The smokescreen is an accepted part of communications from coaches and general managers in the days and weeks leading up to the draft.
We know they’re fudging the truth, they know we know they’re fudging the truth and everyone goes along because it’s all part of the game. To work, though, the smokescreen has to be somewhat believable or the whole thing just becomes ridiculous. Dolphins coach Joe Philbin is experiencing the rodeo for the first time from the big chair and some comments he made about Texas A&M quarterback Ryan Tannehill on Tuesday make you hope that he gets a little better at it in the future.
“We’ve talked obviously a lot,” Philbin said, via Mike Beradino of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “We’ve had draft meetings. We’ve discussed him as an individual. We’ve watched his film. Obviously Mike [Sherman] has been around Ryan for a long, long time, but it wasn’t like we sat around and said, ‘OK, what about him at eight?’”
Really? Not once in all of these discussions about Tannehill was there a moment when someone asked the room if it made sense to actually draft him?
It’s starting to feel like the Dolphins are protesting a bit too much whenever Tannehill’s name comes up in discussion. Whether or not the decree is coming from the owner’s box about drafting Tannehill, there’s some reason why the Dolphins are working so hard to send a message that Tannehill isn’t the apple of their eye.