The Silence From Miami Says Everything

Have you seen anything about the Miami Dolphins scroll across the bottom of your TV while watching ESPN or NFL Network?  Not outside of Joey Porter’s arrest as mentioned as a former Dolphin or Ronnie Browns’ two times over the limit alcohol blow.  Nope.  Nothing.  It’s like a field of crickets that won’t shut up.

Go back a couple of weeks ago and you hear that starting RG Justin Smiley is on the trade block.  So you start watching the lines and the tickers and scrolling the million forums (which by the way we have one) just to see if the news has broken.  Yep…nothing.  It’s silence and this silence coming from Miami is saying everything.

Bill Parcells and his disciples loathe talking to the media.  I have spoken to Tony Sparano twice and on both occasions he was gracious but you understood that there were other places he wanted to be.  Jeff Ireland was the same way.  Bill Parcells?  Yeah, not a chance.  So when you hear talk about Smiley on the trade block or the Phins non-committal on their QB situation or Jeff Ireland saying that they would “like” to find a big time receiver you have to wonder what the walls would tell you…if you could hear them speak.

There is a lot of history on the walls of the Miami Dolphins training complex.  If you enter the facility through the players entrance there are collages of photos on every inch of the team meeting room hallways and those pictures start with the earliest days of the franchise to the most recent.  So yeah, they would have a lot to say.  But what of this silence now?  What is going on in Miami?  Is it simply nothing more than our own wild imaginations because we have nothing left to go on other than the entertaining thought of believing they have something in the works or is there simply nothing going on in Miami?

Armando Salguero took a leap on his blog today when he pointed out that something will have to give with the Dophins QB situation.  He went so far as to say that 2 of the 4 QB’s will not be on the roster come the end of training camp.  We all assume that it would be Thigpen and White.  He says not to rule out Pennington in a trade.  Armando doesn’t jump off the page often and leave his tail exposed.  So careful consideration, if not inside information, went into his article.  It’s because of that reason that I don’t summarily dismiss it.

Head over to the Sun-Sentinel (my favorite of the local news) and you will read that Mike Berardino responded to one of his “Ask Mike” articles to a question regarding Dwayne Bowe of KC.  His response, after a long citing of KC GM Scott Pioli…the Dolphins should trade a 6th round pick and Justin Smiley to the line starved Chiefs in return for Bowe.  Seriously? While I would love to see that happen and don’t think for a moment that it will, there is no way that trade ever comes to light.

A bigger rumor making it’s rounds courtesy of Profootballtalk.com is that the Dolphins are enamored with Clemson running-back CJ Spiller.  Apparently they are hearing that both the Giants and the Dolphins are looking to move into the top 10 to take the runner.  Now, as far as Miami is concerned, I would buy into the smokescreen attack.  Make the teams behind you believe that you want to jump up in the hopes that they might trade up with you if he is still on the board when it’s your turn.  But what if there is some truth to that?

Consider the Dolphins have not said that they wouldn’t trade Ronnie Brown.  They low tendered him at a 1st round pick but not the 1 and 3 that most franchise players would get.  He is coming off a foot injury and now a DUI but teams know what he can do when healthy and this DUI is his first legal trouble ever.  There are plenty of teams out there who would do well with his services but this is too early to start working on deals for a RB.

From Ronnie Brown to Justin Smiley to the QB’s there are rumors but the one player that Miami fans seem to want traded, Ted Ginn, there is nothing.  Still, one local media journalist believes that the Phins are working on something and that Ginn may be gone for a mid-round pick.  I don’t remember which one talked about the possibility but the reasoning behind it is simple.  This years draft is the deepest draft in perhaps the last decade and the Dolphins only own 10 picks with only 4 in the first 5 rounds.

So back to the quiet sound of rolling waves upon the Miami shoreline on a Sunday night in late September.  Listen carefully and sometimes you can hear more than the waves.  In Davie, the Miami Dolphins are plotting a strategy for the draft.  They are plotting a strategy for this season, and they are plotting a strategy to fill the holes they have on the team.  Our own Shane, Onole1, is predicting that the Dolphins will not select at the number 12 slot come draft time.  And that is a strong possibility.  The question is, how will they move out, will they move up or down, and what exactly are they targeting?

10 years ago, we would have known everything that was going on in Miami.  Our coaches would have been talking to anyone who would listen.  Now, not so much.  It makes a reporters job a nightmare and makes a bloggers job a helluva lot more fun.  Speculation can really kill the off-season ticking of the clock.  It makes you wonder and it makes you think.  That’s what silence does.

So what do you think the Dolphins are up to?  Nothing?  Everything?  Or somewhere in the middle?  Jump into our forums and let us know.