We probably will have 14 new starters, but only a handful will be NFL quality starters. Likely at a minimum 4 rookies, and even if they pan out long term, they are still rookies. Very few rookies come in and make an immediate substantial impact.
For once, I totally agree without Armando
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Which Fitz? What about Tunsil? That absolutely tremendous players that played well for us, then netted two first round picks and a second round pick?
Gonzofinfan
Super Donator
sigh its like Armando and some of our fans think with 13 draft picks 120 plus million that magically we are gonna trot out the same team next season... I'll put it to you this way I expect by 2020 when we get tua most likely we will only have 4 starters from 2019.. Howard,Baker,Deiter,Fitzpatrick are the only starters we currently have i could see starting in 2020.
** Maybe 5 starters i really liked john jenkins since he was at georgia, the guy is a plug in the middle of the DT something we have been missing since solai..
** Maybe 5 starters i really liked john jenkins since he was at georgia, the guy is a plug in the middle of the DT something we have been missing since solai..
Sooooi.....
You believe we can find 18 NFL starting quality players in one offseason?
Good luck with that.
Oh well. Someone should mail all these laments back to last season when they may have done something. As a poster eloquently put it, there is no “don’t tank” option at this point. The Dolphins pulled a play from the Cortez playbook and burned the proverbial ships (and the season)— i.e. there’s no turning back; whether we get to the Super Bowl or eventually fall back into mediocrity for years and years (again), there’s nowhere to go but forward.
NJ Dolphan
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Mando is being his usual long-winded, have it both ways, forget other things I've said self.
What's happening now is pretty simple to figure out. Whatever the Dolphins had was not enough to succeed and also not enough to put the team in a position to get your can't miss franchise QB (or as much as someone can be can't miss). One solution is to keep treading water and hope that you find that guy in the middle of the first round or later. (Something Mando seems to have always thought isn't that hard to do, much like a swim coach who tells the team "swim faster.") That has not worked for the past 18 years as ownership has pointed out.
So now they're going the other route, tearing it down and putting themselves in a position to not have to gamble that the QB they take in the fourth round will be Russell Wilson (who himself is not the elite QB he's often propped up to be). And when they hopefully get that quarterback, they'll have $120 million in cap space and more than twenty draft picks over the next two years (four, perhaps five of them, being first rounders depending on a Minkah trade).
Say what you want about it, and the misery it's causing now, but it's a plan that makes too much sense. The issue is whether you think Grier can turn those picks and cap space into a winner. The jury is out, but the problem with Mando and our other beat writers, is all they'll say is things like "Grier drafted Charles Harris, so it's not going to work." Every GM has draft busts under their belt. A good sports writer will try to figure out more details of Grier has in mind in the future and evaluate it on its own terms.
What's happening now is pretty simple to figure out. Whatever the Dolphins had was not enough to succeed and also not enough to put the team in a position to get your can't miss franchise QB (or as much as someone can be can't miss). One solution is to keep treading water and hope that you find that guy in the middle of the first round or later. (Something Mando seems to have always thought isn't that hard to do, much like a swim coach who tells the team "swim faster.") That has not worked for the past 18 years as ownership has pointed out.
So now they're going the other route, tearing it down and putting themselves in a position to not have to gamble that the QB they take in the fourth round will be Russell Wilson (who himself is not the elite QB he's often propped up to be). And when they hopefully get that quarterback, they'll have $120 million in cap space and more than twenty draft picks over the next two years (four, perhaps five of them, being first rounders depending on a Minkah trade).
Say what you want about it, and the misery it's causing now, but it's a plan that makes too much sense. The issue is whether you think Grier can turn those picks and cap space into a winner. The jury is out, but the problem with Mando and our other beat writers, is all they'll say is things like "Grier drafted Charles Harris, so it's not going to work." Every GM has draft busts under their belt. A good sports writer will try to figure out more details of Grier has in mind in the future and evaluate it on its own terms.
TheWozz
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I'd add Wilkins, Godchaux, Davis and Williams to that list. Maybe Kilgore, Parker and a RB...
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IMO, clearly wrong. Some (e.g., Williams) will clearly start. A number of players who are average (yes, Miami has a few) will return. I say, maybe too frequently, EVERY NFL team starts a LOT of average players. Nothing wrong with that.
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No Christian Wilkins there already, chief?
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ATL_PHIN_FAN
Winner Under Construction
I'd trade Mando for a 7th and a warm bottle of Pabst, easy peasy. :up:
Ferretsquig
Perennial All-Pro
A franchise QB changes everything. It is true that even a young Marino on this team would have had a tough time winning but I can assure you that it would be a whole lot more fun watching them lose these games. An elite quarterback gives a franchise and a fanbase hope whether it is for this year or the next.
Indy was a horribly mismanaged team during Luck's entire tenure and still produced quite a few good teams, a couple which had a chance to contend if things had gone their way. Swap Tannehill for Luck and Miami would have had a very different path over the last decade, even if they never managed to win it all. Having an elite signal caller makes all the difference in the world.
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Honest question brother, because I have a great deal of respect for you, but I don't see the risk the same way, and I want to understand your point of view--How are we worse off tanking if that correct coach and GM were not available to us?
Assuming Adam Gase wasn't the answer, we needed a new coach. I did not see the correct coach available this past offseason. Our options were A) continue with Gase, B) hire Flores, C) hire another coach who is not the correct coach. Given those three choices, I do not see any of the three being the right answer and I do not see any of the three being a huge risk … only three bad choices that are temporarily between today's failure and tomorrow's success when we find that coach.
We got rid of the real GM too, Tannenbaum. We kept the best of the three from a talent evaluation standpoint, Grier, and added other well regarded talent evaluators like Reggie McKenzie. IMHO, that's a positive move. If we assume that the correct GM is not available that year, isn't that a net positive? My belief is that this was a decent move, even if Grier & Co. isn't the correct GM, because he was a solid choice of what was available then.
So the question becomes, how much worse off are we with stopgap GM and Coach solutions? My guess is that we are not really worse off unless we fail to hire the correct people when they do become available to us.
The other question becomes, how does tanking hurt us long-term when this GM and Coach are replaced with the correct GM and Coach? To me, it offers a clean slate with more talent.
Are you factoring in the potential loss of fans permanently if we stink up the joint too bad as we are today? Do you see this stench of dysfunctional Dolphins preventing the correct GM and Coach from coming here when they are available? Are you worried about the locker room when the new GM/Coach cleans house and gets rid of 95% of the guys we bring in via our tanking experiment? Is it the bad record we are welcoming in the short term? All good points, and I'm sure you have others, but are any of these things going to endure past the hiring of a new GM and Coach?
I guess I see this as an attempt to jump off the mediocrity treadmill we've been on for so long. We never quite have enough talent to get over the hump--and more importantly, as you've noted, we never had the right Coach. At least the tanking strategy will concentrate more talent on our roster, all things being equal. Hell, even the Barry Switzer led Dallas Cowboys was great for one year with the roster Jimmy Johnson built before he left. I would love to taste that kind of dominating team once again. But we've proven we can't build it through traditional patchwork rebuilding, so I'm game for trying to concentrate our resources via tanking. Help me understand why you see this as a big risk … if the alternative is decades of irrelevance through mediocrity … what's really at risk?
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And your last sentence nullified your whole post. They can't undo the roster. Your whole post makes it seem like they are in some way holding something back out on the field. Their best offensive play is to just chuck it up in the air 40-50 yards down field and can barely muster the time to get 3-4 of those plays off a game. Now if your believe Grant, Parker and Williams were all instructed to drop those passes, then I guess your 100% right.
They aren't tanking for one player, regardless of how it looks. They are creating a new way of operating, revolving around the draft. They didn't trade Laremy Tunsil to in anyway shape or form help themselves land Tua.
If Clowney only cared about money, he's on this team for a third round pick, along with Tunsil and Stills.
We owe Jadeveon Clowney a big thank you. He made the tank official by refusing to be a Dolphin. Houston helped the situation along with a monstrous offer for our two best offensive players.
The Dolphins plan to have twice as many draft picks as everyone else, for as long as possible. That's what the tank is NOW all about.
I think people are planning to see that the plan for this team has changed, twice in fact.
They were just going to ride out Fitzpatrick with a young roster and a likely eye on the 2019 prospects.
Then Rosen fell into our laps and the FO squeezed him into it's plans, with no real major commitment. He will get his chance to start very soon and he will determine his own future.
Then things took a major turn 3 weeks ago with the Tunsil/Stills trade. Grier, Ross and Flores had to have talked about (and accepted the fact) that this trade will lock us into a brutal season but with a rosier prognosis for 2020 and beyond.
All questions inevitably get answered on the field. The game is great that way.
"Alright fellas, the tanking f off, you can go ahead and stop the tanking"
Here is the thing...this isn't a one year project, or even a two-year project...it is an attempt to build something sustainable. 11 picks in the first two days of the draft over the next to years. 20 or so drafts picks in total. 150 million in cap space, and shitty ass contracts off the books.
This year coming up, get your QB and find a way to keep him protected as much as possible. Sign lineman, draft lineman and give him someone to throw 2. Next, work on that defense (although you are already sitting over there with Howard, BAker, Godchaux, Wilkins, Minkah, and Wilitz).
Pretty soon you are in this wonderful world where you have 10 or so picks in each draft, have a solid nucleus, and you can put other players on rotate..let them play out the rookie contract, let them sign somewhere else, get comp picks and draft the replacement.
That is the end goal in all of this. Getting the QB is part one...there are many other parts after.
Here is the thing...this isn't a one year project, or even a two-year project...it is an attempt to build something sustainable. 11 picks in the first two days of the draft over the next to years. 20 or so drafts picks in total. 150 million in cap space, and shitty ass contracts off the books.
This year coming up, get your QB and find a way to keep him protected as much as possible. Sign lineman, draft lineman and give him someone to throw 2. Next, work on that defense (although you are already sitting over there with Howard, BAker, Godchaux, Wilkins, Minkah, and Wilitz).
Pretty soon you are in this wonderful world where you have 10 or so picks in each draft, have a solid nucleus, and you can put other players on rotate..let them play out the rookie contract, let them sign somewhere else, get comp picks and draft the replacement.
That is the end goal in all of this. Getting the QB is part one...there are many other parts after.