DAVIE, Fla. - Kansas City's head coach worked out two quarterbacks, on successive March days, at schools a few hours apart. He told each he would draft one of them. He kept his promise, too.
The quarterback who wasn't drafted sat at home, simmering, as he fell on draft day, and kept falling, all the way into the Dolphins' lap.
Not Chad Henne on Saturday.
Dan Marino, 25 years ago.
"It's a day of mistakes," Marino said this week. "Look how I ended up here. How many teams made a mistake?"
Saturday, the Dolphins continued their annual offseason game of Searching For Dan Marino by catching a falling Henne. Maybe this new regime made a mistake in the way every previous regime of the past decade has made. Or maybe, this time, it will benefit from others' mistakes in passing on the Michigan quarterback.
That's the perfect word for this day, the only one if you have some common sense and sense of history: maybe. Because no one knows the answer, no matter how sure they are today, as this same second-round draft pick has shown through the years on Dolphins quarterbacks.
In 2004, A.J. Feeley was The Hope.
In 2006, Daunte Culpepper was The Man.
In 2007, John Beck was The Future.
Now, Henne's just The Latest One.
That's four second-round picks used. In fact, if you want to tally the full cost of attempting to find a franchise quarterback since Marino left, add in two fifth-round picks, three sixth-round picks and two seventh-round picks.
The question is whether the cost will keep rising, because you can't stop taking quarterbacks until you're certain of having one. That's the First Law of Football.












