Cry Me a River: The Phillip Rivers trade and the Phins

The NFL draft is rapidly approaching and as we have said countless times before, as the draft gets closer, the rumors start to heat up. The hottest trade rumor on the market currently is that Phillip Rivers will be traded. Even though this may not directly affect the Dolphins, there is still some indirect effects on the Dolphins if Rivers is traded.

First of all the Chargers are in a heated battle with the town of San Diego, and the end result is that the Chargers may be packing their belongings and moving across town to play in LA for the 2016 season. If this situation does lead to the Chargers moving to LA, then Philip Rivers has openly said that he will not re-sign with the team. Rivers is already 33 years old and is at the tail-end of his career, however he is still a productive QB in this league, and most sports gambling fans would say that he probably has around 3 solid years left in the league, barring any serious injuries.

The Chargers could stay pat in 2015 with Rivers and continue to be competitive and then franchise him in 2016, which would cost $20.9 million, or they could start the rebuilding process earlier and trade Rivers and move up in the draft to a position that will allow them to draft Marcus Mariota from the Oregon Ducks. At first glance it seems like an extremely risky and ridiculous maneuver, however if they are going to move to LA, then they will have a QB that does not want to play on their team anyway, and it may be wise to trade Rivers now while they still can get decent value for him. Lastly the Chargers had Drew Brees when they drafted Rivers, which means they have already in the past shown the tendency to look towards the future in the QB position even when they had a franchise type QB on the roster, so they may decide to look to the future in the QB position yet again.

At the moment the team that is most closely linked with Rivers is the Tennessee Titans. This is an odd choice at first glance, because even with Rivers on the Titans they are still very far off from being a playoff team, and Rivers would most likely want one more shot to win a Super Bowl. However, Rivers grew up in Decatur Alabama, which is very close to Tennessee so he may be interested in a home coming. Also if the Chargers want to be able to draft Mariota than they will need to at least trade up into the top 5 of the draft, and Tennessee has the 2^nd overall pick in the draft. However, with that being said, Tennessee may want to draft Mariota themselves if they like him that much and believe he could be the long term answer.

Even though the Chargers and Titans are not in the Dolphins’ division this situation does have some effect on the Dolphins. First of all if the Chargers do trade Rivers, then the sportsbooks in the world will be decreasing the odds on the Chargers playoff chances for next season and to be honest I do not think that they will make the playoffs giving us a better chance to finally get back into the dance.

Lastly in this off-season we have already seen some big name player trades such as McCoy for Alonso, Foles for Bradford, and the Dolphins also had two headlining trades as well that involved Mike Wallace, Dannell Ellerbe, Kenny Stills and a few draft picks. There has been more player trades than in recent memory, which means there may be even more player trades during the draft including Philip Rivers. I would not be surprised to see the Dolphins follow suit and pull another player trade themselves on draft day. Obviously the first name to come to mind is Dion Jordan, but there could be other players on the trade block as well. What other players on the roster do Miami Dolphin News fans think could be on the trading block on draft day?

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