Is cornerback now Miami Dolphins biggest need after Jones tweets?

The Miami Dolphins have a lot of needs but the Byron Jones situation may just make it the biggest of this year’s offseason.

Byron Jones tweeted what appears to be his retirement intentions on Saturday. You can read about that, and see the apparently now-deleted tweets, here.

There was a lot of speculation that the Dolphins would move on from Jones this off-season after missing all of last season. A likely post-June 1st release, Jones would provide the Dolphins over $13 million in cap relief.

Since that was going to be a probable scenario, the answer as to whether or not the cornerback position would be the biggest need on the team this off-season is no. Why? Because nothing, in reality, changes, it was always one of the big needs heading into this offseason.

The change would have come had Jones been a part of the Dolphins’ plans this year and his intentions were to play. That would have resolved a need. So with his announcement, the Dolphins are not suddenly in need of a starting cornerback, they have been if we are to believe the presumptions around the league, the media, and the fans.

The 2023 league new year will begin on March 15th and the Dolphins have plenty of work to do between now and the start of that business calendar. Miami has 28 impending free agents, we looked at all of them here. They have to make decisions on restructures and internal releases before the start of the new year to be cap compliant. Chris Grier and money man Brandon Shore have some manipulating of the “funny” money to get the team operating capital.

It is about to get very interesting as the calendar flips to March in a few days.