Miami Dolphins Trades, A Perspective

The Miami Dolphins made two big trades yesterday, let us take a closer look at them for some perspective on the bigger picture. The two trades yesterday, sending Dannell Ellerbe and a 3^rd round pick to New Orleans for Kenny stills then sending Mike Wallace and a 7^th round pick to Minnesota for a 5^th round pick, need to be looked at in the bigger picture to be really understood.

The first big thing about these trades is that they both unloaded big contracts from a previous regime. For those fans who have been living under a rock for the last couple years, Jeff Ireland had been replaced directly by Dennis Hickey and now there is a new man in charge of football operations in Mike Tannenbaum. Regime changes always mean sweeping changes throughout the organizations and Mike Tannenbaum’s new reign might as well have started with a broomstick as he swept away all of the “underperformers”(when it relates to the size of their contracts) from the Ireland regime. Yesterday’s trades sent two of the last “bad” contracts from Ireland’s regime away for another team to deal with. Wallace was a good receiver but was a square peg in the round hole of our offense thereby making his contract even more of a mistake than it was at first. Ellerbe simply had not turned out to be the difference maker at LB the Dolphins thought they were getting making his contract all that much harder to justify.

The underlying reason for all of these trades is the extra cap space that it give the Dolphins. Omar Kelly of the Sun Sentinel is reporting that the two trades from yesterday have netted the team an extra 11.15 million in cap space. This will definitely allow the team to continue upgrading in areas such as guard, safety, linebacker and possibly even a veteran presence at wide receiver. This will also allow the Dolphins to be even more competitive in retaining Charles Clay.

At the end of the day the truth behind these trades is that the Miami Dolphins were planning on cutting these players either this year or the next. They were smart in being able to get something for them when originally they were going to get nothing for them. Simply being able to unload these contracts is a win for the franchise. Also in this year’s draft there is not a wide receiver in the third round that I personally would feel comfortable taking over Kenny Stills. He is dynamic, a proven deep threat, is not afraid of going over the middle or making the catch in traffic AND he has playoff experience.

In closing I would absolutely consider these trades a win for the Dolphins franchise. If nothing else the cap space they received thanks to this makes it all worth it. Now it simply remains to be seen what they do with this newfound space. Stay Tuned.