Landry’s departure will haunt Dolphins
This one’s going to hurt. Badly.
The Dolphins have a special knack for breaking South Florida’s heart, but they’ve outdone themselves this time. Jarvis Landry is gone, headed to the Browns in a trade that will become official Wednesday and likely brings in two mid-round draft picks. This team is going to regret that for a long time.
Don’t be duped by the Dolphins’ spin as they try to justify dumping a 25-year-old who would’ve gone on to become
Jason Lieser
the most productive receiver in their history. They’ll point to Landry’s uneven temperament, locker room concerns and his improvisation on the field. While there might be some validity to that, far more egregious transgressions have been overlooked.
Funny how none of those objections surfaced until it was contract time. Gase used to joke about Landry, Jay Ajayi and him being the three hotheads on the team. In his first year coaching Miami, he flatly said Landry was the best offensive player he had. There was no one he trusted more.
This is really about the Dol-
Lieser
phins grossly misjudging what this kind of talent is worth, and that’ll prove to be a fire-able offense for whoever had final say on it. They’ll realize it quickly when they see how difficult it is to replace a man who totaled 400 receptions, 4,038 yards and 22 touchdowns in four years. The franchise never had a 100-catch receiver until he showed up and did it three times.
Landry wants market value—how audacious of him—and the Dolphins don’t agree with his asking price. Everything else is a footnote.
The asterisk they put on his gaudy numbers is that he did it out of the slot, as though it’s impossible to be a game-changing receiver any other way than how Julio Jones does it. Go ask Ryan Tannehill if he agrees with that.
Tannehill and the other quarterbacks didn’t seem perturbed by the improvising, either, as they threw 27.5 percent of their passes his direction. Landry was always there for them when the pocket fell apart and, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, the pocket is always falling apart around here.
In fact, Landry’s ability to change on the fly might be one of his best attributes. The Dolphins weren’t amazing at quarterback during his seasons, but he made it work. They had no tight end last year, so he morphed into one of the best red-zone players in the league. The Browns are pretty excited about the improvisor they’re acquiring.
Of all the young talent Miami’s let walk out the door, this is the easiest it’s ever been to predict which side will get the last laugh. This will be an alltime regret.
Landry’s likely going to get a $60-ish million extension from the Browns and keep making Pro Bowls. Meanwhile, his old team’s going to rum-
mage through free agency bargains and keep counting on the DeVante Parker breakout year that’s always right around the corner.
The most painful part of this for anyone who cares about the Dolphins has to be that it was so preventable. Landry wanted the millions he was due, but he was adamant that he wanted them from Miami.
He was patient about that, too. He watched vice president Mike Tannenbaum come through with a wheelbarrow full of cash in the 2017 offseason and hand it out to everyone but him.
Reshad Jones got $60 million. Kenny Stills re-signed for $32 million. T.J. McDonald, who had been with the team five months, hadn’t played a game and was on suspension at the time, received a $24 million extension. And the Dolphins giddily threw $10 million at a retired Jay Cutler.
They committed an additional $69 million to Andre Branch, Cameron Wake and Kiko Alonso. That means nearly $200 million in new deals circulated the locker room while Landry played the final year of his rookie deal for about $1 million without a peep.
No deal last offseason? He showed up for every second of Organized Team Activities and minicamp, maintaining all along he wanted to be a Dolphin. No deal then? He reported right on time for training camp with the same message. On the eve of the season opener, he said he was at peace playing out his contract.
Landry wanted to win, and missing time was counterproductive. He did it the way they wanted, and now it’s fair to ask whether they misled him
all along.
Why in the world were the Dolphins thinking they’d get him at a discount after dragging him through that whole process? And, by the way, they already got their discount when those first four years cost them an average of $942,000.
This must be particularly exasperating for general manager Chris Grier, who’s seen plenty of good players leave in his 12-year run with the Dolphins. He had a hand in them stealing Landry in the second round of the 2014 draft.
The sting of Landry’s departure goes beyond simply watching him keep racking up big numbers in someone else’s uniform. Think back to how putrid this offense was the past two years. Now subtract its most dangerous weapon. Get ready for a 2018 season that’s almost as thrilling as knitting a quilt.
The only way this works out in the short-term is if Gase is a secret genius who knows Stills is going to have a career year, has the cure for all that ails Parker, somehow finds an effective tight end, adds a modestly productive replacement for Landry in the slot, turns Kenyan Drake into Matt Forte and gets the best out of Tannehill at 30 years old after two knee injuries even though his favorite target is playing in Cleveland.
That’s all that needs to go right.
More realistically, this team has seriously hurt the prospect of turning things around this season and upped the chances that those who made this call on Landry will be following him out the door sooner than later.