The NFL is all about timelines. Competitive timelines, to be precise. A team with a ready-made franchise quarterback à la Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson should be all-in essentially every season. A team with a rookie or promising young quarterback should be trying to improve, but still placing a premium on youth that will peak on or around the same timeline as the quarterback.
Dolphins general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan acknowledged the reality when he spoke of trading Jaylen Waddle. Appearing on PFT Live with Mike Florio and Chris Simms, Sullivan said: "Jaylen is a really good player, he’s 27 years old. He’s [going to] want a new contract, and the receiver market’s not going down, it’s going up. And by the time we hit our stride, I didn’t know if that made a lot of sense for us. That’s as transparent as I can be with you."
The words "by the time we hit our stride" are doing a ton of heavy lifting there. Everyone wants to be around when the party's rocking; few want the responsibility of cleaning up afterward. Sullivan is subtly acknowledging that the Dolphins, fresh off of a fruitless championship push, are at the least exciting part of the timeline: the cleanup. That's when the player shedding happens, the salary cap needs a reset, and typically, the team does a lot of losing. It wasn't that long ago — 2019 to be exact — that the Dolphins were last at this phase.
The Miami Dolphins leapt 19 spots from second-to-last in 2025 to 12th in 2026 in terms of under-25 talent on the roster
Step one is always acknowledgment. When Jon-Eric Sullivan shed Tua Tagovailoa, Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Bradley Chubb, and Minkah Fitzpatrick, he proved he understood the assignment. These moves weren't about winning in 2026. They were about resetting, a necessary development after the previous Dolphins build delivered back-to-back subpar seasons.
There were no reasons for optimism with that iteration, as it was chock-full of veteran players who would very likely be getting worse, not better. With the reset, though, come some growing pains. The Dolphins invested heavily in youth in the NFL Draft, selecting a league-high 13 players. What's more, they mostly stood pat in big-money free agency (where veterans can be had), save for inking their beacon of hope, quarterback Malik Willis.
As a result, ESPN's data guru Aaron Schatz has the Dolphins as the league's No. 12 team in terms of under-25 talent. This comes after they ranked 31st in 2025. It's a tangible sign that the roster is reverse-aging, a positive at this stage of the rebuild. Jon-Eric Sullivan can't expect to build something special with players who've seen their best days pass them by.
No one said it was going to be easy, but the path to sustained success is unearthing and retaining your own talent. Free agency plays an important role, to be sure, but it should be reserved for filling a final spot or two, not building out a roster. The fact that draft misses are the very thing that brings a desperate GM to the treacherous free agent waters in the first place illustrates the loop that can easily form.
By starting all over, Sullivan is banking on his and his staff's ability to identify top-tier, young talent that will grow together into a sustained winner. If he can deliver, fans will welcome it like the first rain after a quarter-century drought.
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