This could be Eric Rowe’s last season with the Miami Dolphins
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins are preparing for the 2021 season but in 2022, Eric Rowe may be the odd man out despite still being under contract.
In most cases, you wouldn’t look ahead to the future but considering this is the off-season and training camp is still over 80 days away, looking at what players may be playing their last season with the team isn’t really a bad thing and the first person I see as potentially being gone, is Eric Rowe.
When the 2022 season rolls around, the Dolphins should be over their rebuilding efforts and if that plays out to be true, the players they have drafted and are developing should be the starters and that is where Jevon Holland and Brandon Jones come into the picture.
The Dolphins are expected to have over $60 million in cap space next year as the NFL cap is expected to hit $200 million. The Dolphins, along with a lot of other teams, will have plenty of cap room to make big moves in free agency and at the same time retain their free agents but they will still not keep players around simply for financial reasons.
The Miami Dolphins got a lot of quality production from safety Eric Rowe but now, he is expendable and will not likely see another season after this one.
Rowe is scheduled to make $5.075 million in 2021. $4.5 million of that is fully recoverable and Miami would only eat $525,000 in dead money. There is two lines of thinking here, one, the Dolphins have him at a bargain but they also could use the money on someone else.
Rowe may have a favorable contract with the Dolphins in terms of saving money but the real issues facing him is that Miami has invested in Jevon Holland and Brandon Jones the last two draft and if they both produce as expected, they will be the safety tandem in the future and that leaves Rowe sitting on a $5 million contract as a potential backup.
Next. 2021 Dolphins compared to the 2018 squad. dark
A lot of what happens with Rowe will depend on how well Holland transitions to the NFL and whether or not Jones continues to develop. He had a good season last year but he still has room to grow and should see improvements this year.
There is no reason to believe that Rowe will not have another solid season for the Dolphins and if he does, Miami should consider keeping him around especially if Holland becomes what Miami envisioned with Minkah Fitzpatrick, that utility secondary safety that can roam the field. That would be Rowe’s best chance to stick around in 2022.