The Dolphins 2025 Salary Cap situation as of now

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

2023 was the first time the Dolphins had made the playoffs in back-to-back years since Marino.  Of course they are going to try to win now.

The Dolphin's now have a choice.  Either once again do everything they can to max out the credit card and trade having a slightly better team this year with the ability to have a much better team in future years. 

[Spider-Dan]

the ability to have a much better team in future years.

read: go back to the drawing board and completely start over, as they have multiple times since 2004

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

read: go back to the drawing board and completely start over, as they have multiple times since 2004

Yup.  They can either do it this year, or they can dig the hole deeper and do it down the road.  But they need to do it before they are a serious contender. 

Ya gotta good coach but the GM doesn't know how to build a team.   

[Dave Gray]

I don't think that is quite right.  There have been times when the Dolphins have attempted long term plans.  But recently every year they take a max everything this year, don't worry about salary cap, etc for next year. 

Yeah, I know.  It was a callback to T-shirts we had made in the aughts.

[Spider-Dan]

They can either do it this year, or they can dig the hole deeper and do it down the road.

As I said earlier in this thread: blowing the team up is not something you need to plan for.  You can do it at any time!

So yeah, the Dolphins should actually try to win with their current employees before giving up and starting all over.  It's not like there's some sort of time limit on the ability to start from scratch.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

As I said earlier in this thread: blowing the team up is not something you need to plan for.  You can do it at any time!

So yeah, the Dolphins should actually try to win with their current employees before giving up and starting all over.  It's not like there's some sort of time limit on the ability to start from scratch.

You can continue to delay the rebuild.  But you are only digging a bigger hole.  The Dolphins do not have a path to win LX nor LXI and probably not LXII but they most certainly have a path to compete for LXIII. If they go all in on LX  they won't compete for LX nor LXIII nor anything in between.

By the way I don't expect the Patriots to win LX and I don't want to see them burning cap space or picks so they can lose week 1 of the playoffs instead of missing them entirely.  I want to see them do a methodical build that gives them a chance in for LXII at the earliest.  Dolphins are in a mode of maxing out the credit card to buy duct tape.     

[Spider-Dan]

Mike McDaniel is one of the youngest coaches in the league; he has many more decades of coaching left in him, for as long as Ross is willing to pay him.  So you don't need to win now for his sake.

There is only one rational justification for starting the rebuild as soon as possible: to maximize the number of years you compete during Tua's prime.  Yet I am confident that the "blow it up" crew is not advocating this course of action; Tua's departure is part of their plan.

So again, if your plan is to raze everything to the ground, whether you do it in 2025, or 2026, or 2027 doesn't matter; you can always blow up the team at any time.  There is no advantage to giving up early, but there IS an advantage to continuing to try with the players you have.

Or to put this another way: if the goal is to get back to something like week 14 of 2023, where you have the #1 offense in the league and you are in possession of the 1 seed, it is easier to do that with the players that you have already done this with than it is to start over from scratch.  And the Dolphins should know this, having failed to do so for the prior 30 years!

[Pappy13]

We've seen what his offense looks like when Tua isn't running it.  It's terrible.

No, we've seen what Tua's offense looks like when Tua isn't running it. Not the same thing. I'm not saying that McDaniel can take just any QB and make him successful, the QB has to be decent to build an offense around, but McDaniel hasn't had any QB's at Miami that were decent other than Tua so far. That doesn't mean McDaniel only has 1 offense that needs Tua as the QB.

[Spider-Dan]

Dude, Tua is not the OC nor the head coach.  When Tua is standing on the sidelines in street clothes, it is not his offense; it's Mike McDaniel's offense.

I know people want to blame Tua for all the team's ills, but saying the reason the offense is terrible when Tua is watching on IR is because it's "Tua's offense"... that is delusional, man.

[Pappy13]

Dude, Tua is not the OC nor the head coach.  When Tua is sitting on the sidelines watching, it is not his offense; it's Mike McDaniel's offense.

You can't just change the entire offense that's been taught for the last 2 years just because Tua is hurt. The offense doesn't change, just the QB changes. You might be able to install a few new plays, but the entire offense doesn't change and even if it did you would have an entirely new offense that you expect the team to be able to not only learn but execute well in a week. Only once you remove Tua for good can you change the offense and only with at least a full spring to do it.

I know people want to blame Tua for all the team's ills, but saying the reason the offense is terrible when Tua is watching on IR is because it's "Tua's offense"... that is delusional, man.

I'm not blaming Tua for the teams inability to fulfill it's full potential, there's a lot of holes on the team, many of them on the defensive side of the ball, but you can't deny that there are holes in Tua's game that Tua cannot fix. He does a great job with doing what he does best, but he can't really go beyond that. Tua has actually surprised me by how well he's played at times, but on the other hand he's also had me shaking my head at some of his decisions especially in critical situations. When the pressure is on to win a game he seems to take on too much responsibility himself and he lets the entire team down in those cases, he's much better when he's supposed to win and the pressure is off. When he goes up against a good team especially a good defensive team that takes away what he does best, he doesn't adjust well, at least he hasn't shown me yet he can do that. Great QB's rise to the challenge, that's not what I see in Tua. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Having an opinion other than yours isn't delusional. If it were there would be a LOT of delusional people.

[Downunder Dolphan]

We've seen what his offense looks like when Tua isn't running it.  It's terrible.
If he could make it effective with a lesser QB, he would.

We've also seen the way Tyreek and Waddle both mail it in when Tua is not the QB (with the one exception of the Browns game, where I would guess Hill was told to put in an effort for once).

If the key guys you are throwing to don't buy in with a backup QB, it doesn't matter who they are, McDaniel's offense is screwed. The same goes when they don't put in the effort when they're not getting the ball.

Securing a capable backup is a priority this offseason, but another priority should really be looking into the attitude of these key players (whom we are paying a shitload of money) to see what has to be reset. We ain't going anywhere if what happened between the ears this season is repeated.

[Spider-Dan]

Only once you remove Tua for good can you change the offense and only with at least a full spring to do it.

The offense will somehow improve by getting rid of the only player that has so far shown to be capable of running it.
OK, man.

So when the offense fails to produce when Tua is on the field, it's Tua's fault because he can't perform under pressure etc.  And when the offense is far, far worse when he's NOT on the field, that is... also Tua's fault, because his existence means McDaniel can't design a functional offense that any other QB can understand.  In other words, even if Miami gets a decent backup - you know, someone who has already proven that they can fill in capably on a team with an exceptional starting QB without needing to have the offense totally reworked, like a Teddy Bridgewater or a Tyler Huntley - the offense will still be terrible any time Tua isn't under center because it's Tua's offense.  (And most importantly: this does not mean Tua is an outstandingly exceptional weapon that Miami must keep at all costs.  No, it somehow confirms he's above-average at best.)

The hoops that people will jump through to lay the team's problems at the feet of the QB... it's amazing.

P.S. For what it's worth, my only real problem with Tua is that he tries to do too much (as you said) and refuses to protect himself.  (This problem has progressed to the point where I actually consider it a coaching issue now; I blame McDaniel for not benching Tua for a series every time he doesn't slide.)  But this is a far stretch from blaming him for the lack of production from McDaniel's offense when Tua is on the sidelines.

[Pappy13]

The offense will somehow improve by getting rid of the only player that has so far shown to be capable of running it.
OK, man.

Show me the post where I said the offense would improve without Tua. You can't do it. The team can improve without Tua provided you spend the money that you are spending on Tua to improve things like the line and the defense and focus more on having a well rounded team that's built for the playoffs rather than the team they have now. It won't be easy and maybe that's too much to ask of McDaniels/Grier, but I wouldn't be against them trying.

Lamar Jackson winning a 3rd MVP and failing to make it to another Superbowl is more proof that a team is more than just it's QB. I preferred football when the QB wasn't the sole focus of your team, when defenses and mistake free offenses won championships. I believe that it would still be possible to win that way if it weren't for the crazy contracts given to QB's these days, many of them not deserving of such money. Most of the QB's are only getting that kind of money because they are the QB and not much else. There's a handful of QB's worth the money spent on them today. Yes, I realize you can't go back and change things, it is what it is and yet I still think there's room for improvement on this team by spending less on the QB and more on the rest of the team. Call me crazy.

By the way, it's not just Miami that is in this predicament so it's not solely a Miami problem, it's a league wide issue that's getting worse and worse. Dallas is in the same position in my opinion, spending way too much on their QB and not having enough money to spend on the rest of the team. He's a decent QB, but no where near worth the money he's being paid. I believe they too should have let their QB walk the last time his contract was up for renegotiation and tried to find a cheaper alternative, maybe in the draft? Did they forget that they got Dak in the 4th round? Hell pay the backup a little more and go with him probably would have been a better option. Then maybe they could have gotten some RB's or WR's to throw to beside Lamb?

Speaking of getting QB's in the draft you don't have to draft one in the first 5 picks, you can get QB's that don't have the same resume as the stars later in the draft and some of them actually pan out. Many don't, but how's this any different from every OTHER position other than QB? You should probably draft at least 1 QB in every draft unless you already have your franchise QB and just keep trying to find one that pans out. That's what most teams do for all the other coveted positions rather than trying to hit on that one franchise QB in the first 5 picks and then sticking with him far too long when he doesn't turn out to be a franchise QB and then even worse paying him like he's a franchise QB when he's not. I'm not necessarily talking about Tua here there's a lot of QB's that fall into this category in my opinion. I'm just generalizing, but I do see Tua as a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.

This isn't a new take from me either, before they paid Tua I said they probably should let him play out his contract and then negotiate a new one if they still felt the need and take the chance that Tua would bolt to another team. Had they done that they probably would have saved themselves a lot of money as I don't think there would have been teams lining up to pay Tua after this year. I also said they were stupid for letting a couple of their best defensive players last year walk in free agency. I think Miami could have held onto those defensive players if they didn't pay Tua and perhaps the team would have been better off in the long run. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong and you're free to disagree with me, doesn't make me delusional.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

^^^^ Nobody claims that the sole act of getting rid Tua or Hill will improve the team And that is what Spider is arguing against.

But getting rid of expensive players who to eat more cap space then their production justifies and replacing them with players with a better cost to production ratio will improve the team in the long term

[Spider-Dan]

Show me the post where I said the offense would improve without Tua.

Here:

Only once you remove Tua for good can you change the offense and only with at least a full spring to do it.

The implication is that the "change" would be an improvement, because it doesn't make sense to change the offense with the goal of being worse.

By the way, it's not just Miami that is in this predicament so it's not solely a Miami problem, it's a league wide issue that's getting worse and worse. Dallas is in the same position in my opinion, spending way too much on their QB and not having enough money to spend on the rest of the team. He's a decent QB, but no where near worth the money he's being paid.

As I said earlier in this thread, if your competitors are also forced to "overpay" their QBs "more than they are worth" then it's not a competitive disadvantage.

But the ultimate argument I have against this approach is simple: look at the teams who haven't paid out a huge contract to a franchise QB in a while.  Teams like NO, LV, IND, and TEN.  Do they seem like they have a competitive advantage worth emulating?  Or to look even closer to home: do you look back on the 2000-2011 Dolphins and think those teams had a more promising QB situation than MIA does now because of how much money they were saving under center?