Miami Dolphins problems can be traced to player retention

The Miami Dolphins are 3-1 but as the saying goes you are only as good as your last game. In this case, the last game was pretty bad.

Slow starts have plagued the Miami Dolphins for what seems like forever and through four weeks of 2018 it hasn’t improved. We discussed on Wednesday whether or not Ryan Tannehill or Adam Gase is to blame for the slow starts. You can read that here.

While the offense is a slow starting unit right now, there are problems on the defensive side of the ball as well. Some of that can be attributed to youth. Three starters are either rookies or basically rookies. Minkah Fitzpatrick, Jerome Baker, and Raekwon McMillan who missed his entire rookie season with a knee injury.

Some of the struggles on defense can be attribute to injury. Andre Branch, William Hayes, Reshad Jones, and now Bobby McCain. All of it on both sides of the ball contribute in some way but another reason Miami struggles is retention. Or rather lack thereof.

It is easy to point at Adam Gase and say, “this is your fault” but in reality he can only be blamed for the players brought in since 2016 and most of the players drafted while Gase has been head coach are still with the team. In fact only three players drafted in the Gase era are not with the team either on the 53 or practice squad. Thomas Duarte and Brandon Doughty both 7th round picks in 2016 an Jordan Lucas drafted the same year in round 6.

This is not the problem. Not yet. What happens after this season will be a bigger indicator on Gase’s draft classes as players like Leonte Carroo, Isaac Asiata, and Cordrea Tankersley‘s futures are decided. Maybe sooner.

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Retention begins before that. Good NFL teams find the right players through the draft and supplement them through free agency. Since 2011 only Ryan Tannehill, DeVante Parker, Bobby McCain, Ja’Wuan James, and Walt Aikens remains. Of those five players, only three are weekly contributors. DeVante Parker’s future should be in doubt after 2018 if he ever gets on the field.

That is five drafts that have produced little or no long-term contributions to the growth of the Dolphins on offense or defense. Miami is lacking when it comes to developing players and whether or not Gase can develop his draft classes remain to be seen. One question we hear a lot is whether or not Gase is trying to develop them or expects them to grow on their own. There is no answer just yet.

Free agency has created another retention issue as well. While Miami has rid themselves of players that do not fit the image and expectations of the team concept, Jay Ajayi, Jordan Phillips, Jarvis Landry, and Ndamukong Suh, he has also relived his team of players that simply were not that good. Dallas Thomas, Billy Turner, and Jamil Douglas.

As to free agency, Suh is the biggest name that comes up the most. Miami paid a lot of money to one player and it did not pay off. The Dolphins were still ranked near the bottom in run defense and never became a dominant unit barely reaching average.

Miami’s biggest problem has been their penchant for signing aging veterans who are then expected to start and stay healthy. This creates chemistry issues and forces the Dolphins to rely more on inexperienced players who under normal circumstances would need more time to develop properly.

It can and should be argued that sometimes throwing players into the fire so to speak can get players ready quicker but with that comes a lot of mistakes and growing pains. Jesse Davis is a good example of this. So is Mike Gesicki who isn’t ready for a starting role just yet.

The fact that Miami was not able for more than a decade to find, evaluate, develop, and retain players has been a revolving problem for years dating back to the Jeff Ireland, Tony Sparano, and Joe Philbin years. It all adds up and eventually you pay that price for making those mistakes.

It is the reason that losing Daniel Kilgore and Josh Sitton for the year is problematic. The only thing left on the roster are aging veterans who are prone to injury as well and were only here to provide depth to begin with. Now should be the time for players like Isaac Asiata.

One of those mistakes could be Ryan Tannehill. He is in his 7th season with the Dolphins playing in  five seasons. He seen two head coaching changes, one interim head coaching change, and three offensive coordinator changes. It is hard to develop a quarterback with so much change on an almost yearly basis.

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Tannehill however can not be summarily dismissed in all of this. The Dolphins have not done anything to find a suitable replacement or even real competition for him at the position and this leaves a lot of doubt for the future should one of two things happen. Tannehill does not mature into a legitimate franchise quarterback or he is lost for the season again.

In both cases the Dolphins are not prepared and having three other quarterbacks on the roster will not help this team in the event he is not playing. This is where the Dolphins have failed the most. Finding and developing players, especially quarterback, leads to a lack of the aforementioned retention issue.

Due in part to that retention, the Dolphins are forced to rely on those aging veterans and injury prone players who come cheaper than most. Injuries happen, it’s a part of the game but the failure to develop and then retain your roster exaggerates those injuries making them far worse.

Adam Gase has all of this year and he should get all of next season as well to finally finish what he is trying to build but he needs to not fall into the same hole that those before him has. He needs to properly develop the youth on this team and start to replace those aging veterans with those developed players. He also can not keep the tunnel vision as it relates to his quarterback. The Dolphins need to find real competition for Tannehill as it will make him better.

What happens with the rest of this season will translate to what happens during the next off-season and if Gase and the Dolphins want to take a big permanent leap forward they have to identify the players that will make up the roster not today and not in 2019 but in those critical years after that. If they don’t, we will be talking about this again, just like we did four years ago.

Of course the biggest problem is identifying the proper players who can be developed.