Twenty years and Miami Dolphins still search for the next Dan Marino

2013

Funny, on the year the Dolphins get the 3rd overall pick, there is one QB selected in the first round. EJ Manuel was that guy taken 16th overall by the Buffalo Bills. He played 4 seasons with the Bills and a total of 28 games with them. He threw 19 TDs and 15 INTs in that span. Not exactly the type of guy you hope to get in the first round.

2014

With the 19th selection, only Blake Bortles (3rd overall) was off the board at the QB postion when Miami’s pick was up. The other first round QBs were Johnny Manziel (22nd overall) and Teddy Bridgewater (32nd overall). Manziel’s off-field issues kept him from ever reaching his ceiling of potential and Teddy’s injury in 2016, as unfortunate as it was, would have made him a risky pick in hindsight. Another slight cheat here, Derek Carr was selected early 2nd round by the Raiders (36th overall) and is still a starter in the league today.

2015

The Dolphins picked at 14 but the only viable options at QB were gone picks 1 and 2 with Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota respectively. However, hindsight being 20/20, both of those QBs were obviously tough roads to take. Mariota lost his starting job 6 weeks into the season and Jameis is one of the more wildly inconsistent QBs in the league with 2 games below a 50 QBR and 4 above 100.

2016

Picking at 13, Paxton Lynch was on the board at 26th overall. Yea, no thank you. The other two first round QBs? Jared Goff (1st overall) and Carson Wentz (2nd overall). Yup, just like 2015, the two real QB options came off the board right away.

2017

Miami surprisingly made the playoffs in 2016 before being beat by the Pittsburgh Steelers on the road on Wild Card weekend. Oddly enough, Pittsburgh was the team that started the run that propelled Miami into the postseason. The Dolphins were 1-4 when the Steelers visited on October 16th, 2016 and Jay Ajayi ran for 204 yards and 2 TD to help the fish to a 30-15 win that sparked a 6 game winning streak.

Tannehill was hurt late in the season against the Arizona Cardinals in a 23-20 win. Matt Moore took over and went 2-1 as a starter in the final 3 games, throwing 8 TDs and 3 INTs in that span. I do still wonder how the wild card game would have gone if Tannehill was the starter but we will never know.

Anyways, now that I went off on that tangent, 2017 was the year of Mitchell Trubisky (1st overall), Patrick Mahomes (10th overall), Deshaun Watson (12th overall). The latter two QBs were acquired via trade ups and that is what Miami would have had to do with their 22nd overall pick. Did making the playoffs in 2016 hurt more than it helped? Maybe.

2018

The Dolphins were picking at 11 and many thought they could land one of the four sought after quarterbacks in the draft. Everyone was and, sometimes still is, debating on who would be the best signal caller from the group of Baker Mayfield (1st overall), Sam Darnold (3rd overall), Josh Allen (7th overall) and Josh Rosen (10th overall). The Cardinals traded up for Josh Rosen at 10 and left Miami to select Minkah Fitzpatrick with the 11th overall pick. However, Fitzpatrick was traded to the Steelers earlier this season for their upcoming 1st round selection.

With him off the team now, the question is, should the Dolphins have selected QB Lamar Jackson, who came off the board as the final pick in the first round to the Baltimore Ravens. The scary thing about Jackson, is that he is a small, mobile player who reminds me of Michael Vick a bit. Vick had his injury issues at times and I keep wondering if that will get to Jackson at some point. It hasn’t yet and he’s been a pretty electric player at times. He even torched the Dolphins in the first game of the season this year.

2019

Kyler Murray (1st overall) and Daniel Jones (6th overall) were the two guys that Miami could not have taken with their 13th overall selection this season. However, Dwayne Haskins went 15 to the Washington Redskins and COULD have dawned the aqua and orange if desired. As it turns out, and the jury is still out on him and his ability, he hasn’t looked great in his season-long competition with veteran QB Case Keenum for the starting job in Washington.

I think the main thing to take away from this long look at the Dolphins draft positions, and whether they could have replaced Dan Marino more effectively, is that drafting a star QB is extremely difficult. And, yes, it does take more than a QB to make the Super Bowl. However, looking at these past 20 years of drafts, there were 56 QBs mentioned in this article, 8 have played in a Super Bowl (sorry Carson Wentz). This gives teams a 12.5% chance of drafting a QB 1st round (or early 2nd round) that can play for them in a Super Bowl.

Dan Marino, himself, had troubles getting back to a Super Bowl after Super Bowl XIX. Signing Drew Brees in 2006, would have been the easiest way to get back to a Super Bowl but there have been some opportunites for the Dolphins to draft an impact signal caller (like Aaron Rodgers), trade up for a talented arm (Patrick Mahomes) or stay put and draft a talented QB (Matt Ryan or Lamar Jackson).

We can sit around and play Monday Morning Quarterback every day. However, it’s tough to make these calls. The Dolphins are inevitably going to have another shot in this season’s NFL draft. There are going to be some very talented players at the QB position to choose from. Who will the Miami Dolphins try to replace their greatest man under center in team history with this time?