is a new Miami Dolphins organizational approach to football. But, not too dissimilar to the last few versions, this one still offers big ambitions. Grier is just more calculated about when and where he strikes. Here’s to seeing some of his big bets this offseason paying dividends on the gridiron starting next week.
