The Miami Dolphins arrived at their 53-man roster after a flurry of moves Sept. 5, and the group has more of an offensive flavor
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-- The roster includes 24 newcomers, players who were not with the team at the end of the 2019 season. Impressively, not one of those players was a "street free agent." Of the 24, 11 were unrestricted free agent signings, 10 were draft picks, and three came over in trades — Bowden from the Raiders, Shaheen from the Bears, and Breida from the 49ers.
-- Along with the picks from the 2020 class, the Dolphins have 15 other original draft picks on the roster, meaning 25 of the 53 players were original Dolphins draft picks.
-- The initial 53-man roster does not include a single rookie free agent, which goes along with what everybody thought: that it would be very difficult for a UDFA to make a quick impression with no offseason practices and no preseason games.
-- By percentage, the bigger makeovers from last season occurred on both lines, with four of the seven defensive linemen being new as well as five of the nine offensive linemen.
It will be interesting to see how the Patriot WRs - considered to be the weak link on the team - fare against Miami's secondary, which appears to be the Dolphins strongest position.
Hope. That’s what has been absent during the Miami Dolphins’ two decades of dormancy, mediocrity and irrelevance. The once-proud franchise, so long led by the
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When you give up more points than any team in the NFL, and more yards than all but two, it’s hard to find positives. But there were some in 2019.
While the Dolphins didn’t often play well, they always played hard. They were not heavily penalized, showing discipline that previous Miami teams lacked. They found some useful players on the scrap heap (such as young cornerback Nik Needham and linebacker Vince Biegel), got a bounce-back season from young linebacker Raekwon McMillan (who was traded to the Las Vegas Raiders in late August) and did get better as the season went on — the Dolphins allowed a ridiculous 163 points in the first quarter of the season but later held the Colts to 12 and the Patriots to 24.
And they did the latter after shutting down their shutdown cornerback Xavien Howard. Now Howard returns, to pair with Byron Jones, stolen from Dallas with a major payday ($57 million guaranteed). Jones isn’t the thief that Howard is, but few get open against him, and that is necessary until Miami finds a pass rush (just 23 sacks in 2019, worst in the NFL). Brandon Jones, a rookie out of Texas, will have a chance to earn a starting safety spot alongside a returning veteran, Bobby McCain or Eric Rowe, while another rookie, Auburn’s Noah Igbinoghene, will likely be the nickel.
