Grier Explains Dolphins Draft Trades

Miami Dolphins General Manager Chris Grier broke down the thought process behind the team moving down and up in the first round and why he might not be done

Miami Dolphins General Manager Chris Grier broke down the mechanics of the team's two trades within the top 10 picks of the 2021 NFL draft and confirmed that, indeed, he would be open to the possibility of making another move under the right circumstances.

This isn't overly shocking given what the Dolphins have done since Grier became general manager, but it was interesting nonetheless to get his thoughts on everything related to the draft and trades.

"I think we’ll always listen to everything," Grier said Wednesday during his annual pre-draft media session. "We’ve shown that and I think you owe it to your team and your organization to always listen to any offers that may or may not come. And at the end of the day, as the draft falls and gets towards our pick, if someone wants to call and they make an aggressive pitch to us, we’ll evaluate it, look at the board, and look at our options and make the decision that’s best for the Miami Dolphins at that point."

We discussed what that potential scenario could look like for the Dolphins, particularly in the event that tight end Kyle Pitts and wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase both are gone by the time the sixth overall pick arrives.

But Grier said there would be no regrets about potentially missing on any player as the result of the two trades that ultimately saw the Dolphins go from 3 to 6 in the first round.

"I think when we made our move, we had targeted a number of players that we liked, we were comfortable with getting," Grier said. "So I think with us, when you make a move like we did and doing what we did to get back up, we’re very comfortable where we are, but we’ll always evaluate it. And drafts change, as you know. People fall for reasons unknown. Or people select players for their roster based on their needs. So we’re comfortable where we are. We feel very good where we are and we won’t have any regrets."

To refresh the memory, the Dolphins moved down from 3 to 12 and acquired from San Francisco first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 along with a third-round pick in 2022. Then the Dolphins moved back up to 6, giving the Eagles their own 2022 first-round pick and also giving up a fourth-round pick this year in exchange for a fifth-rounder.

So if one is looking strictly at the 2021 draft, the Dolphins' total sum of the trades was moving down from 3 to 6 and swapping for a later round (from fourth to fifth). But Grier instead is focused on the future rewards of the trades.

"We still have four picks in the first two rounds (in 2021), so we just view it completely different," Grier said. "We just see a difference of opinion. We feel very good about it and we also added a lot of stuff for the future. We picked three guys in the first round last year. We're gonna keep adding young players and talent and growing. We feel good. We feel really good about how things transpired for us.”

Lastly, Grier confirmed the machinations of the two trades as a collective, indicating the trade with the 49ers was made in conjunction with the other deal with Philadelphia.

“We had a number of teams call us, they were talking about coming up to 3," Grier said. "We were comfortable being where we were and once we evaluated and then obviously San Francisco was very aggressive. John (Lynch) was great dealing with. He was very open and honest, transparent, and as we worked through it, we thought that with the offers, as we talked through it and once they gave us the offer that we were comfortable with taking, we decided it was important for us as well to get back into that top 10.

"And so once it looked like San Francisco could happen, we kind of reached out to a few teams just gauging whether they would move or not and Philadelphia was a very good partner working with. Howie (Roseman) did a good job with us in terms of what we were looking for and what we were looking to do and I give them a lot of credit. There's a lot of teams that wanted to wait and wanted to wait and see. It takes guts to make a move like that, so I give San Francisco and Philadelphia both credit for doing it.”