Chris Grier and Mike McDaniel – April 30, 2022
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Saturday, April 30, 2022
General Manager Chris Grier and Head Coach Mike McDaniel
Mike McDaniel:
(What was it like for you? First draft as a Miami Dolphin.) – “It was fun. It was an exercise in patience but I think I think it was an exercise in patience and virtue. I’m pumped about the players that we added so that was fun.”
(Making the phone calls, did you enjoy that?) – “Yeah, I was the closer. (Chris Grier) had the hard work of the opener. But yeah, that was fun. It’s a special moment for a lot of people and you can hear it in the background especially. It’s a cool thing to be a part of.”
Chris Grier:
(Today you had three picks. You started off with getting WR Erik Ezukanma. Wide receiver probably wasn’t at the top of your needs but was that a case of best player available and what did you see with him and his fit here?) – “Yeah, I think with us, we always go down the board and always talk about the best players available. We got to that pick and he was a player we had talked about, we had visited with him, spent some time. Wes (Welker) worked him out, went there and he was on Mike (McDaniel) from day one about getting a Red Raider receiver in here. (laughter) We dealt with Wes all spring talking him up. We had a good workout with him. We had a private workout with him as well. He did a nice job for us. We got to know him and he was the kind of player that fit our profile for what we were looking for. Good kid. Tough. Catches the ball well. He blocks. Run after catch and things. When he was there and we looked at the board, we said we had to take him.”
(A few months ago, not long ago you said that you wanted to add competition at center with C/G Michael Deiter. Obviously, you didn’t come away with any offensive linemen. Was that just a matter of how the board kind of shook out? Did you try to trade up or trade back? Can you try to walk me through not coming away with an offensive lineman?) – “Yeah, we want competition at every position. We still, we do have some competition with the offensive line group. As we’ve gone through here in the spring and Mike (McDaniel) and the coaching staff have been very excited about the group and that’s been the fun part about working with these guys here is they’ve talked about it all spring and then getting on the field with them recently, they’re really excited about it. With us, all through the draft, yeah we try and look at every position but we follow our board. We don’t reach for people. We did try and move up a couple of times but we had limited resources in terms of being able to move around. As we said before, just because the draft is over doesn’t mean we are going to stop looking to improve the roster. We’ll keep working through that all spring and through the summer.”
(What is the plan now for backup center or is this a situation where you might try some other guys at that position?) – “Yeah, I think – every option.”
Mike McDaniel:
“It’s important for a team that you’re a combination of players working together. You give everyone an opportunity that you think fits. We have some good, young competition that we feel good about and you’re trying people at different avenues really just to put people in the best position they can be to be successful. You can’t force the market whether it’s the draft or free agency. You do what you’re most comfortable with for the team, that’s what we’ve continued to do and moving forward, if the opportunity presents itself, we’ll jump on it. Right now, we’re just a group of guys that are all in, trying to learn a new system and get better every day. That’s what we’re most concerned with moving forward.”
Chris Grier:
(Chris, you mentioned that the offensive line group in this draft class stood out to you. I’m just wondering if there was a point in this draft that you were trying to trade up for an offensive lineman or it just didn’t fall right or you didn’t have the resources to do so?) – “Yeah, we were looking but we are happy with the players we got. There were opportunities where we made calls and tried to get some deals done but sometimes the ball bounces that way. For us, Mike (McDaniel) was antsy a couple of times. We were on the phone and we were joking about how no one wanted to do business with us.”
Mike McDaniel:
“You really just want to make sure that – at the end of the day, you have four draft picks. You’re going into both days, or really all three days of the draft saying, ‘You know what – we want to make our team better as best we can.’ You want to feel good about the players that you add. There’s a lot of people that are on the field, a lot of positions to fill, but the bottom line is that we need some Miami Dolphins that our locker room can embrace and that can make the players that we have better and make the team better. That’s what we did and we feel great about that.”
Chris Grier:
(On QB Skylar Thompson, if you could each talk about what interested you in the quarterback and what you thought was appealing about him?) – “Yeah, I think going through the process here, we’ve all kind of seen him over the years. It seems like every year Kansas State pulls a big upset over someone and he has a game that people end up talking about. He’s a competitive kid that’s smart, tough. He’s got some athletic ability. I always appreciate how he played and how their coaches and people around him talked about the character and the person. It was always intriguing and then we got to the point here at the end where there is a guy that has some potential to develop as a quarterback and has some upside. We’re excited. The coaching staff and Mike (McDaniel), I’ll let him speak on that but they followed suit with their work.”
Mike McDaniel:
“You’re excited when you turn on the tape and you see a guy with passion play the position of quarterback. You could feel his command and his competitiveness and that’s something that the entire team benefits from because you’re touching the ball all the time and making decisions. We felt good about that opportunity. I just really like the way he played the game and how competitive he was. I think that everyone will be excited that we added another competitor to the team and move forward in that way. Skylar by far had the best audience, too, around him. (laughter) They were all great but I think he had like several people screaming in his ear and into the phone because it was that loud. A lot of people were excited about it.”
(What was your evaluation of WR Erik Ezukanma?) – “Well, I thought he would be a really good guy to draft. Chris (Grier) agreed, so we drafted him. The cool part about Erik is that he competes and he does it – we’ve talked about it at length. Wes (Welker) believes it and a lot of the receivers in the room are starting to understand it but you can really dictate the toughness and the physicality of the team with how guys go about their business. That’s the one unique thing I think we have is however fast they are, all of our receivers compete and play tough. That’s watching Erik do something similar in a completely different body type. It was exciting to watch him play and I think he fits the energy and the skill level that we’re looking for. We want guys to be fast and play fast and doing both with a decisiveness and a team-first passion that he bleeds. We’re excited to add him. That was the biggest thing, I saw a football player playing the receiver position.”
(The roster the day you were hired and the roster today are remarkably different. I was wondering if you could compare the two and maybe talk about how much better you feel about the players you have?) – “It’s exciting but you’re not sure. I’d like to think that Chris (Grier) thinks that I’m a pretty good coach but then he was aggressively adding a lot of really good players. He recognizes that a good coach needs help, he needs good players. It’s a collective. I’m not sure if it was a compliment or if he was saying, ‘Hey dude, you need some help.’ (laughter) But regardless, the end result I feel very good just about the whole team. It’s not just about the guys that we added. It’s about a collective group of people whether you’re in your first year or you’ve been a Miami Dolphin for two or three years. You want people to all agree on the front end to say, ‘Hey you know what, we’re ready to do something together and full commit to it.’ That’s what I’m most excited about because when I first got here, we didn’t have a team meeting. I was individually meeting people maybe two or three guys a day and then the rest were FaceTime and phone calls. Now, we have the energy of a full nucleus and I know one thing – we have a group of guys with these college guys now joining that are committed to trying to win football games and that’s the best part about the roster now.”
Chris Grier:
(General Manager Chris Grier, you were asked about center and I’m curious about the running back position. Obviously you have quality running backs on the roster but I’m curious if there was a running back or two that you and Head Coach Mike McDaniel and the other coaches liked in that third or fourth round range that would have been an option had it broken a little differently?) – “Yeah, there was one guy that we kind of targeted a little bit and Mike (McDaniel) fell out of his chair when he got picked by somebody.”
Mike McDaniel:
“I mean I was composed. (laughter) I was a professional. I was convinced that I was internalizing it all.”
(The 49ers got a back, right? Was he from Arizona State?) – “The 49ers drafted a running back? I don’t know. We were focused on our four picks.”
Chris Grier:
“Yeah, we were just focused on our guys. (laughter).”
Mike McDaniel:
(Did you guys have any HBCU targets that you guys wanted to bring in during free agency or after this draft as unsigned free agents?) – “There are plenty of good players in college football. They come from all different conferences. That’s competitive as well. It’s just like the draft. There are a lot of players that we feel good about that we would add on our team that we don’t have the opportunity to because of the competitive nature of the selection process and undrafted free agency. There are plenty of players we’ve evaluated, several of which we had high on our board.”
(How are you feeling now that the draft process is over as a head coach? How are you feeling, how was this process for you?) – “I feel like there has been a lot of work done, but nothing has been done if that makes sense. You’re right, you’re in the natural process of at least for a portion of the calendar of the year, you can be focused specifically on one thing and that’s practicing football and getting better at that. That’s relieving, but it’s just the transfer of focus. It’s a cool part of the process. It was fun. I imagine the first night would be a little more climatic in the near future. It was nice to get my feet wet by doing nothing. (laughter) But it was fun. I was very happy with our draft picks on our first day. I just got to watch them practice for the last couple of weeks with Tyreek (Hill). That was good. We felt good about that one. (laughter) I’m excited to move forward and I think a lot of people in the building are too.”
Chris Grier:
(I’m guessing you guys will have a large undrafted free agent class to get into now?) – “Yeah, we think so. We’re in the process of working through that here as the draft ends. We’ll be signing players as always and getting ready for rookie minicamp.”
(Does it benefit you that you don’t have that many draft picks with the undrafted rookie, or is that really a situation that comes down to money?) – “It’s a combination of both. It does help because some teams have had eight, nine, 10 players added at a position. With us it gives you a little more space for opportunities. Kids will look for opportunities with their agent. But at the end of the day, the good players that are left, it always gets competitive with the money.”
(This is you guy’s first time in this process working together in the draft and free agency. I’m curious if you guys learned anything from each other throughout the course of this process the first time around?) – “I learned that he likes sushi. He was crushing sushi on Thursday night.” (laughter)
Mike McDaniel:
“He’s a tough guy to compete with in Cherry Pepsi consumption. I tried to go bottle for bottle with him and I couldn’t keep up. (laughter) That was humbling I guess. No, but it’s been great. You’re excited to get involved in the process and it felt like we’ve worked together for a long time, to the point where I feel like Chris (Grier) looks at me and he’s like, ‘We’ve worked together for a long time, I’m kind of sick of you at this point,’ which I think is good for everyone. (laughter)”
Chris Grier:
“It’s been good, it’s been good. Even when we disagreed on players, we spent time on the players and talking through why and talking with the coaching staff and scouts. It’s been a good process. It has been fun. I think for everybody it has been enjoyable. The scouts, coaches – we’ve had a number of coaches that Mike has hired that have said they’ve enjoyed this process because it’s been different, the openness and communication just from other places they have been. It’s been fun and we feel good about the process but there is still work to be done.”
(Did you end up watching any WR Tyreek Hill highlights?) – “No, we didn’t. (laughter) Practice film, we actually did. Thursday at practice. (laughter)”
