Fins a young team? Yes!!!!

[BennyVW]

OK,
I counted the ages of all of the guys who currently have contracts to return to the Fins. I got their ages off the fins site and did a quick and dirty breakdown of the ages. I wanted to see if we are really an old team like all the sportwriters keep saying. To keep it fair i put the guys on the roster and then beside it the amount of guys that start in that age class...


25 and Below (Young)
34 players w/ contracts
6 Starters

26-29 (Prime)
25 Players w/ Contracts
12 Starters

30-33 (Declining)
5 Players w/ Contracts
5 Starters

34+ (Old)
3 Players with contracts
1 Starter



Here is the depth chart i used...
QB- Culpepper
RB- Brown
FB- Williams
TE- Mcmichael
T- Shelton, Carey
G- James, Hadnot
C- Mckinney

DE- Carter
OE- Taylor
DT- Holliday, Traylor
LB- Spragan, Thomas, Crowder
CB- Allen, Daniels
S- Bell, Tillman

K- Mare
P- Jones

Now this will obviously change, but the message is still the same. We are not an "Old" team.
89% of our players are under 30
75% of our starters are under 30

Furthermore we have 8 guys over 30 and 6 of them are starters. Unluckily, except for Mare they are all on the "Front Seven". Luckily their is developing talent behind them.

Currently i have not added Beasley cause its not official yet. I have excluded guys such as Boston, Schulters and Morris as they have no contracts at this time.

 

[ASCII]

Great work and Great Post!

 

[Dolfan5000]

MMMMMMMMMmmm, so glad we rid ourselves of the stach what seems so long ago now.

 

[Welshfin]

How does this compare to other teams?
What's the average age in the NFL?

 

[Super Duper]

did you count our WRs?

 

[NickJr.]

Very nice research. One thing that really bugs me is the lack of knowledge from some national personalities. I mean of course they can't follow every NFL team with the zeal of it's home fans, but a little homework would really help.

 

[Welshfin]

I found this from 2003...
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/6628372

Anyone got anything more recent?

EDIT: After looking through the article, our roster's average age in 2003 was 27.4
(compared to the then NFL average of 26.5, which you classify as prime).

I'll just go and work out our current roster's average age...

EDIT2: According to the official site's roster, our current roster's average age = 26.2.
I would hazard a guess that the NFL average age doesn't vary very much from year to year.

 

[DuderinoN703]

Olny thing I see is that our defensive front is getting old.

Traylor has maybe 1-2 seasons left
J Taylor has I'd say about 4-5 seasons
Kevin Carter maybe 3-4 seasons
Vonnie Holliday 3-4 seasons

We upgraded our secondary with age, now we need to do the same to the DL either this year in the draft, or next year's FA and draft

 

[aerokev]

Olny thing I see is that our defensive front is getting old.

Traylor has maybe 1-2 seasons left
J Taylor has I'd say about 4-5 seasons
Kevin Carter maybe 3-4 seasons
Vonnie Holliday 3-4 seasons

We upgraded our secondary with age, now we need to do the same to the DL either this year in the draft, or next year's FA and draft

i think they have already started to try to get younger on the Dline. roth, wright, and vickerson.

 

[Puffboy(ricky)]

Means the future may already be here! Phins 06, lets go man

 

[BennyVW]

did you count our WRs?

I counted all the guys under contract through 2006...

So i counted:
Jason Willis
Chris Davis
Chris Chambers (Starter)
Marty Booker(Starter)
Wes Welker
Fred Gibson
Cliff russell
Kelly Campbell

 

[finfan32]

great job

 

[motioncityhifi]

thats great to know...i kept reading from all these experts and they kept saying the dolphins were "long in the tooth" to borrow and expression from them. great to see we have a good balance of young and experienced players.

 

[grooves12]

Your compilation really means nothing without comparing it to the rest of the league... and payers "with contract" doesn't mean much since over half of them will be gone on opening day.

For what it worth I know I remember several sources pointing that our starting defense was the oldest in the league last year. We have gotten a little younger there with Seau leaving and maybe slighly younger in the defenseive backfield, but we are still up there with likely the oldest D-line in the league.

Like you said at least we have some talent that could/should take over when these guys finally move on, in Wright/Vickerson.