The Dolphins and the draft

For those with no knowledge of American major league sports, the draft is a curious concept. There's no transfer system as such in American football, though at the end of contracts players do become free agents and can sign with another team. Alternatively, a player can be traded, for other players or for picks in the draft.
The draft exists to distribute talent emerging from the College football system among the 32 NFL teams. In April of every year, a two-day meeting is held in which NFL teams choose the college players they would like to bolster their team. The worst goes first, in seven rounds of picks. The Miami Dolphins, who won one and lost 15 of their games last season, were the team with the worst record in the NFL. This year, they have the overall Number 1 pick in the draft, and the first in in four of the remaining rounds (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 7th. The Dolphins traded their 5th round pick of this year's draft last year for the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Trent Green, who subsequently suffered a recurrence of concussion issues and was let go this off-season).
The problem this year is that there is no standout superstar college player that the Dolphins want to sign. (They need to sign several - which makes the dilemma worse.) They would dearly have loved to have 'traded down' - swapped their overall No.1 for perhaps a first-round pick lower down the order, and say a 2nd round pick in addition to make up the value. Unfortunately, the player picked overall No.1 stands to make so much money - especially if he is a skill position player like quarterback or running back - from this honour that 'trading up' would constitute a major gamble for another team. For there is no guarantee that the No.1 pick, or any pick, will turn out to be successful. There are as many 'busts' as there are superstars. If a team generates 3 starting players from a 7-pick draft, that is considered to be a highly successful (unusually successful) year.
So no team wants to gamble in taking the Dolphins No.1 pick in a year when there is no seeming-surefire college player. Instead there are 5 or 6 'elite' players who could be the No. 1: defensive end Chris Long, offensive tackle Jake Long, running back Darren McFadden, quarterback Matt Ryan, defensive end Vernon Gholston.
Speculation on the Dolphins fan stites, on the blogs of local papers the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun Sentinel has been feverish. Who will they take as No.1? What is the strategy of Parcells, Sparano and Ireland? Is news that the Dolphins are negotiating with Jake Long a smokescreen? Bloggers and the respondents post up their draft picks with rationales, arguments, all thoroughly reasoned and convincing. And all wrong, no doubt.
But this week the energy has diminshed. The speculation has started to pall.
The draft weekend is 26/27 April, the weekend after next. Things will heat up again shortly.
The curious thing is that this year's draft is so exciting because the Dolphins were so bad last year. How can they get better, and how fast? What will the arch wheeler-dealer Parcells do? Improving a SuperBowl contender is one thing; reconstructing an entire team something else. Something far more interesting. Honest.