The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Interim GM Champ Kelly hasn't wasted any time, and has sent Phillips packing for a 2026 third-round pick.

https://www.si.com/nfl/dolphins/onsi/news/breaking-down-the-jaelan-phillips-trade-to-eagles-01k94w617j9y

The fire sale/tear down begins.   Hopefully whoever the new GM is will make the right choices with the picks this team is about to get.   However, given the Dolphins history, Phillips will ball out for the Eagles.

UPDATED TO ADD

Dolphins have said they are open to trading Minkah.   

Miami couldn't afford to keep Phillips next year anyways, this way they get a draft pick next year vs. waiting another year for a compensatory pick.

Good luck to him.

Good for everyone involved, I think.

I see now that Miami also had to pay $5.1 million of Phillips remaining $6.6 million salary for this year.

Miami basically bought a 3rd round pick. I think the fact everyone was on the board to be traded and no one else was says a lot about what teams think of our talent and their contracts. Joe Rose said a San Fran radio station called him yesterday because they had inside information Chubbs was being traded. Either way, it never happened so apprently we didnl' care for what they were offering or in the case of Phillips ...  asking for.

With that said the freaking Jets hit it out of the park. Crazy. Miami might want to ask to be moved to the AFC South as the other 3 teams clearly have it heeaded in the right direction.

This year is a lost cause.   Next year it comes off the books.   Hopefully the new GM will make the right choice with that extra pick.

Next year will be bad too as we could have 100 million in dead money. If we keep Tua its less but still quite a bit. We have to pay the piper for all of those contrats we kept kicking down the road. We went for it and failed mightily.

That has been a problem with the Dolphins for years and is my criticism of Tau.  You pay players as if they are much better than they are.  Its not that all your players are bad, but its that you play good players as if they are great. 

Tua did not receive some outlandishly large "great player" contract.  As I have already mentioned, Kirk Cousins, Deshaun Watson, Kyler Murray, Russell Wilson, Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, and Dak Prescott were all made the "highest paid QB in the league" when they signed their contracts.  It is entirely unexceptional and primarily a function of when your deal comes up.

But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do for your team.   Look at the Dolphins now.  Cap strapped and trading away superstars.  Next year is going to be a rebuilding year with all the dead money on the cap. 

Its a horrible contract and they didn't need to do. He had time left on his contract, he had more years of injury than his one good season. They could have used the franchise tag even after.wards. And it's not like they had anyone bidding against them. They were in control and gave him a huge contract, only to be disallusioned a year later. It's a very bad deal they will paying for for a while. Only Deshaun Watson has a worse contract.

One thing about Phillips (and Chubb, had he been traded), is that even if he's good -- even if he has promise, we're paying for a guy's best years AND WE STILL can't pressure the QB.  It's just not worth it to put money into guys and still not be able to operate as the unit.  I'm not pro-bums, but while you're rebuilding, you gotta let guys go in their prime years when you can get similar (bad) production from cheaper players.

Signing him to an extension was indeed a gamble, but you say this without acknowledging the flip side of the gamble:

1) Not signing him to an extension is management betting that he will have a worse year.  Because if he doesn't, instead of paying him $53M/year, you're now paying him $60M+/year.  Making that kind of bet against the savior QB that was suppose to resurrect your franchise is a lose-lose proposition: either your team sucks (but you saved money), or you have to spend even more money to keep him (and you've only deferred the risk by one year), or...

2) If Tua has another good season in 2024, franchising him and making him do it again (a.k.a. the Dan Snyder strategy with Kirk Cousins) just ensures that he will not re-sign with the team.  Tua was already the first Dolphin QB to make the Pro Bowl in 20+ years; for them to spend two decades in the wilderness searching for a franchise QB and finally find one only to drive him away by penny pinching is a far worse outcome than anything we are seeing today.

It was a bad decision because Tua has not kept up the same level of ability and availability that he had in 2023.  But if he had kept up that level of performance and the Dolphins didn't sign him to an extension in 2023, it would have been much worse than what we have now.

And this dynamic should be fairly obvious and intuitive: which do you regret more?

a) MIA paying Daunte Culpepper money he didn't deserve
b) MIA turning down the chance to get Drew Brees

It was a bad decision because he didn't warrant the new big contract. Mike Florio was screaming at the time saying it's not like anyone is bidding aginst you. Worst case scenario would have been if he asked for a trade but no one, and I do mean no one, thought he would leave Mike even for more money. It was just like the Ramsey thing, we gave him money we didn't need to give him. In a wierd situation where the Dolphins held all of the cards Chris Grier folded.

As I just said, if you make him "prove it" before paying him, there WILL BE competition for him, which means you're going to have to sign him to a much larger contract (which hurts your cap even more)!

We still had years to go before anyone could go after him so I don't see that as an issue.

Tua's contract extension only makes sense if you were absolutely certain that every year after 2023 he was going to perform better than 2023 and despite only remaining healthy during one of his first four seasons, he was no more likely than other players to be injured going forward. 

Did Joe Burrow's contract extension make sense?