South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Hyde: ’Fins should be 1st in line for Watson
If Texans QB becomes available, Dolphins should act
If Deshaun Watson talks his way out of Houston, the Miami Dolphins should talk their way to the front of the line.
Trade Tua Tagovailoa. Trade the No. 3 draft pick. Throw in a second-rounder this year and secondand fourth-rounders in 2022 just to pretty it up like a full flower arrangement.
If Houston is dumb enough to allow Watson to leave, the Dolphins should take advantage of them for a dumb-to-dumbest second time recently.
Trade Tua, the No. 3 pick, a secondrounder and the first-round pick next year to make it a full box of chocolates.
Watson is everything you hope Tagovailoa quickly becomes.
He’s 25. He’s one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks. He’s signed for a moderate price through 2025. He was on a 4-12 team this year, threw 33 touchdowns against seven interceptions and ranked as the NFL’s second quarterback behind Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers.
Oh, and one more thing: He’s really unhappy.
“Some things never change,’’ Watson tweeted this week after Houston owner Cal McNair hired Nick Caserio as general manager.
The issue, it seems, is Watson wasn’t consulted on the hire. Maybe it is Caserio’s New England background too. Fired coach Bill O’Brien and another front-office type,
Jack Easterby, were also from Bill Belichick University.
Yes, Dolphins coach Brian Flores graduated from the same school, but his management style, if it matters, is noticeably different than Belichick, who rules by fear. Flores rules by building relationships with players.
“They’re like my sons,’’ he has said on different occasions.
Back to Watson.
“We need a whole culture shift,” he said at the end of the season, when he unloaded on the Houston franchise.
“We need new energy. We need discipline. We need structure. We need a leader so we can follow that leader as players.”
Isn’t that Flores in a paragraph?
“I’m not sure what exactly the ownership wants to do, but whoever it is has got to come in with a great structure and plan, making sure we’re accountable for every action,” Watson said. “We’re all striving for one goal, and that’s raising that [Lombardi] trophy.”
Again, doesn’t that sound like Flores’ way? The first question to Caserio in his introductory news conference Friday was about Watson. He expressed respect for Watson and called him “our quarterback.” Asked if that meant Watson wouldn’t be traded, Caserio said it’s “important for us to take some time” and they’d talk at the “appropriate” time.
The cold-water reality is Houston would be nuts to trade Watson, no matter how unhappy he is. The Dolphins once had an unhappy quarterback who wanted out. They went through the behind-the-scenes motions of trading Dan Marino after the 1988 season but never did so.
Name the last top-tier quarterback to be traded in his prime. Hmm. Well, there has to be someone. Drew Brees leaving San Diego in 2006? Sure, except he was a free agent, he had a career-threatening injury and San Diego had
Philip Rivers waiting behind him.
The Dolphins sound as if they won’t go the San Diego way of insuring Tua with another highly drafted quarterback and also sound as if the surprisingly wonderful Ryan Fitzpatrick years have played themselves out.
The Dolphins sound as if their backup quarterback next year will be some journeyman with neither the game-winning nor team-winning personality of Fitzpatrick, or a third-round pick who will need a year or three of clipboard carrying.
Bottom line: They want a quarterback who is no threat to Tagovailoa’s standing either in practice, where players could notice, or in the games, where everyone else would. That’s not unusual either. They’re all in on their guy.
The Watson situation is unusual. Franchise quarterbacks rarely speak out against the franchise. They rarely express such discontent about the owner that it makes headlines. They rarely try to talk their way out of town.
They also rarely have any say in the next general manager. But Watson stood on the deck of the Titanic last season as McNair empowered O’Brien to make dumb move after dumb move. He then fired the coach and now brings in Caserio.
Do the Texans have one more dumb move in them?
Because there’s only one thing more nuts than Houston actually trading its franchise quarterback.
It’s the Dolphins not standing at the front of the line with a basket full of goodies to pry him away.