Columnist Dave Hyde weighs in on Suh’s likely departure and the Fins’ rebuilding plans.
Dolphins will try to win while changing, restoring their roster
And so the cycle begins anew. The rebuilding. The rethinking. The infernal re-spinning, too, as the Dolphins’ machine that once praised Ndamukong Suh for his talent on the way in the door now questions his makeup on the way out. Too selfish. Too introverted. Just too-darn Suh-centric. And Jarvis Landry was too loud. And Jay Ajayi too demanding. And Olivier Vernon too unproven, Vontae Davis too immature, Karlos Dansby too opinionated and so on and forevermore with anyone kicked out the Dolphins door. Even Hall of Famer Jason Taylor was too much of something at one point when kicked out the door.
The search for that elusive perfect player goes on for the Dolphins rather than a develMiami oped ability to work with the imperfect player. Suh didn’t change, you see. He was in
Detroit what he was here. Selfish. Introverted. And great.
The price tag on him changed, though. With the Dolphins scheduled to pay him $17 million this season, his release wasn’t about his personality, not really, just as Landry’s trade wasn’t about that, either.
Those moves weren’t about anything except Suh and Landry being too expensive for the impact a defensive tackle and slot receiver can respectively make. No, they weren’t perfect players. They were Pro Bowl players, though, on a team with little of that.
The Dolphins want to spin this as some “winning culture” motif. And bully for them. Buffalo’s new regime traded away top talent a year ago and eked into the playoffs. So it can be done.
The Dolphins of coach Adam Gase and vice present of football operations Mike Tannenbaum are in Year 3 of their regime together, though. The thought was the winning culture worked after a playoff trip their first year. Then 2017 happened.
Will it take more losing to build a winning culture?
The Dolphins aren’t in full rebuild. If so, they won’t be inviting expensive veterans such as center Mike Pouncey and defensive end Cameron Wake back, and both are returning by all indications.
So it’s simply a soft rebuild, where they do the difficult task of trying to win and restore the roster at the same time. You could argue the trade for defensive end Robert Quinn fits into that.
He works in the idea of moving on from a high-priced defensive tackle and slot receiver by investing in impact positions: Pass rushers, cornerbacks, tackles and quarterbacks.
It’s hard to say the Dolphins are going that way just yet. It’s hard to say they have a working philosophy at all beyond this sudden aversion to high price tags.
If they are serious about rebuilding, really serious, though, it means they’ll go hard after quarterback Baker Mayfield in the draft.
It’s one thing for Gase to support Ryan Tannehill, as he does at every turn, as he seems to genuinely believe in him. It’s another thing to realize you’re rebuilding with a quarterback off knee surgery who is 30 and still has to take that eternal next step to being what you want.
Do the Dolphins invest in the biggest impact position of all? Do they also invite all sorts of questions and prodding for Mayfield to play if the Dolphins stumble out the gate?
We don’t know how they value Mayfield. We don’t even know what this offseason is about beyond letting go of high-priced talent at non-impact positions, just as most teams don’t.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned on the Dolphins eternal walk through the wilderness, it’s how it’s always easier to throw good players overboard than it is to find good replacements.
The Dolphins have spent years and wasted millions and draft picks trying to replace Charles Clay, Davis and Vernon. The question becomes who replaces Suh’s ability to draw a double team, and how they replace the fire of Landry more than his catches. Change the culture? Maybe that’s a lesser part of it, too. But nothing much appears changed by moving on from two great players at less-than-greatimpact positions like Suh and Landry.
The culture remains of a mediocre team cutting a mediocre path for itself.