With the possibility of the Dolphins landing perhaps one of the biggest free agents to hit the market in the last 20 years, the longer the Dolphins proclaim their confidence that they will land Ndamukong Suh,(but do not have him either on the phone or in the building working out a contract) the more this scenario reeks of another Peyton Manning and Jim Harbaugh failure. In 2011 when Jim Harbaugh decided to take a stab at coaching in the NFL, the Dolphins were aggressive in trying to sign him to be their new head coach, however even though they appeared to be the front runner, they lost out to the San Francisco 49ers. Then the following year in 2012 when Peyton Manning hit the free-agency, the Dolphins were rumored on some of the best sportsbooks in the world to be the early favorites to land his services, however they failed in that regard as well.
Now fast forward 3 years and Miami is in a similar situation chasing the biggest free-agent in this year’s market and they are once again confident and rumored on some of the best sportsbooks to be the odds on favorite to land him. Teams are already beginning to re-sign some of the top free-agents in the market such as Randall Cobb, Kareem Jackson, Mark Ingram, and David Harris, which were all players that the Dolphins could have potentially signed to upgrade their roster. Sure there has been a few leaks that say that Suh prefers the Dolphins as his next team, but all this is conjecture and rumor until concrete factual evidence comes out that Suh and his agent are working up contract details with the Dolphins. The longer we do not hear about a contract being worked out with Miami and Suh, then the higher the probability that Miami will not land him.
Miami needs to stop teasing their fans by reiterating that they are confident that they will land Suh, and begin to get him on a plane to work out contract details, because now if Miami does not land Suh, they have put the rest of their free-agency plan on freeze, and will lose out on other players that they had coveted. By not closing the deal on Suh quickly they are pigeon holing their cap space, and risk the chance of settling for players in their plan B, and C scenarios.
It is already Sunday and the official March 10th 4pm opening of the 2015 free-agency period is only around 2 days and 6 hours a way, which means the clock is ticking for Miami to start this free-agency with a statement to their fans or with a huge disappointment. The phins organization needs to stop talking about their confidence in landing Suh, and start talking to Suh and his agent about how much money it is going to take to get him to play in South Florida. After the 2014 season it was mentioned here on phinsnews.com that Miami should think about going after Suh, however to be honest it was an educated guess and I could not confirm 100% that the organization would feel the same. But now fast forward 2 months and the Dolphins are clearly serious about signing Suh and are thus in the process of getting their fans’ hopes up. I will say it now that if Miami does not land Suh, this is going to make a lot of Miami Dolphins news fans extremely disappointed, and will be worse than if Miami didn’t even want to pursue Suh in the first place, because all our eggs are in this one basket.