MSN a slide show of the worst draft picks of all time by team complied by Walter Football.
I think Walter Football has a short memory. Ginn turned out to be a bad pick but the guy has managed to play in the NFL for almost a decade. For me the worst pick was John Avery and I'm not even considering the fact that we traded down before the draft and lost out on Randy Moss. Avery was such a reach at the time, that I remember I couldn't even find a profile on him in any draft publication. He ended up gaining 500 yards for the Phins with 2 TDs and 5 fumbles. At least Ginn shined in that game against the Jets.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/the-worst-draft-picks-of-all-time-for-every-nfl-team/ss-BBrLg5S
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The Dolphins have a long rich history of 1st round busts, I swear, it seems as though half of this franchises 1st rounders were busts, but to me one stands out head and shoulders above the rest, Dion Jordan, because he was a 1st and 2nd round bust, we wasted 2 picks on this guy.
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Dion Jordan was a higher pick, however he was in a pretty bad draft. Ted Ginn was picked instead of Willis and Revis. Both players better than any player in the 2013 draft. -
Jamar Fletcher and Jason Allen were pretty bad busts as well, but neither of them were top picks. What really gets me about Fletcher and Dion Jordan is that these guys were drafted when those positions(CB & DE, respectively) were considered the strength of the team while glaring holes went unfilled whereas those drafts had good talent available to fill those holes with. Instead of doing that we doubled down on positions that we were already stacked at.
In 2001, we drafted Fletcher when we already had Madison and Surtain, could've kept T-Buck for a few years too as our slot where he looked best at (he had a few good remaining years with the Pats after us). Meanwhile, we skipped on drafting Drew Brees, the first of two opportunities that we could have had with him. Because ya know, don't even bother drafting a franchise QB after your Hall of Fame QB retires and trusting a career backup in Jay Fiedler to take over the team totally made sense.
Jason Allen was another head scratcher, as S wasnt a huge priority and there were much more talented players available even at S than Allen. But Nick Saban had to have his way.
Dion Jordan, for some reason I knew at the time that this pick would come back to haunt us. He wasnt a regular down player at Oregon and didnt do anything spectacular. He was just a freak athlete and rarely do those type of guys translate into talented NFL players. Not to mention we were already stacked at DE and OL was and continues to be an albatross around the neck of our offense. Even though Lane Johnson, Luke Jockel and Eric Fisher havent turned into all-world OLmen, they at least would have made sense. Id rather bust at a position of need than waste a pick on a bust at a position of strength. Thats just stupid and wasteful of valuable picks. Only exception I'd make is of that player was Dan Marino-Lawrence Taylor special and Jordan didn't look like anything close to that.
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And ya, swinging for the fences and trading up for an impact player makes sense, I wouldnt trade up for an OL. But I think the Jordan move was an unnecessary "ballsy" move that cost us when we could've stayed put and drafted a decent OL or even a better DE than Jordan.
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Yeah, I don't think I can call Ted Ginn are worst bust. Then again, I'm a bit biased since I dang near had a perpetual migraine from all the "We should have drafted Brady Quinn" threads. Like, I wanted Quinn over Ted Ginn, too, but the way people were acting, you would have thought Quinn was putting up Dan Marino numbers.
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Just for fun, ugh, I went to PFR and listed all our 1st round busts and the number that PFR has give for their career, the higher the number the better the player, Marino has a 145, so here is a list of all 1st round busts, chronologically, and the PFR number;
QB Jim Grabowski 19
DT Mike Kadish 29
DT Don Reese 22
OT Darryl Carlton 16
LB Jackie Shipp 18
RB Lorenzo Hampton 25
DE John Bosa 10
DE Eric Kumerow 4
RB Sammie Smith 14
WR Randall Hill 27
OT Billy Milner 7
WR Yatil Green 2
RB John Avery 4
CB Jamar Fletcher 9
DB Jason Allen 13
WR Ted Ginn 37
DE Dion Jordan 3
So this would place Ginn as the best 1st round bust in Dolphin history, Yatil Green as the worst, and it's hard to argue, just from what they were as players;
Y Green, 18 catches for 234 yards
T Ginn, NFL all purpose yards, 12,582, 30 TD's
Green's 2 beats out DJ's 3, and on the field I agree, Green was more futile, but Green just cost 1 pick, Dion cost a 1st and a 2nd, imo cementing the crown on his head as worst Dolphin's 1st round bust of all time.
(DJ's career is not over however, and he can yet get redemption, though I have zero faith in that, I have to mention it out of fairness)
Here are the rest of the "first pick" busts, when we had no 1st;
WR Otto Stowe 12
TE Chuck Bradly 0
QB Guy Benjamin 1
RB JJ Johnson 7
LB Eddie Moore 3
Thats 22 first pick busts, 3 shy of half the first picks in franchise history, ouch. -
2013 first round is not very good. Only 2009 top 10 might be worse.Silverphin likes this. -
To be honest I think calling Yatil Green a bust is a little unfair because I think a true bust is one where the player isn't good enough, not one where injury cut him down.
I still think Ted Ginn was a worthwhile gamble because of his unwordly football speed. He wasn't just fast on the track he was fast in pads. If he had toughness on the field he would have been a first ballot HOFer.
If you are going to gamble, then bet on a guy like Ginn who had some good college production along with fantastic measureables. Gambling on guys like DJ, Jason Allen or John Avery who only had measurables is a bigger waste of a pick. -
Kumerow had to have the greatest initial sting. We took him in front of Chris Spielman. Every snap a memory of what could have been.
dolphin25 likes this. -
I still think Jamar Fletcher was a bigger bust than Jordan tbh.
1). Sam Madison and Patrick Surtain.
2). Fletcher played zone CB in college.
3). Jay Fiedler was our QB. Drew Brees was on the board and at 26, he was great value.
So you have two all-pro CB's and you're drafting a CB that would need to elevate himself to being one of the top 5 CB's in the NFL just to have a chance to start... Otherwise, his ceiling is nickle CB and playing 30-50% of defensive snaps. Remember, this was 2001. The NFL was still a run first league. Nickle CB's didn't have the value they do today. In addition, Fletcher came from a zone defense to Miami, where we played press man coverage. Nothing about this pick made sense... Then, adding insult to injury, Fiedler came off a season in 2000, where he had a sub 75 QB rating and 14-14 TD/INT ratio... Even worse, in the playoffs he tallied 52% completion, 1 TD, 6 INT, 5.1 Y/A, 1.6 AY/A, and a 36 QB rating. On the board? Drew Brees... While not a perfect prospect, especially at his height, his value at pick 26 was extremely high. There was no justifiable reason to pass on him for ANYONE. Let alone a CB who didn't even fit our system.
Jamar Fletcher is IMO, the worst bust in Miami history. Not only because he cost a premium pick and wasn't very good, but because that decision set the franchise back more than a decade. Dion Jordan might have costed more in terms of picks and dollars and cents, but that pick isn't going down in history as a pick that could of changed the course of a franchise. Even losing out on Randy Moss is forgivable in that Marino only had 2 years left at that point, one of which he would battle shoulder problems and become a shell of himself. And Jay Fielder wasn't making Randy Moss into a superstar. Fletcher > Brees takes the cake by a wide margin, IMO.keypusher, dolphin25, GARDENHEAD and 1 other person like this. -
He was a noodle arm shrimp of a QB who didn't play an NFL style O in college, and no one else in the 1st round picked him either, and chances are if we didn't pick Fletcher we still wouldn't have picked Brees, the FO at the time was not willing to give up on their new QB, whom they believed in, and the team did too.
Fletcher was thought to the BPA at the time, he was a ball hawking terror in college, just coming off the Thorpe award.
I could see your point if the collective football worlds jaw was on the floor because we didn't draft Brees, but that was not the case, no one expected us to draft a QB, and Brees was viewed as kind of a long shot QB, which is why he slipped into the 2nd round. -
Yeah, I'm not sure I agree that you can call him the worst pick of all time for us. Without thinking too hard about it and going off recent memory, I'd say Dion Jordan gets that distinction considering what we gave up to get him, and what he's provided us to date.
While I agree that Ted Ginn was a bad choice at the time, it's hard to call him a bad pick considering the length of career he has had, and his success in Carolina this past season especially.
Was he worth #9 overall, oh, hell no. Nobody can dispute that, but it's hard to say he's one of the worst all time considering he's put together a good career. Was it a bad decision on our part? Yes. Worst we've made? No. -
How about worst second round pick ever?
Eddie Moore. Mostly because you don't draft a special teams LB in the second round! And also because we could've taken Anquan Boldin instead. I remember that draft well and smacking my head wondering what the hell was Wanny was thinking.
Phillip Merling deserves a mention, because he showed some potential in that one Jets game against Favre but he flamed out rather quickly. He's become a forgetten former Dolphin.
Pat White is also a candidate, but he never should have been drafted so high. His failure here was the fault of Parcells and Sparano who stupidly went away from their draft blueprint in just year 2 and started drafting players for a trick play! This was a "wildcat" pick and when you already have Pennington starting and Henne waiting in the wings, you don't select another QB(albeit not one undersized and not pro ready like White), when we were still trying to build the team. I feel bad for White, on a different team in different circumstances he could've had a solid career as a backup.
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No one wanted Fletcher. I remember cussing up a huge storm when this pick happened. No one thought it was a good pick when it happened. -
Dion Jordan, and it's not even close. After that, Yatil Green, followed closely by John Avery. I'm not even sure if Yatil Green saw more than a couple of snaps in a regular season game.
[Edit to include the following:] Tore his knee up two TC in a row. Came back a third year and played in 9 games, 18 catches for 234 yards, no TDs. I'd thought he played but didn't know he'd seen that much action. Ranking stands. -
Yatil was a talented WR who was projected as a first round pick. His career never panned out but that was more bad luck than anything else so I can't knock the FO too much for him. After the back to back injuries he was never the same. -
Remember, Brees was the 2nd QB drafted that year, no one was in love with Brees, because he was short and had a weak arm, he became an exception to the rule, looking back now and saying he was a franchise changer is a little bit of revisionist history imo, because no one was looking at Brees like he was a franchise altering QB at the time. -
Eddie Moore was the worst of all the worst second round abortions.
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I remember the talk, because I was pretty anti-Brees at the time. At least at Heraldtalk BB, I was in the minority.
Everyone did not want Fletcher. He was BPA, however he wasn't a position of need, at all. You don't take a first round pick on a nickelback. -
At least LB was a need. Who needs a gimmick quarterback? -
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I do agree that Fletcher was a surprise, but it's hard to kill a GM when they are picking BPA, because if Fletcher was the goods, then you have trade options, value is value, he was highly touted. -
Guest
Jamar Fletcher is a good call, particularly as:
1. CB wasn't an area of great need
2. These players all went in the next 10 following picks : Reggie Wayne, Drew Brees and Chad Johnson.
Has anyone mentioned Sammie Smith yet?FinSane likes this.
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