An interesting development out of South Florida today. As you may have seen through the AP report, Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland raised a bunch of eyebrows at the pre-draft press conference today when he responded to a question about the first overall selection by saying, “You hope that this guy is a pillar of your defense for a long time” (22-second mark).

Naturally, the fact that he uttered the word “defense” created quite the stir in the media room, as this type of information is simply not divulged 10 days before the draft, especially considering many assumed Michigan OT Jake Long was the favorite to land in Miami.

Now, there are a couple of ways to interpret this:

1. Ireland, who’s in his first season as general manager and not accustomed to addressing the media, made a Freudian slip, and Ohio State DE-OLB Vernon Gholston or Virginia DE-OLB Chris Long is in fact the guy they’re going after.

2. He did this intentionally to throw off teams, something that wouldn’t necessarily be unexpected from a Bill Parcells understudy.

Ordinarily, considering just how sensitive the information is, it’s hard to imagine that Ireland would be that careless with his words as to unintentionally leak this info. But here’s the part that makes me suspicious that it actually was unintentional and that the Dolphins are in fact zeroing in on Gholston or Chris Long — bear with me:

I wasn’t at the 12:30 press conference, but I received an e-mail transcription of the session at 2:58 this afternoon. I read through it and didn’t find anything too interesting, to be honest. Mostly humdrum stuff.

Then the AP story came out, and I was shocked to learn that I somehow glossed over that rather huge detail about the “defense.” So I went back to the e-mail, and sure enough, the transcribed quote was, “You hope that this guy is a pillar of your [team] for a long time.” As in, the public relations staff changed Ireland’s words.

Then, at 4:25 p.m., after the AP story was released, I received a second, revised transcript, with the one correction being “defense” for “team.”

What does this all mean? Call me a sucker for the conspiracy, but I just can’t understand why the Dolphins public relations staff — which is one of the best in the business, by the way — would deliberately change a quote unless Ireland made a huge slipup of words. And I have to assume that the only reason they sent out the revised copy is because the story of Ireland’s gaffe had already been released, so now it was all about damage control.

Makes me wonder. Hmmm…