Did The Dolphins Thread The Needle? A Look At 2024 Offseason Objectives & Successes
The offseason offers a slew of potential objectives for NFL teams. The Miami Dolphins in particular entered the winter with several interests in different directions — did the Dolphins ace the test?
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 100 times — my favorite part of the offseason calendar is just before the official kickoff to free agency. It’s enough of a window of time to study the draft and free agency, assess the contracts, gauge the needs of the team and piece together a good bit of prognosis that tries to fall in line with the path the team will actually take. With my annual coverage of the Miami Dolphins, this content series is known as the annual “Miami Dolphins Offseason Blueprint”.
The Offseason Blueprint is, effectively, putting the GM hat on and trying to put together a winning plan for the upcoming season. It’s extensive. It’s exhaustive. And it is, to be honest, impossible.
Every string you pull from a personnel move impacts every other hypothetical decision. It’s like a mock draft on steroids. I hate how much I love it.
This year’s edition was particularly enlightening because as I prepped to run the series in March I quickly got a sense of just how many things the team could try to accomplish if they wanted to. They could run the gang back together again and kick their cash spending into overdrive to retain everyone. They could make transitions at critical spots. They could transition back to drafting for volume to reset their financial clock (although they’d need more draft picks to do that). They could completely use 2024 as a transitional year and reset their financial flexibility by sitting on their big contracts. They could strategically approach free agency in order to game the system and collect extra draft picks via the compensatory formula.
Trying to guess what would take precedent in reality was an overwhelming proposition. And so I did the best I could to read in between the lines of what Mike McDaniel and Chris Grier have always told us and assembled an offseason that would field a competitive team hopefully capable of making a playoff run — but I did so with an eye towards financial flexibility long-term. That meant no Christian Wilkins franchise tag or monster extension. I also didn’t opt to secure the services of Robert Hunt via extension either.
The objective was to find economic alternatives while still trying to level up other parts of the roster.
You can find the final summary of the 2024 Miami Dolphins Offseason Blueprint here.
But now comes the fun part. I showed my work on what paths I thought Miami should take this offseason back in March. But we’re now less than a month away from 2024 Training Camp and the Dolphins have made a number of Post-June 1st signings to help fill out their roster. It is, for all intents and purposes, just about ready for the competition to start. (I, too, am praying nightly for a Greg Van Roten signing, for the record.)
So…how did the Dolphins do? Between all the tugs and nudges in all the different directions, they’ve managed to do what I felt was nearly impossible:
They’re having their cake and eating it, too. Consider these potential offseason variables and how Miami has attacked them each this spring:
Game the Compensatory Pick Formula for the departures of Christian Wilkins & Robert Hunt
Achieve transition into more long-term financial flexibility
Improve the roster to ensure competitiveness in 2024
Achieve extra 2024 NFL Draft capital to help ease long-term financial fluidity
Secure team-friendly long-term contract extensions to boost both competitiveness long-term and financial freedom
The Dolphins have, to some degree or another, achieved success with each one of these objectives thus far in the offseason.
Compensatory Pick Formula
The Dolphins unequivocally knocked this out of the park. The window for compensatory pick calculation closed on the Tuesday after the NFL Draft — opening the door for Miami to start a new wave of free agent signings after that point without remorse. But to be honest, they didn’t really need it. Miami maneuvered methodically through free agency in the early window, targeting players cut from other teams and only tapping into compensatory eligible free agents once their own list of lost players grew long enough to ensure they could add players and keep Hunt & Wilkins net losses on the books.
That’s one thing to accomplish by itself. But to do so while coming out the other end of it with a competitive roster? It’s a hell of a job by Miami.
OverTheCap currently lists the Dolphins to be in line for 3 total compensatory picks in the 2025 NFL Draft.
Curious about compensatory picks in general? We did a deep dive on Locked On Dolphins that explains how they work.
Achieve Transition Into Financial Flexibility
The Dolphins had (it might still be have) too many guys to pay what they’re hoping for. But the transition is well under way. This happens easily enough when you offload over $200M in commitments to Hunt & Wilkins via free agency. But the Dolphins offered a blend of short-term contracts for veterans, void years into restructures and new deals and well-structured cash flow into their new mega-deal for Jaylen Waddle this offseason.
Miami also (currently) has achieved more financial runway because they have not manipulated the Tyreek Hill contract — which felt like a shoo-in for a restructure during my construction of the Offseason Blueprint. We’ve since come to find that Miami didn’t move the dollars in part because Hill wants a re-worked contract. Maybe he’ll get one. But not restructuring for 2024 operating room has left the Dolphins with more flexibility with the Hill contract in 2025.
For now.
Secure Roster Improvements For 2024
Miami isn’t better everywhere. It is important to remember that. I do think the falloff along the interior offensive line especially hurts. We’ll see what they do there; they have the room if they want to add a player before the season opens. Miami experienced a downgrade on the defensive interior from Wilkins to Calais Campbell, too — but it is close. Aaron Brewer has big shoes to fill at center. And I think Deshon Elliott to Jordan Poyer has the potential to be a minor downgrade.
Those are the four biggest falls in talent by my grading this season — although three of the four have a competent (or better) solution in place.
Spots you’re better? How about the WR3 role? Beckham Jr. isn’t what he once was but he’s better than Berrios and Cedrick Wilson, for sure. Tight end? Jonnu Smith is a tremendous fit for the offense and a huge passing game upgrade from Durham Smythe. The depth at tackle is better. The depth at EDGE is better. The collection of interior defensive line talent replacing Raekwon Davis grades out as a marginal upgrade to me. Jordyn Brooks is, at minimum, a parallel move. Same for Kendall Fuller and Xavien Howard — but Fuller is a more versatile talent from an alignment perspective.
The drop off in talent of downgrades feels bigger — but Miami is individually better in more spots this season in my opinion. Marcus Maye shouldn’t be overlooked as a major upgrade as SAF3 from Brandon Jones, either.
Secure Extra 2024 Draft Capital To Help Reset The Cap
We did this in the Offseason Blueprint! I moved down in the mock draft from 21 to 27 with Arizona to pick up an additional 3rd round draft choice and then drew inspiration from some past draft trades to collect another 3rd courtesy of a 2025 3rd round pick.
Miami didn’t get the memo about moving down from 21 — although one does have to wonder if the Detroit Lions came calling amid their efforts to trade up for CB Terrion Arnold. Detroit ultimately moved up 5 spots with a trade via the Dallas Cowboys to select Arnold for the cost of the 73rd overall pick.
But the Dolphins did trade a future 2025 3rd-round pick to manifest an early Day 3 selection, which they used on RB Jaylan Wright.
Wright’s addition is made possible by another prong of the offseason objectives: gaming the system for compensatory picks in 2025. The Christian Wilkins contract is so lofty that it should be considered a slam dunk for a 3rd round value — he became a top-5 paid defensive player in football when he left. Robert Hunt’s loss could score as a 3 or a 4. The point is, however, that you can sleep easier at night trading away a future 3rd when you’re getting one back.
Wright signed a 4-year contract worth a total of $4.78M in total value this summer.
Secure Team-Friendly, Long-Term Extensions
Welcome! This is where the “You Are Here” sticker would currently reside on the map.
The Miami Dolphins are developing a bit of a reputation as stingy negotiators. They’re willing, as we’ve seen with Tyreek Hill and Bradley Chubb, to pay hefty for your services. (That Chubb contract has aged rather gracefully despite the end of season injury to Chubb last year, by the way). But that’s the point, is it not? Hell, Tyreek Hill’s contract has aged so gracefully for Miami that he’s trying to get it torn up and a fresh one handed out this summer.
Jaylen Waddle has secured his long-term deal as well — but his deal is a friendly one for Miami. Surprise! OverTheCap currently lists Waddle as having salary cap hits of $9.09M, $8.02M and $11.65M in each of the next three seasons.
(A current reminder that Tyreek Hill’s contract with Miami is currently set to expire in…2027. Huh. Imagine that.)
Waddle will carry a salary cap charge in 2027 amid an exponentially growing cap that is lower than Tyreek Hill’s salary cap charge this year.
Miami should be applauded for the vision and the structure of the deal. For as good as Waddle is, there’s an exit ramp as early as 2026 that would save the Dolphins money against the cap, too. It’s a win for Waddle but also a win for Miami. And that brings us to the elephant in the room known as “Uno”.
There’s a lot of apprehension about Tua Tagovailoa’s ongoing contract negotiations with the team, including from Tua himself. He described himself as “antsy” at mini-camp when asked about his mood towards the contract standoff. And while he conceded that Miami and his reps have made “a lot of progress”, things weren’t where they needed to be. And then ESPN’s Jeff Darlington dropped onto NFL Live yesterday and nudged Dolphins fans closer to the nuclear button by stating Miami is “not offering a market value contract”.
But here’s where I sit through all of this: you can’t applaud the Dolphins for constantly striking objectively good contract structure and then completely dog them on their methodical approach to contract negotiations. This is how they do business. Is it ideal? No. Is there a possibility they’re playing with fire and get burned in one way, shape or form? Hell yes there is.
Tua Tagovailoa could play this year on the 5th year option and blow it out of the water. He would, in theory, then be an even hotter commodity looking at the prospect of free agency. Miami would cost themselves more than they already have by not getting a deal done yet. The team could alleviate that pressure with the franchise tag for 2025 but that comes at the expense of minimal operating budget in free agency through the first few waves of free agency — it would be much more limited than the Dolphins were this offseason.
But what the Dolphins are not going to do is just *not have a plan*. Tua Tagovailoa will be the quarterback under contract. Or if he’s not, it's because the process of coming to an agreement will have taken too long and they’ve found themselves in striking distance of someone they like more.
Tua’s the floor at quarterback. And that makes him the overwhelming favorite to be the guy long-term. But Miami is going to handle this as they have with every other player on the roster since they’ve got here. They’re going to be stingy. But they’re not going to just flush their long-term window away getting into a pissing contest over pennies. And in Miami, when push has come to shove, the Dolphins have ultimately found middle ground with their top players. We’re all carrying the scar tissue of Christian Wilkins’ departure — but let’s not forget how often Miami threw their own instincts into the wind to appease Xavien Howard’s contract desires.
Tagovailoa has produced on a similar level to Howard (flashes of elite, top production but with some questions along the way about the consistency of it all) and is an upstanding citizen and leader on the team. Howard? Well…not so much.
It is still essential that Miami gets this done if they believe in Tua long-term. But they’re playing their game along the way. We’ll see who blinks first. But if it’s Tua and his camp, Miami will have put the cherry on top of an insanely efficient and productive offseason.