Dolphins have fallen behind competition this offseason. But it’s a marathon not a sprint
If we can put it in football terms because, after all, the Miami Dolphins are a football team, let’s look at this offseason as a four-quarter contest.
And the first quarter just ended because free agency’s two-day negotiation window is ending and the 2021 league year begins Tuesday afternoon.
What happens during that league year until the draft is the second quarter. What happens in the draft until training camp is the third quarter. And what happens during training camp until the regular-season opener is the offseason’s fourth quarter.
We good?
So let me say this: The Dolphins have started slow in the first quarter.
It’s not a failure to make plays. They’re making plays.
The club during the negotiating period got a backup quarterback in Jacoby Brissett after losing one in Ryan Fitzpatrick. The club added career backup running back Malcolm Brown. And it should not go unnoticed Miami actually upgraded at inside linebacker by trading for Houston’s Benardrick McKinney (assuming he gets and stays healthy, which he wasn’t last season).
But the Dolphins are not a better team today than they were the final day of the 2020 season.
They lost 10 sacks from the defense after cutting Kyle Van Noy and trading Shaq Lawson to Houston in the McKinney deal.
The addition of Brissett is a solid move that could pay dividends if Tua Tagovailoa gets hurt but is he going to be better than Fitzpatrick was for the Dolphins? He’d have to pull a game out of nowhere in miracle comeback fashion, like Fitzpatrick did last year, to make the case he’s simply as valuable.
So, you see, it’s so far difficult to perceive upgrade for the Dolphins.
And, I’m sorry, but agreeing to sign special teams contributor Cethan Carter, who has caught seven passes in 46 games, is the kind of special teams and depth addition that teams often find more cheaply using sixth- or seventh-round draft picks.
Carter was, in fact, undrafted in 2017 so that kind of proves my point.
None of this moves the needle.
The Dolphins may see it as necessary roster work. And fans, loyal and trusting and hopeful, might see this as wise spending on solid additions.
But I see it so far as stepping back rather than forging ahead.
And now I interrupt your screaming to remind everyone, we’ve only just completed the first quarter of this 2021 offseason. There’s more to come and bigger things may be afoot as the league year begins and eventually moves on to the draft.
But just like Hard Rock Stadium’s quad corner screens keep track of the running tally every quarter, this space is doing that now.
And the Dolphins are trailing.
So you should be asking why this matters? Why must we keep track of where the Dolphins find themselves as if they’re hooked up to a GPS monitor?
Well, because they’re in a competitive situation. They’re in an intriguing division where the Buffalo Bills have taken over and the New England Patriots seem uncomfortable with that event and are trying to flip it back around.
The Dolphins, who finished second behind Buffalo and ahead of New England, are kind of mostly watching while the other two are doing stuff.
Yes, the Bills are doing stuff. The team that swept the Dolphins, winning the last meeting by 30 points, winning 13 games, and advanced to the AFC Championship Game, has mostly kept its record-breaking offense intact the past couple of days until late Tuesday.
That’s when it became clear Buffalo is moving on from a declining John Brown and is upgrading to Emmanuel Sanders, who has continued to deliver at a high level as a 32-year-old slot receiver.
The Bills are also feeling good about getting defensive tackle Starlite (his actual name) Lotulelei back for next season after he opted out in 2020.
So, despite having limited cap space and not jumping out in the free agency negotiating period, the Bills have improved in two significant ways.
The Patriots, on the other hand, jumped out as if from a plane during the negotiating period. Rip them all you want for signing eight new players and spending approximately $275 million in new contracts. Call it over-reaching and desperate.
And some of it probably is — just as some of what the Dolphins did last year proved to be a mistake.
But like the Dolphins did last year compared to 2019, the Patriots have improved compared to 2020. They may not be better than the Bills and, indeed, probably aren’t.
But they’ve definitely closed ground on the static or perhaps even retreating Dolphins.
Sheer logic would accept this.
There is, however, good news: The Dolphins don’t have to show up for their regular-season opener on Wednesday.
They’re merely tasked with showing up for the second quarter of this offseason. And this second quarter is going to be very, very, very important.
Because it’s going to offer grand opportunities for Miami — maybe even opportunities to beat back the advancing Patriots and make up some of those 30 points on the Bills.
How can general manager Chris Grier and coach Brian Flores do this? Be doing what they do better than they’ve ever done it.
This offseason, you see, is a financial disaster for players hoping to be paid big in free agency. And it’s terrible for teams needing to get under the salary cap.
So this offseason presents the amazing opportunity of finding second- and third-tier free agents available while most teams are unable to spend.
That can be a boon for the right team.
The wise team.
Players who most years join the first wave of free agency are second- and third-wave guys now, some willing to sign one-year prove-it deals in the next few days.
And those guys will be angry and hungry and eager to show that, dang it, they deserve to be paid in 2022 when they hit free agency again.
The Dolphins can use this to their advantage. They must use this to their advantage by identifying those players and adding them to the Miami roster. They must use the second quarter of this offseason to identify the untapped cheap stars of 2021.
One more thing about this offseason’s first quarter: Maybe the Dolphins knew this was going to be a slow start.
Maybe they did it this way on purpose, kind of like Secretariat used to do before bulldozing the rest of the field after the quarter pole. Maybe they did it this way understanding this free agency period, unlike any other, would be a marathon and not a sprint.
So the early slog doesn’t have to terminal. It doesn’t have to be defining.
But it is definitely there. And the deficit we’ve all seen the Dolphins allow needs to be soon erased.
This story was originally published March 16, 2021 at 9:38 PM.
