The 2024 Miami Dolphins Free Agency Board
Kyle Crabbs' Top-200 board entering free agency — featuring Miami Dolphins rostered players and 180 of the best available free agents. Talent is ranked by Dolphins-specific positional attributes.
Free Agency is right around the corner. The NFL’s dog and pony show has come to Indianapolis for their annual Scouting Combine. But, as I said this past week on Locked On Dolphins, the ‘scouting’ and ‘combine’ are really just the tip of the iceberg. You see the 40 times and the podium sessions. What you don’t see is the executives and agents seated at Prime 47 or St. Elmo’s talking over steaks about your favorite team’s players and contracts.
The college prospects hustle through the grind of the Combine for a few days, whereas the football braintrusts of 32 franchises and countless agencies are doing most of their own gauntlet at night. It isn’t a coincidence that you see so many free agent contracts materialize so quickly after the league’s ‘legal tampering period’ begins in mid-March.
Many of those agreements have the framework generally discussed here in Indy.
So free agency will move fast in a few weeks. Fortunately, I did my own hustling before the event so that we can have a complete picture of what decisions the Miami Dolphins can make in the first wave of free agency.
This, in all of its glory, is the 2024 Miami Dolphins Free Agency Board. (Download a copy for yourself here.)
Methodology
A grand total of 206 players have been graded off their 2023 film and sorted by rank and value. The list includes the core Miami Dolphins players under contract, with the objective being to illustrate where Miami currently possesses talent and where they don’t. The list also includes Miami Dolphins who are expiring contracts, to contrast the Dolphins’ potential outgoing talent and the alternatives available as scheduled free agents.
This outline not only contrasts Miami’s talent versus the league, it also affords perspective on depth of free agent classes and the feasibility of adequately replacing an expiring contract with a comparable player.
The total breakdown of talent is as follows:
Current Miami Dolphins players under contract: 26 players (color coded in orange)
Current expiring contracts among Miami Dolphins: 13 players (color coded in aqua)
All other scheduled unrestricted free agents: 167 players
A handful have been reported to have received (or set to receive) the franchise tag, such as Kansas City’s L’Jarius Sneed, Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins and others. You will see their names grayed and crossed out to reflect their removal from the market.
The board will update daily (on the PDF for download) to reflect current NFL transactions and provide a real-time snapshot of the current market of available players.
Every player is also currently listed with a projected annual average salary for their next contract. These numbers come from excellent resources such as PFF’s Brad Spielberger or Spotrac. Players expected to receive cheaper contracts are reflected in green in the APY (average per year) column, whereas more expensive players are reflected in red. The more intense the color, the further they are from the median salary within that position group.
Player Scoring
Players at each position were graded on a group of 10 position-specific traits for what Miami’s anticipated scheme requires on either side of the football. The Dolphins’ defensive outlook is a bit more mysterious given the addition of new DC Anthony Weaver. Weaver has said the bones of the system will be that of the 2023 Baltimore Ravens under Mike MacDonald, although he did concede the need for scheme flexibility and state significant overlap was present with what Miami had done under Vic Fangio and what they expect for 2024.
Positional traits were divided into four separate weighted categories: non-negotiable, need to have, would like to have & ancillary. A ‘non-negotiable’ quality carried 1.33x more weight than a ‘need to have’ quality, 2x the value of a ‘would like to have’ quality and 4x more weight than an ‘ancillary’ quality.
Adding up the sum of all 10 weighted traits yielded a score out of 100; which players were then listed within their positional column on the board to reflect proper value when graded for Miami’s scheme within that position.
So let’s take a look at the actual board. There will be more deep dive content into each positional group in the days and weeks ahead, but this is our first look at the talent distribution currently scheduled to hit the market. For those of you with sensitive eyes, my apologies…but remember you can download a copy of the whole board for yourself and you can zoom and scroll appropriately for ease of reading.
Offensive Free Agency Board
The classes with depth in this upcoming free agency class are the rotational running back, WR3 and interior offensive line group. Boy, do I have good news for you, Dolphins fans! Miami’s most pressing needs on the offensive side of the ball? Interior offensive line, a wide receiver three and a powerful presence in the backfield.
I would add tight end as the X-factor position: Miami could go this route and if they do, they’ll have a few limited options. But generally speaking the tight end class in free agency leaves you wanting more; which makes it perhaps a trade/draft avenue to addition instead. I would imagine Noah Fant and Dalton Schultz will have robust markets given the lack of competitors in their stratosphere at tight end.
Also, bravo to the Dolphins for locking in Austin Jackson on a contract extension in-season. Jackson would have been far and away the second-best OT available in free agency behind veteran Tyron Smith had they not. And that would have cost the Dolphins a pretty penny. Inside, Miami’s depth of options is likely a contributing factor in their eagerness to meet either Connor Williams or Robert Hunt on lofty new contract aspirations. Yes, Miami’s talent is the best in show, but there’s a handful of would-be quality starters available in both spots behind them and a high volume of adequate starting options log-jammed together.
Defensive Free Agency Board
I’m keeping a watchful eye on the Christian Wilkins situation; as he’s looking like the player the Dolphins are feeling the gravitational pull towards among their big free agents. And the drop-off behind him is precipitous. (That’s fancy-speak for daunting.)
Miami’s EDGE depth woes and ability to bridge for the recoveries of Bradley Chubb & Jaelan Phillips looks promising given the names on the market and should the team transition away from Jerome Baker, there’s a plethora of similarly tiered players the team should be able to tap into in order to prevent a huge drop off in performance in the new scheme.
In the secondary, cornerback is headlined, post-Sneed franchise tag, by a nickel defender in Kenny Moore and another franchise tag candidate for a spending power heavyweight in Chicago’s Jaylon Johnson. Cam Smith is expected to have a healthy shot at a starting job this offseason but the team will assuredly have options for (cheap) competition.
And the best outlook for Miami is at safety. Deshon Elliott would be a welcomed addition back to their ranks but as evidenced above, the team should by no means overpay for his services. He’s in the middle of a very crowded group of similar players; meaning Miami should take advantage of the “supply & demand” outlook there.
I’m in Indianapolis for the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine this week and have enjoyed the perspective offered by both head coach Mike McDaniel and general manager Chris Grier. The Dolphins have much work to do but we’ve been given some context clues for what it is going to look like. You can follow along all week on Locked On Dolphins.