Dolphins’ tank season has unexpected setbacks
Remember the Dolphins’ bizarre and fascinating plan for 2019? It sounded weird at first blush, but then made some sense in a peculiar way when the team decided this would be a reset year. And whatever pain that planned reset brought would be worth it because the light at the end of a short, dark time would be a draft pick that would bring a shining quarterback prodigy to Miami for the first time in two decades.
Remember that plan? Some (me) called it “tanking” because the Dolphins poked so many holes in their roster that it was obviously pieced together to lose.
Some would argue with that word and call Miami’s strategy something else, but this much is inarguable: The strategy has had an atrocious couple of weeks.
The tank is off its tracks. Consider:
The Dolphins have won two of three games, which is enough to knock them from the projected first pick in the 2020 draft. And if the team continues to improve as players and the team’s coaching staff expect, the Dolphins might play themselves out of the top four or five picks altogether.
More: Presumptive Dolphins draft pick Tua Tagovailoa dislocated his right hip and sustained a posterior wall fracture against Mississippi State. The Alabama quarterback is done for the season and must rehabilitate following surgery in Houston. While his prognosis is good, three surgeries in one calendar year means his durability is not.
That makes Tagovailoa’s path to being the elite quarterback to lead Miami out of its decades-long desert experience uncertain.
More: The Cincinnati Bengals, meanwhile, didn’t start out the season tanking. But they strung a handful of losses together and suddenly they benched starting quarterback Andy Dalton. They inserted rookie Ryan Finley the past two weeks.
And Finley has played — trying to put this respectfully here — like he has no business in the NFL. He has completed 47.5 percent of his passes and has a quarterback rating of 52.8, or half of what 10 of the league’s best passers are posting.
As a result the Bengals are 0-10. They’re the
NFL’s only winless team and have a firm grasp on the projected No. 1 overall draft pick in 2020.
The Bengals, in other words, are out-tanking the Dolphins.
More: Even as it seems the Bengals could be making designs on picking LSU quarterback Joe Burrow next spring — and remember, he’s from Ohio — that perhaps turns Miami’s attention to other quarterback prospects out there.
The problem is with Tagovailoa’s future uncertain, the next-best prospect seems to be Oregon’s Justin Herbert. He seems to have Miami Dolphins draft pick written all over him.
The Dolphins could do worse because Herbert is 6-6 and 240 pounds. Herbert has a fine arm. And he is mobile enough and smart enough and good citizen enough to be Miami’s guy. The problem is no one knows if he’s going to be good enough.
Because Herbert plays in the Pac-12 and he rarely faces the kind of defenses that Burrow and Tagovailoa played against routinely in the Southeastern Conference.
So what to make of Herbert? He’s an enigma seemingly as far from a sure thing as Florida is from Oregon.
More: The Dolphins, smartly they believe, insulated themselves against having to pick a great quarterback in the next draft by trading for Josh Rosen during the last draft. It was a good move, general manager Chris Grier believed, to see if the 2018 Arizona Cardinals first-round pick might be Miami’s future quarterback.
The problem is Rosen has not been good enough to earn a spot as Miami’s current quarterback.
So it’s not only impossible but unwise to project him as anything other than a project. A player to try to keep developing.
Are you seeing a trend here with these issues working against the Dolphins?
More: The Dolphins believed a month or so ago that they were insulated from any apparent setbacks because they held so much 2020 and 2021 draft ammunition that they could shoot their way out of any trouble.
The Dolphins traded Minkah Fitzpatrick, Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills and others to accumulate 14 picks next year, including three first-round picks and two second-round picks. And that haul continues to promise amazing possibilities.
The problem is their worth is tied to the success or failure of the Dolphins, Pittsburgh Steelers and Houston Texans.
Well, the Texans won Thursday night and lead the AFC South with a 7-4 record. Right now, they project to the No. 25 slot in the first round of the 2020 draft. The Steelers project at No. 16 overall.
So the Dolphins would hold the Nos. 4, 16 and 25 picks in the next draft. And it’s unlikely they could package those three picks to move to No. 1 overall to pick a quarterback. Why?
Because the team holding that top spot right now also needs a quarterback and no price involving just 2020 picks would satisfy the move down. That’s if — big if — the Bengals were even tempted to trade down with Miami.
You can bet a quarterback-needy team like the Bengals would also ask for 2021 first-round compensation. Yeah, steep.
The Dolphins might be willing to part with future picks if they have a strong feeling about Burrow. But such a move would effectively get the Dolphins a possible franchise quarterback but not enough talent around him. Because such a trade would bankrupt Miami of premium 2021 picks.
More: Did I mention Dolphins coach Brian Flores is doing his everlovin’ best to win more games? He’s not tanking and so it’s not impossible the Dolphins might win two or three more games — maybe against the awful New York Giants and tanking Bengals and New York Jets, which Miami has already beaten once this season.
The Dolphins might conceivably finish with five wins this season.
Yeah, the tank seems off the rails.