How is it possible for a 6-10 team to have 3 key free agents from the previous year and not be in a good position to sign any of them? Poor cap management.

I am hopeful that the new regime will make better long-term decisions, but I already disagree with one decision.

I hate the fact that Vernon is getting exposed to free agency. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to commit huge long-term money to Vernon yet, because I don't think he has earned it yet. The worst stat to look at for Vernon is "QB Hits". Yes, he had a ton of them in 2015, but a lot of them were of the 15-yard penalty and 5-digit fine variety. The key stat is sacks, and I believe he had only 7.5 in 2015, which is not enough to justify a long term mega deal. But "QB Hits" as a stat has exaggerated Vernon's value greatly, which will help him get a huge deal on the open market. The Dolphins could have prevented that by placing the franchise tag on him. Pay him big for one year and make him earn a long term deal by proving that he can improve in 2016; but it's already too late for that.

Also regarding Vernon, I would rather see him get the franchise tag than pay Wake his big salary for 2016. Even though I believe Vernon needs another year to earn a long-term deal, he most certainly could be a big part of a building a winning team. Wake is a one,, maybe two year guy. We should have thanked Wake for his years of service; but since he wasn't willing to take a very team-friendly extension (at his age and coming off a huge injury) then we should have already let him walk to free up money for guys like Vernon.

Restructure Suh? Only as a last resort. We gotta stop creating future salary cap problems and pushing salary cap problems into the future.

Grimes. Bye bye. Is he our best CB? Probably. Is he worth 9 mil at this point in his career? No way on earth. The only way to get better in the NFL is make fiscally responsible long-term decisions. The $9 mil we pay him could prevent us from keeping or signing a good young player.

Miller - should have been signed to an extension before 2015. We shouldn't even be in this situation with him. I hope we can keep him.

Matthews - we've invested high picks at the WR position (1st rounder for Parker; 2nd for Landry and 3rd for Stills), so we don't have the luxury of paying big money for our 3rd or 4th best WR. Hard to think he will be back in Miami.

We have to stop thinking we are one player away from winning it all. That line of reasoning led to the horrible trade for Culpepper and the huge money we gave to Suh. We are not one great player away from winning. We need to add talent at many key positions. The only way to do that is to make good business decisions. It can't be one or two good business decisions. EVERY contract has to be a good business decision. And it has to start now, or this mess will just continue.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2016 07:39AM by Northeast Fin Fan.

While I do not like back-loaded contracts like the one Suh and T-hill received, it's not just cap management and business decisions, it's talent acquisition.

Suh only counted 6 mil against the cap last year. That's just ridiculous. T-hill counted only 11.6 mil.

They made huge mistakes by not signing OV earlier and signing T-hill too soon.

We would be fine in regards to the cap if we didn't have so many misses in FA and the draft. We wouldn't need the cap space if we had better depth and talent across the board. It would be "next man up".

Dion Jordan was supposed to protect us at this point when OV's deal was up and Wake was getting older. Had Wake not gotten hurt, no one would be concerned about his contract. If Jordan was able to step in for OV, we could let him walk without flinching.

Same goes for Jamar Taylor and Will Davis in regards to Grimes.

Bad FA acquisition at LB year after year put us in the hole and void of talent.

Two or three good drafts over the past couple of years and we are not having this conversation.

Now the 2012 contracts are coming due....

Had we drafted Kelechi Osemele or Bobby Wagner instead of Jonathan Martin.....in round 2 of 2012

Malik Jackson over Michael Egnew in round 3 of 2012.

George Iloka over Josh Kaddu in round 5...

I could go on forever.

Good points, Joe. Drafting has been brutal. But it's poor cap management that is causing us to potentially lose both Miller and Vernon.

Also, IMO Jordan would be replacing Wake, not Vernon. With good cap management, you would never let a guy like Vernon walk right now. If Jordan had panned out, it would be Jordan on one side and Vernon on the other.

His lack of production against the run in this small sample size doesn't change what the long term plan was originally.

Well, this is how I remember it...

2011: Cam Wake played WOLB in the 3-4. Koa Misi played early downs on the strong side, Jason Taylor split snaps with Misi on the strong side after he rejoined the team.

2012: Switched to the 4-3 and Wake played at the weak side DE spot. OV was his backup. Jared Odrick played SDE.

2013: Wake moved to the strong side. OV slid into the weak side spot and got 15 sacks. They had no idea what they had in OV, who had 0 starts the year prior, so they drafted Dion Jordan to start at WDE opposite Wake.

They didn't trade up to draft a guy at 3 to "eventually" take over for their franchise pass rusher who was only 30 and who had 15 sacks the year before. They drafted him to form a dual threat on the outside with Cam Wake, who just signed a 5 year contract that same year.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2016 10:13AM by JoeFootball.

Certainly not suggesting that Wake should have left or taken a back seat when we drafted Jordan. But I also know that good pass rushers (JT, Von Miller etc) can play multiple positions. Also, depth is needed at every position. I still believe that if things went well with Jordan and we weren't in cap trouble, that we would have Jordan one side and Vernon on the other for years to come.

That's true. It would have been ideal. It's actually Ireland's only 1st round flop.

I guess we can hope for a miracle in regards to Jordan. Maybe he will come back this year and give us 15 sacks. I guess I'll go have another beer (while Jordan is probably getting stoned). Ricky Williams 2.0

Amazing how many pro sports team can't evaluate talent. The combine is little league tryouts on steroids, if you draft based on it you are screwed

jlyell13 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Amazing how many pro sports team can't evaluate
> talent. The combine is little league tryouts on
> steroids, if you draft based on it you are screwed


Obviously the collective criteria of the "sports hive mentality" used in mass to evaluate is seriously flawed and probably meme infested.

"Let's Make The My Yammie Dolphins Great Again!"

BNF.

jlyell13 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Amazing how many pro sports team can't evaluate
> talent. The combine is little league tryouts on
> steroids, if you draft based on it you are screwed


Obviously the collective criteria of the "sports hive mentality" used in mass to evaluate is seriously flawed and probably meme infested.

"Let's Make The My Yammie Dolphins Great Again!"

BNF

It's pretty bad when the fan base is smarter than the team management/ownership.

I've seen better off season plans on this board than anything in Miami for 15+ years.

cut misi, jennings, cameron, mitchell. plenty of cap space. when vernon signs with someone else even more.


the best part about that is once he does sign it'll be out of the funny money stage of FA and we can start signing players to reasonable deals.

Koa Misi is restructuring as we speak.

misi must be a yes man

Restructure the scrubs and let go of the good players.....Good job miami.


Plus misi is injured all the time. What good is he?

Hopefully it's a pay cut, not an extension!

JoeFootball Wrote:
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> Koa Misi is restructuring as we speak.


sorry missed this post...

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All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Nietzsche

Misi restructure....ugh! The guy is just a body, he has never been a playmaker and will never be. His career numbers show that he shouldn't even be on the team much less retained.