The title alone is not very flattering: “Rocky start for dolphins on the first lap.”
That’s how the NFL.com presented its review of the 2020 draft among the AFC East teams, with full grades.
The Dolphins received a C in the history of Gennaro Filice.
It was the lowest score given to any team in the division, behind the Patriots (B), Jets (B) and Bills (B-).
Although it is an interesting read, evaluating a draft after a year is not really fair.
The most true indicator, as is often suggested, is more than three years.
And that would take us to the Dolphins 2018 draft, and three years later, we would have to say that it was actually a very good transport – with a big asterisk.
As a reminder, the eight choices of the Dolphins in 2018 ended up being safety Minkah Fitzpatrick in Round 1, tight end Mike Gesicki in Round 2, linebacker Jerome Baker in Round 3, tight end Durham Smythe and running back Kalen Ballage in Round 4, Cornell Armstrong cornerback in Round 6, and linebacker Quentin Poling and kicker Jason Sanders in Round 7.
Of the eight players, the top four are starting and Sanders has just received the All-Pro award in its third season.
This, in any measure, is a good success rate.
The big asterisk goes next to the name of Fitzpatrick, of course, because the 11th selection of the 2018 draft became a star in good faith – only with a different team.
But the fact that Fitzpatrick ended up being negotiated logically falls more on coach Brian Flores for allowing a conflict to get to the point where Fitzpatrick wanted to get out – unless we want to buy the narrative that Fitzpatrick got into an attitude problem, where in case it shouldn’t have been drawn up anytime soon.
RELATED: Revisiting the Minkah Confusion
In any case, the Dolphins ended up getting a Steelers pick for Fitzpatrick, who was used to face Austin Jackson, who will have to step up his game to match the exploits of Fitzpatrick, who has been named All-Pro each of the past two seasons.
But we still consider it a good choice in retrospect.
Gesicki got better and better and about to become one of the elites who receive tight ends in the NFL, Baker had a very strong end in the 2020 season, Smythe is a versatile two-way tight end and we have already discussed Sanders.
RELATED: All-Pro Honors for Sanders, Howard
Ballage was a bad foul, although it happened in the fourth round. It is a bad fault because the book about him outside the state of Arizona said he was nowhere near as effective as his back as his physical attributes suggested he should be.
Armstrong has appeared in at least five games in each of his three NFL seasons, the last two with the Houston Texans, so he certainly wasn’t a failure of a choice in the sixth round. Poling was unable to maintain his career because of injuries.
But if you look at the big picture, the Dolphins did a great job choosing players in that 2018 draft, after a very indefinite first year for that class of newbies. It was a big recovery after a 2017 draft totally forgettable for Miami.
The most important lesson should be to understand the history of NFL.com for what it counts: fun reading for now, but not something on which you make a final determination of the draft of the 2020 class of the Dolphins.