The 2025 NFL Draft saw the Miami Dolphins add eight new rookies. ESPN’s Mel Kiper, Jr., was not a fan of what the team did.
The Miami Dolphins’ 2025 NFL Draft included eight picks being made and several trades across the draft order. They landed players who should be day one starters at several areas of need and systematically attacked the draft to ensure they were adding the players they wanted when they wanted.
At the end of the three days of the draft, the Dolphins had added Michigan defensive tackle Kenneth Grant, Arizona guard Jonah Savaiinaea, Maryland defensive tackle Jordan Phillips, Florida cornerback Jason Marshall, Jr., Maryland safety Dante Trader, Jr., Oklahoma State running back Ollie Gordon II, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, and Georgia Tech defensive tackle Zeek Biggers. Grant and Savaiinaea should immediately assume a starting role this year, Phillips, Marshall, and Trader could battle their way to the top of the depth chart during the summer, and Gordon, Ewers, and Biggers provide the depth the team needs. Miami also added a 2026 third-round pick during a draft day trade.
It was a solid draft and one the Dolphins clearly wanted to use to bolster size and physicality for this season.
ESPN’s Mel Kiper, Jr., released his immediate draft grades on Sunday morning and he was not a fan of what Miami did. Kiper rated each team’s performance over the last three days by the value they picked based on his “big board” rankings of the prospects. Using his own ranking of the prospects to then assign grades does add some bias into the system, however.
For example, the Cleveland Browns earned an A+ grade for their draft in large part because they selected Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders with the 144th overall pick. Kiper had Sanders listed as his fifth-ranked process. Sanders lasted 144 picks, with every team in the league having numerous chances to pick him, for a reason – but Kiper sees that as a positive 139-position value pick for the Browns, giving them the A+ mark.
But, he has to have some way to provide snap grades, and using his big board as the basis is as effective as any other method when most of the players have not even made it to their team facilities yet.
Kiper’s grades typically range from A+ to C each year, which makes his C+ grade for the Dolphins’ draft a rough one; he only ranked the Atlanta Falcons and Cincinnati Bengals below Miami this year.
He introduced his thinking of the Dolphins’ draft writing:
This is a team in need of a spark, and it was a good year to have a bunch of picks. But then Miami used its first-round pick on … a nose tackle.
The Browns received an A+ grade, including with a pick of a defensive tackle with their first pick (the trade back factors into that, but it is still a defensive tackle with their opening pick). The Dolphins receive a C+ because they used their first pick on…a nose tackle.
He continued:
Kenneth Grant is a good player, no doubt. The 331-pounder stops runners in their tracks and breaks up passes at the line of scrimmage. The Dolphins needed an impact player next to Zach Sieler on the defensive line. I just don’t know that No. 13 overall was the place to find that player — especially because Grant’s pass rush upside is limited.
Miami was routinely disparaged last year for lacking a physical presence. They needed to find a way to stuff the run and a way to free up Sieler as an effective inside pass rusher. They added Grant to do exactly that.
Kiper turned his attention to the team’s needs in the secondary with his second bout of criticism about Miami’s performance. He wrote:
The bigger need falls in the secondary. Even before Miami was exploring a Ramsey trade, cornerback was a problem. Miami came to Green Bay with some combination of Storm Duck, Cam Smith and Ethan Bonner penciled in at CB2 to replace Kendall Fuller. That wasn’t going to work. Safety was an even bigger issue after Jevon Holland signed with the Giants. Yet it was crickets at both positions until Day 3. Jason Marshall Jr. (CB32) and Dante Trader Jr. (S16) were the only adds.
Do the Dolphins have needs in the secondary? Absolutely, and Kiper is fair in his assessment that it was crickets until the fifth round for Miami when it comes to addressing an area of need. The Dolphins trading out of the third and fourth rounds limited their ability to add a cornerback earlier, but they did not seem to be looking to attack the position as aggressively as they were targeting the line of scrimmage this year. Miami probably still has work to do in the secondary, and the early reports of undrafted free agent signings, including two cornerbacks and a safety, indicate the team knows it.
Kiper returns to Miami’s second-round pick in the next part of his write up:
Jonah Savaiinaea was the team’s lone Day 2 selection. The Dolphins were 28th in pass block win rate (55.7%) last season. Patrick Paul might work out at left tackle as Armstead’s replacement, but Miami needed options across the offensive line. Savaiinaea played tackle and guard at Arizona, and I’m projecting him as an interior blocker in the NFL. He could easily be the starter at left guard, with free agent addition James Daniels taking the right guard spot. If Paul struggled at left tackle, Savaiinaea could be a plug there; he looked good in a handful of games at left tackle last season.
This felt very neutral about the team’s addition of Savaiinaea. The Dolphins had one glaring hole on the offensive line, and they filled it with Savaiinaea. Many of the pre-draft projections had Miami adding an offensive lineman with their first-round pick. They waited until the second, but still landed a player who should be an immediate starter at guard, solidifying the line’s depth chart heading into this summer’s training camp.
Kiper ended his discussion of Miami’s draft with a couple of sentences on seventh-round quarterback Quinn Ewers:
I’ll end with a note on quarterback Quinn Ewers: He throws with touch, but I just didn’t see a lot of consistency from him. He’s a backup quarterback in the NFL.
The Dolphins drafted Ewers to serve as a developmental project and be the team’s third-string quarterback. It would seem the Dolphins and Kiper agree on their assessment of Ewers for this year.
Kiper made no mention of the fifth-round pick Phillips, sixth-round selection Gordon, or seventh-round pick Biggers.
Was this draft a C+ – or essentially a fail based on the span of Kiper’s grades – for Miami? Do you agree with his remarks? Head to the comments to discuss Kiper’s review of the Dolphins’ 2025 draft performance.
