First & Long

Dolphins Ink Top Pick Long

St. Louis, you are now officially on the clock. The Dolphins have known for four months they would hold the No. 1 selection in Saturday’s NFL Draft, and apparently they did not need another four days to make their choice. By signing OT Jake Long to a five-year deal worth more than $57M, the team heads into the weekend without having to worry about whether their top pick will miss training camp. The choice of Long is being described as "both safe and sound.” There are two things that stick out from yesterday’s announcement. First, despite Bill Parcells’ absence from the press conference, he did play a significant role in the negotiations. Perhaps more important, though, is that Long’s deal contains $30M in guaranteed money, a decrease of $2M from what the Raiders gave ’07 top pick JaMarcus Russell. It will be interesting to see if this starts a trend of teams scaling back signing bonus offers to draftees.