Dave Hyde: Is Grier’s 10th year running Dolphins draft the charm — or the end?

Six winters ago, Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross promoted Chris Grier from running the NFL draft to running the entire organization because, “everything you want to see for this job is embodied in Chris.”

Mediocre decisions?

Underwhelming drafts?

Glaring problems?

That’s the embodiment of Grier’s work. He is the Liam Eichenberg of general managers, given yet another chance to prove his worth, playing to a public chorus hoping to finally see in him what Ross once did.

It’s a fair question about who carries more of this team’s burden this coming season, Grier or coach Mike McDaniel. Grier built a leaky roster, McDaniel a leaky culture. But it’s Grier’s time right now with 10 picks in the upcoming NFL draft. March and April are his November and December.

Grier needs be smart like the Philadelphia Eagles boss, Howie Roseman, who drafted two rookie defensive backs, signed three minimum wage free agents and built enough around a second-round quarterback to win the Super Bowl.

Grier needs to think like the Los Angeles Rams’ Les Snead, who went all-in in winning the 2022 Super Bowl yet reconfigured the roster so quickly through shrewd drafts that a team starting three rookies and five second-year players gave Philadelphia its toughest playoff game.

Grier needs to be like Tampa Bay’s Jason Licht, who rebuilt a 2021 Super Bowl winner that mortgaged the future into a team with a good future, or Kansas City’s Brett Veach, who was fearless in drafting Patrick Mahomes and has managed the roster to five Super Bowls in six years.

There are stars in NFL front offices, you see, and their teams are a reflection of that. It works the other way, too, as some are accountably quick to acknowledge even in rebuilding years.

“Last season, ultimately, the roster was on me,” New England general manager Eliot Wolf said last month. “We were 4-13. Just didn’t get enough done. Certainly, the free agency class didn’t live up to our expectations. The draft class, you know, it’s too soon to tell, but we were expecting a bigger impact from some of those guys. … Every on (quarterback Drake Maye), I felt responsible for that. Just ultimately, didn’t do enough.”

Has Grier ever been so accountable?

Instead, he chuckled at media in August for questioning the guard situation and said the backup quarterback is just fine. After the season collapsed in good part because of the interior line and backup quarterback, he acknowledge they were now priorities.

It doesn’t help the season to see the problem afterward. Bill Parcells would tell assistants during games he needed answers immediately because it wouldn’t help on Monday morning.

This past week’s free agent period said the Dolphins are done playing fantasy football of buying proven players in part because it didn’t work. They’re back to building through the draft.

The first part of scouting remains self-scouting. The Dolphins have been awful here. It wasn’t just guards and the quarterback room. They let more talent go out the door last season — Christian Wilkins, Robert Hunt, Andrew Van Ginkel, Brandon Jones, DeShon Elliott … — than could ever come in the door.

What if they’d signed Jones before free agency came into sight? Or Elliott early in that 2023 season? Would they need two safeties this winter?

The Dolphins need a defenseman lineman and cornerback now, too. The Chargers made the playoffs starting Teair Tart, who was cut by the Dolphins in August, and two fifth-round rookie cornerbacks.

You see how it can work? How it has to work some years?

This is one of those years. In his 10th season running the draft, Grier needs his best draft. He needs to create a younger, better, healthier and cheaper roster.

Eichenberg was re-signed this past week and (surely) fighting for the last offensive lineman’s spot on the roster.

Grier is fighting for his job, too. The preliminaries are out of the way after the first week of free agency, too. The main of the NFL draft looms. Is his 10th year running the draft the charm?

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