It came out yesterday that the Arizona Cardinals tampered when they hired their new head coach. The Cardinals reached out to Jonathan Gannon during a time that wasn’t permitted and illegally made contact to a coach under contract with another team. The admitted their mistake, and are sending the 66th overall pick, a 3rd round pick to Philadelphia in exchange for pick 94 and a 2024 5th round pick to settle the situation and close the matter out. The NFL signed off on this and didn’t see a need to further punish the Cardinals.

I know many Miami Dolphins fans are up in arms over this, saying how come Miami lost a 1st and 3rd round pick for tampering and the Cardinals get away with only having to slide down some 30 spots in this draft and they get to do a settlement, and not be punished. What gives here?

The answer as to why Arizona is getting off easy is simple, they admitted guilt. The Cardinals tampered, they admitted they tampered, and worked out an agreement with the damaged party (Philadelphia in this instance) to make things right.

The Dolphins never admitted they did anything wrong. So, why would Miami settle with New England, Tampa Bay, and New Orleans when they have publicly stated they didn’t tamper or violate any rules.

Innocent people don’t settle. And Miami has said in all three cases they are innocent.

Now, did Miami tamper for Sean Payton and for Tom Brady twice? OF COURSE THEY DID! And after an NFL investigation there was hard evidence that they did in all three circumstances.

But, if the Dolphins would have been honest and just said, “Look, we messed up. Sorry!” and worked out settlement deals with the three teams maybe for mid-round picks, there is a chance the NFL wouldn’t have punished the Dolphins and took away a 1st and a 3rd round pick (as well as suspending the owner for half the season.)

And let’s be honest, Arizona tampered with Gannon and ended up signing him away from Philadelphia. The Eagles lost something of value over the tampering. Miami tampered with Brady and Payton and didn’t land either. Miami may have gotten away with sending three mid round or low round draft picks to three teams and been able to put the matter to bed, and end up keeping their 2023 1st round pick and 2024 3rd round pick.

I don’t know if that was possible for the Dolphins, I mean Arizona tampered for one person one time and it only affected one other team. The Dolphins tampered three times and it affected three other teams. But, it sure as heck wouldn’t have hurt to try and settle. But, settling would have meant an admission of guilt. Which, to this day, Miami hasn’t ever admitted to.

So, one has to wonder; if the Miami Dolphins fell on the sword and just said, “we did it and we are sorry” could they have kept their 1st round draft pick in 2023? We will never know the answer but if I had to guess, I would say yes!