Miami Dolphins need to take a lesson from the Browns this off-season
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins are heading into an important off-season and they should look at the Cleveland Browns as a way not to conduct their off-season.
When free agency begins, the Miami Dolphins are expected to be big players in the market. Perhaps even set the market at several positions. When the draft arrives in April, the Dolphins will have a lot of picks to spend on whomever they want. They need to be careful and the Browns should be who they study.
Entering the 2019 season way back in August when camps began, the Cleveland Browns were the darlings of the NFL. They had been rebuilding, gutting their roster for years, they were making moves to improve through free agency, trades, the draft. They had just added Odell Beckham, Jr. to go along with Jarvis Landry. They drafted Baker Mayfield a season earlier. They were undoubtedly heading to the post-season.
Until they weren’t.
Now, head coach Freddie Kitchens is gone. General Manager John Dorsey is gone. The Browns, as has been the case for the last decade and more, are back to being the same Browns from the last decade and more.
Cleveland is a great example that buying up high profile free agents doesn’t always work. The Dolphins, of course, should know this from their own spending under Jeff Ireland. They should know that the NFL Draft isn’t the cure-all if you can’t hit on players. In Cleveland, the Browns have drafted much better than the Dolphins have but they show what bad coaching and bad management can do.
The Dolphins can look at this when they start to bicker internally about who they should bring to Miami. They need to stay focused on what they want to achieve as their long-term goal and not fall victim to wanting to escalate the process.
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Miami needs players and free agency will provide some if not many players to fill vacant holes but those players are not necessarily plug-and-play. This is where the evaluation process must be concrete. Sure players like Melvin Gordan are fun to watch and the idea of them being on the roster makes sense but how do their personalties fit in with what Miami is wanting to do? Will it turn into another Minkah Fitzpatrick type of situation. Or to stay with the Browns, players yelling “Come and get me” to the other team.
What is working for Miami is that the coach and the general manager are on the same page. What is working is that the Dolphins are not being pressured to win now by the owner. What is working is that the Dolphins are not expected to be competing for a division title let alone a playoff birth next year. In other words, the Dolphins have time to be more methodical. To be careful and to make good choices.
Cleveland rushed a lot of things believing they could compete and win by adding names with no real plan on how to use them. Miami has to avoid that same pitfall. They need to be smarter because if they are not, this off-season could just as easily be the one that eventually leads to coaching and executive changes.