The Dolphins have been an extremely active player this free agency period, and that was very surprising for a team that had small wiggle room with their 2015 salary cap. Dawn Aponte and the rest of her team have done an outstanding job figuring out creative ways to structure contracts, and Tannenbaum and Hickey did a fantastic job taking two extremely expensive contracts in Wallace and Ellerbe and finding a way to trade them so they could relieve themselves of close to $20 million in cap space. Every one also did a great job in closing the Suh contract, and also structuring it so he would only count $6 million against the 2015 cap. Even though he will cost around $28 million in 2016, the Dolphins’ recent player subtractions have enabled them to shed over $30 million in contracts for 2016, giving us a lot of space next year even with Suh’s huge cap hit.
Most sports gambling fans would fault the Dolphins for only getting a 5th round draft pick for Wallace and giving up a 3rd round pick for Stills. However, the Dolphins were scheduled to pay Wallace and Ellerbe almost $20 million combined, and neither player was worth that type of money. If Miami was not lucky and creative enough to work out trades with the Saints and the Vikings, then there was a high probability that they were going to release both players and get nothing in return, and also get hit with paying dead money to both players. So in that regard it was a great trade for Miami to basically get Kenny Stills and a 5th round pick, in return for a third round pick giving away two players that they were willing to cut from the team for nothing.
In comparison with Wallace. Stills had a higher yards per catch average (14.8 compared to 12.9), more receiving yards (931 to 862), however Wallace had more Touchdowns (10 compared to 3) and more catches (67 compared to 63.) But in regard to catches, Wallace made only 67 catches on 115 of his targets, which in percentage terms means he caught only 58% of his targets, whereas Stills made 63 catches on 85 targets for a 74% completion percentage on his targets. That is a very telling statistic that shows that Wallace in terms of efficiency was inferior to Stills. Stills is a very young talent entering his third year in the league, which means he is still has a rookie contract that will only pay him a combined total of $1.26 million over the next two seasons, whereas Wallace has been in the league for 6 years and he will be payed a combined total of $21.4 million over the next two seasons. Wallace is also an outspoken diva, whereas Stills is a quiet up and coming receiver. A receiver with more upside, so on many different levels this was an extremely profitable three team multi-player and draft pick trade for Miami.
So with all of these moves the Dolphins were able to get rid of a lot of high paid veterans that were not playing up to the worth of their contracts. Also let’s not forget that all of these contracts that Miami dumped were all courtesy of Jeff Ireland. Tannenbaum and Hickey have finally successfully unloaded all of the over paid mistakes of Ireland and have in the process given us an extra $16 million in cap space still to play with in 2105 (and that number could be higher if Clay leaves, because he is technically counting $7 million against the cap) and an extra $39 million in 2016 (and this includes Suh’s $28 million dollar cap figure). With all this cap space remaining, the Dolphins will most likely use a significant portion of it to strike long term deals with some of their key players that are still on their rookie contracts, such as Tannehill, Pouncey and Vernon.
All in all the Dolphins organization was stuck with a financial mess, and they were able to trade and release their way out of it, and in the process got younger, tougher and have given this team more room for growth. What does the rest of Miami Dolphins news gurus think about the Dolphins strategical moves?