With the First Pick of the 2008 Draft, the Dolphins Could Choose to Take a Pass - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

It seems ludicrous, but I suppose it's one way to avoid paying first-overall money to your draft pick if you're the Miami Dolphins: keep quiet, let the clock expire, and wait for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to say "the Dolphins pass and the Rams are now on the clock." It's never happened intentionally (shockingly, the Mike Tice-led Vikings managed to pull it off a few years ago), but it's perfectly legal.

In addition to the economic implications, there are other reasons to "pull a Tice":

Why would the Dolphins ever contemplate such an outlandish maneuver? Simple. They're a 1-15 team with more holes to fill than a Manhattan street. "We need linebackers, we need secondary players, we need receivers, we need linemen. We need a bunch of things right now," coach Tony Sparano said recently.

Of course, winning a few games would be the more straightforward way around this problem, but whatever. Still, there's a reason team's don't deliberately employ this tactic. At least according to former Packers general manager Ron Wolf:

"It puts a negative spin on your organization. You're trying to be positive. Miami has the first pick. They've got a whole new regime there. ... The object is to get a good player so that you can compete and be representative in a very short period or someone else will be sitting in your chair."

And that probably goes a long way in explaining why there's no history of teams sitting out draft picks. Plus, Bill Parcells has his own strategy for keeping the Dolphins' eventual first-round pick's contract relatively manageable.