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Let me preface this all by saying that I'm every bit as much of a disenfranchised Miami Dolphin fan as the rest of you. I've been a fan of this team for over 30 years and it breaks my heart to see where we have fallen to. I only say this because I feel my following post will have me accused of seeing things through Aqua and Orange colored glasses. I promise you, that's not the case. I legitimately BELIEVE in most of what has happened this offseason. It may get me roasted, but here's my take:
Letting Vernon walk: Not only was it the right thing to do considered the $85 million Mega-Deal Vernon got in the open market, it was also very astute of our FO to pull the Transition tag on Vernon ensuring that we will see a 3rd round comp pick next year. Another slant on this is to look at what Belichek and New England just did with Chandler Jones. A talented pass-rushing DE who's only a year older than Vernon, has put up better sack #'s over the same period of time as Vernon, and will be a Free Agent coming up next offseason. NE undoubtedly saw the deal Vernon just signed and knew the bar has been set for Jones' new contract. With the other impending FA's NE has coming up (especially on Defense), they made the call to trade Jones for a Guard and a 2nd round pick. I'm reading NFL.com and ESPN and seeing their writers talk about how ahead of the curve BB is and how it's a genius move. I can only shudder to think what would happen if last year Miami had traded Vernon for a 2nd round pick and an Offensive Lineman that missed his 1st year with a broken leg, and sat the bench his 2nd year while his coach called him out several times in the media over the course of the season. Did Miami let homegrown talent leave? Yes, but sometimes you get in a position where a guy is going to get vastly overpaid and you're not in a position to cripple your franchise moving forward by matching that contract. Miami's answer to this was Mario Williams. An older player who has been an enigma at times, but has also shown extremely explosive production during good stretches of his career. I think we easily forget that a good portion Vernon's career, he's been a bit of an enigma for us Miami fans. The long and short of it: I agree with T'baum's decision to let Vernon walk away and take the gamble on Mario William's in the short term, while netting us an extra 3rd round pick in the process.
The Running Back situation: While it's a bummer that the CJ Anderson deal did not work out for us, we talk all the time about how RB is the easiest "plug and play" position to fill on any given NFL roster. A lot of our concerns will be negated if Jay Ajayi's knee holds up. I think he is easily a starting level talent at RB in the NFL. You also have to assume at this point that Miami will sign one of the veteran RB's out there for depth as well as selecting a RB at some point in the upcoming draft. Let's say for the sake of argument that Miami signs Chris Johnson and drafts a RB in the 3rd round this year. Going into the season we'd have a stable of Ajayi, Johnson, and a rookie RB that combined will be costing us less than what Lamar Miller is making in Houston next season. To top that off, we will be receiving another comp pick in this situation which for me makes the moves justifiable. And off topic, but getting back to CJ Anderson, many consider John Elway to be a genius but look at how bad he mismanaged that situation. He could have easily slapped a 2nd round tender on CJ and gotten him back for less than half of what Miami ended up signing him to on the offer sheet. Instead, he puts the lowest tender on CJ and costs his Cap-Strapped team about an extra $4 million against the cap this year alone.
The Maxwell/Alonso trade: I'm not a huge fan of dropping from 8th to 13th to make this deal happen. While I am Pro-T'Baum in this post, I will admit that I feel like if Miami wanted to gamble on these 2 player and were willing to drop 5 spots in the draft to do so, they should have at least gotten a 3rd or 4th round pick back for their troubles. With that being said, I can stomach the idea of these 2 guys being on our roster. With Alonso, there's questions of health, and we won't know how this goes until we actually see it play out, but there's no denying that if healthy, he's immediately the best LB on a team that is starved for LB talent. I also like the move of extending Alonso for the extra year, ensuring he's not a 1-year rental, as well as giving him some peace of mind that Miami is "home". Byron Maxwell is an overpaid CB who we've basically targeted as Brent Grimes replacement. Again, we'll have to see how this plays out but obviously the conversation between our FO and coaching staff is that Maxwell is a good player who was a bad system fit in Philly. Personally, I don't think there was a DB coach getting more out of his position unit than Vance Joseph over the past few years and I'd like to think that there is no way Miami does this deal without Joseph's seal of approval. Obviously, we feel that Maxwell was misused last year and there's a strong case to be made that players on both sides of the ball were being misused by Chip Kelly during his tenure in Philly. Again, it's a wait and see proposition, but I can at least see the reasoning on why these 2 players were acquired.
The Guard Position: Obviously, we haven't done anything here yet, and that's concerning. With that being said, just because we didn't pay one of the higher end FA's at the Guard position doesn't mean that we won't be addressing it at some point. My best guess is that it comes in the form of a Veteran like Vasquez and a draft pick. Either way, I'm willing to wait and see who we bring in. It's an incomplete grade at this point. That being said, if the Guard position is not addressed adequately and we are once again depending on Dallas Thomas as a starter when we head into 2016, I will be the first fan carrying the pitchfork.
Overall, I'm happy Miami hasn't gone crazy in FA and thrown huge contracts at guys. For me, the decisions to let certain guys walk and the plan on how to replace them has been measured, and actually backed with some logic in regards to how to build this team moving forward. They key to all of this will be, how well does T'Baum draft? The comp picks in 2017 for Vernon and Miller are nice, but they don't mean much at all of we don't hit on those picks. It also looms large on T'Baum heading into this years draft. With OG, Corner, RB, and LB still being huge needs for Miami, we simply can't afford to miss as often as we have in the past. IMO, Miami has been the worst drafting team in the NFL over the past decade and this is reason #1 we see our team as dysfunctional. While ownership and coaching are big factors, nothing is more important than finally getting to the point in which our FO can identify and select players that are Day 1 starters on this team that immediately improve our roster. If we can do that, all of a sudden T'Baum's offseason decisions actually look pretty damned logic.
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