Ray Nettles could have been one of the best Miami Dolphins draft picks

The Miami Dolphins drafted LB Ray Nettles in 1972 and he could have been great.

In 1972, the Miami Dolphins selected linebacker Ray Nettles in round six. He would never play a down with the Miami Dolphins.

Most Miami Dolphins fans won’t recognize the name Ray Nettles. Older fans might recall the name but likely don’t know much, if anything about him. On ProFootballreference.com, he is simply a black name on the Miami Dolphins All-Time draft history list.

So why are we writing about Ray Nettles? Because in our research of the best and worst trades with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Nettles’ name came up and as we looked into who he was, we realized that Nettles could have been a Miami Dolphins game changer.

Let’s look at the trade first. Miami held the rights to Nettles from 1972 to 1977 when they traded those rights to the Buccaneers for a 5th round draft pick. Miami used that 1977 5th rounder on a punter named Mike Michel. Michel would play one season for the Dolphins and one more with the Eagles before bowing out of the league.

Ray Nettles never played a single down in the NFL on his way to the Hall of Fame.

Born in Jacksonville, FL. long before the NFL arrived in the northern Florida city, Nettles was a standout linebacker at Tennessee where he was an All-SEC linebacker in 1971. The Dolphins drafted him a year later in round six of the 1972 draft as mentioned above.

Miami wasn’t a team that was throwing money around to players back then, and the CFL offered Nettles twice as much money as the Dolphins were offering. So, Nettles agreed to play for the BC Lions.

In Miami, Nettles would have sat behind Nick Buoniconti to start his career. He didn’t want to do that. With a higher contract offer and a chance to play right away, Nettles headed North of the U.S. border.

From ’72 to ’76, Nettles would play for the Lions and then his career would start to become one of a journeyman. He would play four more CFL seasons all with different teams in the CFL.

In 2005, Nettles was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, Nettles lived an off-field life that was “fast” to say the least. He struggled with cocaine and alcohol later in his career and life. At the age of 60, Nettles passed away from liver and lung cancer.

It will never be known what kind of NFL linebacker Nettles would have made or what kind of impact he may have had on the Dolphins defense but it is an interesting twist in Dolphins’ history that sent a top prospect to Canada where he found success.