Going fishing?
Dolphins non-committal on if Drake will be used as trade bait
Kenyan Drake may be the Miami Dolphins’ most valuable trade asset not named Xavien Howard.
Whether Drake is traded Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline, however, could be another story.
Dolphins coach Brian Flores was noncommittal on whether the team will retain Drake, who will make $2.025 million in the final year of his rookie contract despite pushing for a contract extension since the offseason.
“Yeah I do — unless there’s some other situation that presents itself,” Flores said Thursday when asked if he expects Drake to remain with the Dolphins for the rest of the season.
Drake said he fully expects to play against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night.
“My expectations are as good as anybody else’s,” he said. “The thing I can control is being here when I’m asked to be here, which is right now until whenever.
My focus is to continue to prep myself for Pittsburgh this week and do the best I can to show up and be the player I know I can be.”
Drake has seen a diminished role as of late, with Flores opting to give former University of Miami standout Mark Walton an opportunity to start at running back.
Drake has been the first running back off the bench to spell Walton, and has
Smith-Schuster, the Steelers’ Pro Bowl receiver.
“I’m good to go,” Howard said after Thursday’s practice, where his participation was again limited.
Howard looks forward to facing the NFL’s upper-echelon receivers, because those matchups help him gauge where his skills are.
Smith-Schuster, a run-aftercatch specialist, has caught 25 passes for 340 yards and scored two touchdowns. Smith-Schuster should get Mason Rudolph back from the concussion that forced him to miss Pittsburgh’s 24-17 win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
Rudolph, who replaced the injured Ben Roethlisberger, is completing 67% of his passes and has thrown for 646 yards and seven touchdowns in the four games he’s played this season. Rudolph, who is in his second year, has a 102.5 passer rating, which has him ranked as the eighth highest rated quarterback in the NFL when it comes to players who have made multiple starts.
Howard’s playing status won’t be decided until Saturday, and there’s a possibility he could suffer a setback. Howard had his rookie season derailed by a procedure done on left knee, and he missed the final four games of the 2018 season because of a second procedure.
Coach Brian Flores stressed that Miami is being cautious with Howard, fearing that something minor could turn into something major, sidelining the team’s best player for the duration of the season, if not longer.
Because of Howard’s absence, a handful of inexperienced defensive backs have been playing the past two weeks. Ryan Lewis, who was claimed off the waiver wire last week, started against the
Buffalo Bills despite participating in three team practices.
“I think between Ken [Webster] and [Nik] Needham and Ryan Lewis, I think those guys play hard. They work the techniques, they try to be physical at the line of scrimmage. All three guys can run pretty well,” Flores said about Miami’s young trio of healthy cornerbacks. “We’re trying to develop everyone on the team. I think you can kind of see some progress in the back end with those guys.
“They’re all hardworking kids. It’s very important to each one of them.”
The Dolphins’ defense is allowing opposing quarterbacks to have a cumulative passer rating of 127.9, which leads the NFL.
Miami has also allowed 16 touchdown passes in six games. Only the Atlanta Falcons and the Arizona Cardinals have allowed more this season, and both of those teams have played seven games.