It’s unclear which team wants to trade down more: the Vikings at No. 3 or the Jaguars at No. 7.
For now, we’ll call it a tie.
Minnesota is trying its damnedest to drum up a market for the first pick after the top two picks, which barring the intervention of a bus, a lightning bolt, and/or a Biblical plague will be Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III. The Jaguars, who widely are believed to be hoping to trade down from the seventh spot, are now openly selling the idea that the Dolphins will take quarterback Ryan Tannehill with the eighth pick in the draft.
Appearing on 930AM with Pete Prisco (via Tania Ganguli of the Florida Times-Union), Jaguars director of player personnel Terry McDonough said that “people know Miami’s going to take [Tannehill,” and that “if a team wants a quarterback they’re going to have to come in front of Miami.”
And who’s directly in front of Miami? The Jaguars.
That dynamic could help explain the Dolphins’ aggressive and repeated denials of the reports that owner Stephen Ross wants Tannehill. If the Dolphins don’t knock that one down, they’re bolstering the notion that they’d take Tannehill -- and they’re encouraging a team like the Seahawks at No. 12 to trade up five spots.
Conversely, if the Dolphins don’t want Tannehill, they have every reason to create the impression that they do. If, after all, someone leapfrogs Miami to take a player the Dolphins don’t want, it’ll push someone the Dolphins actually want one spot farther down the board.
So if they want him, they should create the impression they don’t. If they don’t want him, they should create the impression they do.
Unless they’re operating on a higher level of misdirection, which would entail creating the impression they don’t want him and hoping that someone will interpret that to mean they do want him, when in reality they don’t want him.