Prior to assessing what the direction the Dolphins will take this off-season, it is critical to understand what players the team will lose. What are the critical areas of need and finally how will this coaching staff shape the roster to fit the scheme they intend to run.
Currently the Dolphins have 15 players entering free agency…
Pos……Player…………………….FA Status
QB……Chad Henne………………UFA
QB……J.P. Losman………………UFA
RB……Lex Hilliard………………UFA
RB……Steve Slaton………………UFA
TE……Jeron Mastrud……………..RFA
OT……Vernon Carey……………..UFA
OT……Lydon Murtha…………….RFA
DL……Ikaika Alama-Francis……..UFA
DL……Kendall Langford…………UFA
DL……Phillip Merling……………UFA
DL……Igor Olshansky……………UFA
DL……Paul Soliai………………...UFA
LB……Jason Taylor………………UFA
CB……Will D. Allen……………..UFA
FS……Tyrone Culver……………..UFA
On this list, the obvious area of concern and is the defensive line. Two of the three starting DL in 2011 are slated for free agency, Paul Soliai and Kendall Langford. The deepest position on the Dolphins in 2011 could be disseminated by the loss of these two starters. Add the retirement of Jason Taylor and Miami stands to lose three of its prominent front seven players.
Losing these players leaves the Dolphins with Jared Odrick, Randy Starks, Tony McDaniel, Ryan Baker and Isaako Aaitui. With the team looking to move toward a 4-3 defense, they will barely be able to field a line and there are no backups. Olshanski, Merling and Alama-Francis could be re-signed without breaking the bank, but these are not frontline players.
The 4-3 requires a dominant defensive line with the pass rush generated by the defensive ends. It’s easy to see, without Soliai and Landford, the Dolphins will need an influx of talent on the DL to field a 4-3 defense. Soliai was franchised last year and will cost the Dolphins a chunk of change to sign but there is no way to replace him and Langford in the draft or find players of this caliber in FA.
With the soft cap in place for this season, the Dolphins should bite the bullet and sign these two players. Not signing them severely limits what the team can do in other areas of need.
There is a reason teams re-sign their own free agents and it’s because the guesswork is taken out of the equation. Miami knows what they are getting with these two players better than they can know another FA or draft pick. If the Dolphins expect to fill this need with lesser (cheaper) players, the need will not go away and the defense will suffer.
The next most pressing need is Offensive tackle, try as they may, the Dolphins have not been able to find a solution for the right side of the offensive line and the 53 sacks given up last year is all that needs to be said. Unfortunately, re-signing Vernon Carey will not solve this problem and Lydon Murtha is a bit of an unknown coming off injury.
Murtha is a restricted free agent and more than likely, the Dolphins will match any offer he gets within reason. The worst that can happen is the Dolphins end up with a decent compensatory draft pick, if a team falls in love with Murtha.
John Jerry showed some signs of becoming a dependable option and Nate Garner’s versatility will keep him on the roster. Marc Columbo is simply not an option and the fact that he manned the right tackle position last year is a testament to how dire this need is. This is without even mentioning the right guard position, which ended up belonging to Vernon Carey.
This is another reason why Soliai and Langford should be signed. There are no players on the roster that can fill the OL spots unless Jerry or Murtha step up. That is big chance when the ability of these players is still an unknown commodity.
Signing Soliai and Langford allows the organization to go outside to fill these spots. There are simply no internal options, free agent or not, that can fill these needs. By not signing the DL, the Dolphins leave themselves in a position where there are too many holes and not enough bodies to go around.
The irony is, five years after Bill Parcells made the edict to build the team from the inside out, the Dolphins are right back to the most glaring weaknesses being at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.
The next area of need is tight end. Anthony Fasano is a fine TE, but he cannot man the position by himself in an era where many teams are moving toward multiple TEs capable of catching and blocking. Charles Clay is somewhat of a mystery, a tweener type of player that doesn’t quite fit the TE position and doesn’t quite fit the fullback position.
The Dolphins will use Clay and he does easy the burden on Fasano, but behind him, Jeron Mastrud is a restricted FA who barely made the field and Will Yeatman doesn’t inspire. To run the offense Joe Philbin is familiar with will require a true passing threat opposite Fasano. For four years the TE seems to have been an afterthought for the Dolphins and in today’s NFL, it is a position that is rising in prominence. The Dolphins will need to address it one way or the other.
Will Allen and Tyrone Culver filled nickel and dime roles for the Dolphins, with Allen in particular playing well at the end of the season. Losing these two players will hurt, but Miami has a lot of young talent in the secondary so the need is not as dire.
Either of these two players could be re-signed if the price is right, but neither should expect a big contract. Perhaps after a whirl around the FA agent market one or both of these players could return, but losing them will not impact the Dolphins as much as the DL.
It’s fairly obvious after this analysis where the Dolphins should spend their FA dollars.
Guess which position was not mentioned… QB!
