Miami Dolphins: Trading for Watson would be expensive but affordable

The Miami Dolphins are back in the Deshaun Watson trade talk after Tua Tagovailoa went down with an injury and could miss a few weeks. Naturally.

For Dolphins fans, this whole Watson saga isn’t going to end until he is traded to the Dolphins or traded to someone else. The Texans hold some of the cards and with Tua now injured, they won’t budge off their asking price.

Over at ProFootballTalk, Mike Florio has dusted off his keyboard to let everyone know that Stephen Ross not only wants a trade for Watson, he isn’t happy that it has been leaked. Read into that what you will.

The question that Florio brings up is whether Watson’s cost will rise next off-season? Does it matter? Three firsts and two second round picks is what Houston wants and that is exceptionally pricey for any player, even a proven QB. It becomes even more pricey when you factor in his legal issues and potential suspension from the league.

Making matters worse, the league will not give the Dolphins or any team any indication on whether or not a player will eventually be suspended so all of the risk is on Miami. This all nothing new. But we have to ask this question, is the price that is being asked for really that expensive?

Consider this, Chris Grier and Brian Flores don’t exactly have a stellar draft history if we are being completely honest. They have whiffed on Austin Jackson and Noah Igbinoghene. It appears they have hit on Jaylen Waddle and Jevon Holland but we are still watching Jaelan Phillips.

We can’t say that Tua Tagovailoa is any better and fans are not only calling for changes they are questioning whether or not they should have drafted Justin Herbert. Of course they are going to question this.

As Florio mentioned, and in no way do I tend to agree with him on anything, the reality is if you look at the wasted draft picks that they have made, send three firsts to solve the QB position isn’t all that expensive if we believe they are going to miss on them anyway.

Personally, I’m not ready to give up on Tua and frankly, the Dolphins shouldn’t be either. His injury would have happened to any QB with the hit he took from Epenesa of the Bills. Davis didn’t so much as touch him.

The problems for Miami are glaring and they are all on the offensive line. Grier took the cheap route to fix the line. Not wanting to overpay on offensive lineman now, it seems, has the owner questioning the QB.

Next off-season the Dolphins are going to have one of if not the highest amount of cap space and they could afford to sign every free agent, proven, offensive lineman but how long can they honestly continue to play the wait game at QB?

This isn’t a great position for the Dolphins to be in and the longer Tua is out and the longer he takes to develop, the more this situation will be a media talking point. Tua can control all of it, or as much as he can when he has time. Something that he doesn’t have much of and something the Dolphins may be seeing dwindle as well.