The suspicions were real after all.
On Monday, reports emerged that Miami Dolphins safety Minkah Fitzpatrick was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers, signaling his exit from the team that drafted him in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft.
This happened after the Dolphins were manhandled for the second week in a row, this time coming from the New England Patriots on a 43-point shutout at home.
Including Fitzpatrick, Miami also sent out a fourth and seventh-round pick for next year’s draft to Pittsburgh, while the AFC North team repays them with a first-rounder, a fifth-rounder, and a sixth-rounder.
After their Week 1 blowout loss to the Baltimore Ravens, rumors circulated feverishly that the majority of the team’s players contacted their agents in order to get shipped out of Miami, citing a disliking to the upper management’s general direction for the future. These people who wanted out of the AFC East team saw a sinking ship, one that supposedly sailed past the point of no return, to which means that this year will be an excruciatingly laborious one.
The surfacing of this news at this magnitude hasn’t been seen in a long while in the NFL, not since, maybe, a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, for a “basement-dwelling” team that is openly described in every facet of that term except in name, being on the receiving end of games doesn’t garner much attention since the only thing that can be covered is their continued nature of losing.
But when an awesome spectacle happens in its backyard, people will frantically look for the primal reasons of its cause. And it’s then within this digging of background information do they finally discover how the Dolphins’ turn of events came to be.
Prior to the start of this season, the Dolphins rolled heads by hiring four-time Super Bowl champion Brian Flores as their head coach. Although Flores is undoubtedly tied to the Patriots’ dynastic success, many were skeptical surrounding his appointment. The highest coaching position he has ever been in was when he was an assistant to the team’s main three coordinators from 2008 to 2011. After that, he was a positional coach for linebackers and safeties from 2012 to 2018.
Another source of concern for his maiden head coaching gig is his age. He’s 38 years old, an age that’s normally too soon for any person to be able to take the head coaching position. Add that with the arrival of two equally novice coordinators (DC Patrick Graham and OC Chad O’Shea), Miami will then have a group of relative newcomers who will direct a under a major position.
Upon former coach Adam Gase’s dismissal, the Dolphins were at the near bottom of the league. They were within the lower third of every general team statistic. It doesn’t matter where you can spot Miami in the standings. Whether it was offense (31st in yards/game and 26th in points/game) or defense (29th in yards allowed/game and 27th in points allowed/game), the team floundered on the field, like a fish flipping around on a dry surface desperately looking for the sea. By the end of 2018, it was clear that change was needed, so after the regular season, Miami looked for their supposed right man to be the new head coach, which they eventually found in Flores.
Despite the initial skepticism, the Dolphins a man with brewing potential (perhaps in a display of copycatting to the Ram’s success from coach Sean McVay’s immediate prominence) that can turn a fledging team into a winner—in due time of course.
And in building a winner, a team needs to acquire household talent for their base. However, a team traversing on a falling trajectory in the NFL won’t be able to do much in acquiring them via free agency. The only way to gain such players is by the draft, which means that for a team to be in prime position of obtaining the cream of the crop from college, they need to be bad. Like, terribly bad, and fast.
As such, with a new coach trying to instill a new identity in a new environment, Dolphins fans understandably started getting the idea that they were going to tank for the number one overall pick in the 2020 draft.
Nobody from the Dolphins addressed it directly, but it was clear that from the amount of losses they experienced (Ja’Wuan James, Frank Gore, Danny Amendola, Laremy Tunsil, and Robert Quinn) and their mildly-inducing signings (Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh Rosen, Chris Reed, and Eric Rowe) that yes, they were indeed tanking.
Going a bit further into their signings, let’s look at who they picked up over this year.
- QB Josh Rosen (Traded to Miami after his former team let him go in favor of Kyler Murray)
- QB Ryan Fitzpatrick (Signed to Miami after playing with 7 teams)
- DE Tank Carradine (Played 10 games, including the recent one against the Patriots, in 3 years)
- OT J’Marcus Webb (With his 7th team, has played 12 games in 4 years, sustained an injury in 2017)
- OT John Jenkins (With his 5th team; was signed and released by Giants earlier in 2019 before the start of training camp)
- OG Danny Isidora (Sent to Miami in exchange for a seventh-round pick)
