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e Greg ious
@GregfromDelray
Fins draft Myles Jack, runs into Wake during camp, ligaments and knees explode everywhere, bone fragment gives Cameron concussion, Kiko dies
DolphinsDraft @DolphinsDraft 2m2 minutes ago
Jack, Ragland, Alexander, A'Shawn, Reed, Dodd, Spence, Ogbah, Bullard, Cravens all on the board still to help the Def. Orrrrr Derrick Henry?
Tunsil slotted to play LG to start his career, between Albert and Pouncey.
If anything bad happens to Albert or James, he can slide out and cover the spot (better than Jason Fox. )
The Miami Dolphins were sitting in their so-called war room late Thursday evening, watching the NFL draft on television, when Mississippi offensive lineman Laremy Tunsil began to slide.
He was out of the Top 3. And then he was out of the top 5. And when he got passed over at No. 6 by the Baltimore Ravens, suddenly there was a buzz in the room.
"We're sitting there watching the best player in the draft fall and we started talking about this might actually be happening for us," a source I spoke with early Friday morning told me.
And when Tunsil dropped all the way to No. 13 where the Dolphins eventually selected him, the disbelief was as palpable as the satisfaction over what had just happened.
"We're picking 13 and the best player in the draft just fell to us," I was told.
The Dolphins promised weeks ago that No. 13 player in the draft would be a starter for them.
Laremy Tunsil will be the fulfillment of that promise. He is today a starting offensive lineman for the team.
No, he's not going to be a tackle, the position he played at Mississippi. He's going to be a starting guard by the time the 2016 NFL season rolls around. That is assuming both of Miami's tackles stay healthy. And if the worst happens with either Branden Albert at left tackle or Ja'Wuan James at right tackle, then Tunsil will be the candidate to fill the vacancy at either spot.
A true swing tackle who isn't going to let quarterback Ryan Tannehill get killed.
But if disaster does not strike, Tunsil is a guard who will upgrade a position that has begged upgrading for some time.
(Halellujah, the Miami Dolphins addressed the guard position)!
That's the vision the Dolphins have for what happened Thursday evening.
Now, is it a vision with no clouds? No. Of course not.
Tunsil comes with a problematic history and issues that need addressing, as I wrote in my column. There are legitimate reasons Tunsil dropped.
But the Dolphins are aware of these issues and they plan to address them.
The Dolphins tell me Tunsil and all of their rookies are going to get coached up on life skills, dealing with living in Miami, understanding their roles as professionals, all these things adults need to learn. All that in addition to learning the playbook when they show up at the team's Davie, Florida facility.
"The majority of the players coming into the NFL today are far from polished people much less players," a Dolphins source told me.
The team recognizes this. The team will address this.
The expectation is also that Tunsil will come to his new team with "his eyes wide open" because he just got a master's degree on how life can go wrong very fast. Think about it: Thursday morning Laremy Tunsil was expecting to be drafted maybe as high as No. 3 overall.
By Thursday night he had his privacy invaded, his reputation and habits unearthed to public scrutiny, and his earning potential was greatly diminished as a result. If that's not a life lesson for Tunsil, then there is no hope for this kid.
So, yes, there are reasons to doubt this will go right. As the Dolphins told me, "You've seen it go wrong before so you doubt ..."
Heck yes, I doubt, because it is true. I've seen movies like this reach bad endings before.
But this is a new coaching staff. This is a newly revamped personnel department. This is a different player.
The Dolphins, in short, believe this is a new day.
Let's see.
Someone's Been Trying To Sell That Laremy Tunsil Gas Mask Smoking Video For Weeks
Laremy Tunsil’s draft-day drop—thanks to a bizarre series of events, including his Twitter account being hacked and posting video of him smoking weed out of a gas-mask bong—cost him millions in salary. About $7 million, if you assume Tunsil would have gone to the Ravens at No. 6, where the first OT of the draft went. (The Ravens reportedly took Tunsil off their board upon seeing the video.)
Laremy Tunsil’s Account Tweets Out Gas Mask-Smoking Video Just Before NFL Draft (UPDATE)
Laremy Tunsil is expected to be one of the first players selected in tonight’s NFL Draft. Minutes…
Read more
Someone was out to get Tunsil, and succeeded. We don’t know who that someone is. But we know someone’s been trying to sell that video for weeks.
On April 12 we received an email in our tips inbox:
40 sec video of Projected top 5 pick in the 2016 NFL draft smoking drugs (crack or weed) from gas mask. Looking to sell.
The email address is apparently a throwaway, but it arrived under the name “Laremy Tunsil.” Somewhat tickled by the caginess of the text when the ostensible subject was right there in the “from” column, we replied, half-facetiously:
Is it Laremy Tunsil?
The emailer promptly replied.
yes.
They then sent three screen shots from the video that emerged last night.
We did nothing after that. We will pay for a good story (email us!), but a college kid smoking weed is not a story at all.
(Nor, it should be noted, is a college kid getting money from coaches to help pay his rent. What is news in that text exchange posted to Instagram is a multi-million-dollar program nickel-and-diming a college kid over a utility bill.)
A day later, after we had not responded to the emailer, they tried one more time.
?
We didn’t reply, and that’s the last we heard from them.
Suspicion for the hacks quickly and naturally fell upon Tunsil’s stepfather, Lindsey Miller, with whom Tunsil has been engaged in a lengthy and nasty legal battle.
Last June, Tunsil was arrested on domestic-violence charges after a fight with Miller. Tunsil told police that his stepfather had pushed his mother, and he punched Miller to protect her, and pressed charges against Miller. Miller told police that Tunsil hit him at least six times, that the attack was unprovoked, and that the argument started over Tunsil having impermissible contact with agents. NCAA investigators interviewed Miller over his claims that he had proof of rules violations committed by Ole Miss.
A month later, Tunsil and Miller agreed to drop the charges against each other.
This past Tuesday, two days before the draft, Miller filed a lawsuit against Tunsil, claiming Tunsil assaulted him and defamed his character. The suit alleges “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
In a statement, Tunsil’s attorney said,
“This unsavory attempt to obtain money from a talented young man is a sad example of the times. The timing of this suit, on the eve of the NFL draft, speaks volumes as to Mr. Miller’s motives.”
Immediately after being drafted at No. 13 by the Dolphins, Tunsil was asked if he believed his stepfather was behind the Twitter hack and the release of the video, which he said was years old. “I don’t know who it was,” Tunsil said.
Miller denied being involved in the hack. “I don’t know nothing about no video,” he told TMZ. “I’m not even watching the draft.”
The war-room panic over Tunsil might be the best example of the NFL’s disconnect from society. A college kid smoked marijuana. That’s it. And yet that was enough for so many teams to decide they didn’t want to risk drafting the guy most had as the most talented offensive tackle available. The Ravens—the Ravens, for god’s sake!—were scared off by weed.
The Drug Value Guy is regularly the single biggest market inefficiency in the NFL, and it seems that everybody but the people in charge realizes it. For more than an hour last night, the draft was the center of a bizarre mental tug-of-war between teams on the clock and their supporters. You had fans praying that their teams would select Tunsil, and then team after team passing because weed is bad.
Tyrann Mathieu, Randy Moss, Warren Sapp, Dan Marino: all players whose draft stock suffered because of drugs, all incredible bargains for the teams that selected them. We don’t know what Tunsil’s career will look like—nor Robert Nkemdiche’s—but their skills are so highly regarded that their new teams would never have been able to get them if not for the NFL’s strange, retrograde attitude toward recreational drugs.
Tunsil had the exact right attitude toward everything. There was no overwrought apology, no big production of saying he’s a changed man. In interviews, he projected a man mildly embarrassed only because social conventions indicate he ought to be, but did not pretend like smoking weed was actually a big deal, or anything to feel genuinely remorseful for. Because it’s not. The only regrets from draft night ought to be from Tunsil for his poor password hygiene, and from a whole bunch of early-drafting NFL teams for passing on a top prospect for the absolute dumbest of reasons. And whether they regret it or not, the biggest shame belongs to whichever dirtbag screwed over Tunsil.