Miami Dolphins future bright with so much youth on the team

The Miami Dolphins may not be having a great season thus far in 2018 but the future may not be as bleak as many fans want to believe.

Looking at the Miami Dolphins roster there are holes. There is no denying that depth is a concern and that quality starters are also of a concern but the future may not be as bleak as you might believe. This Dolphins team is young.

Of the current 53 man roster only 10 players are 30 years old or over. Of those 10 only five of those players are full-time non-depth starters. Those four are Ryan Tannehill, Cameron Wake, Reshad Jones, and John Denney. Denney doesn’t really count and not because he is a long snapper. The dude is 40 years old and still doing his job exceptionally well.

Wake is 36 and his time is winding down. His production this year has slowed as well. Now on the IR list because that is where most of the Dolphins starters are at right now, Josh Sitton, Daniel Kilgore, and William Hayes are all 30 or over.

The majority of the roster is obviously composed of young players. 23 of the under-30 group are 26-29. The 29-year-old is Andre Branch who likely won’t be here next year. At 28 and underperforming, Robert Quinn might be gone as well.

None of the players in that age range are considered “build-around” players. Players that you can build the team around for future success. They are support players for the most part and while some are play makers like Kiko Alonso and Kenny Stills or Jakeem Grant, you are not building around them for the future.

This bodes well for the Dolphins should the under-26 group start picking up the game in the next year. Guys like Xavien Howard, Jerome Baker, Kenyan Drake, and Laremy Tunsil should all get better.

In reality this is an ideal situation for the Dolphins moving into 2019 and 2020 when these players should start to hit the up tick in their careers but a lot of that success might be dependent on getting a quarterback to replace Tannehill at some point in the next two seasons.

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Unless something incredible jumps out of Tannehill in the last six games or whatever he plays next season, the Dolphins have pieces in place that will make life a lot easier on a young quarterback but the Dolphins have to see that finding another signal caller is a smart move whether it is to back-up Tannehill for a season or two or replace him outright.

This isn’t a dig on Tannehill but at 30 years old he has not proven that he is much different from the player that entered the league at 23-year-old. It’s hard to imagine that he will make that jump in 2019. At least not to the point the Dolphins shouldn’t look for help.

Miami is a young football team that has a mix of older veterans that were supposed to provide depth and not start. If this team can stay healthy in the future, we might actually get to see the growth that we have wanted for the last decade.