Dolphins Job Is The Least Desirable

Dolphins Job Is The Least Desirable

This off-season in the NFL, excluding teams still in the playoffs, there are 9 head coaching vacancies. There also doesn’t seem to be a big market of candidates with experience, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing per se, but it would help. 

 The Miami Dolphins are one of those teams looking for a new head coach to work with their new general manager, Jon Eric Sullivan. The problem is the Dolphins’ job isn’t the most attractive job on the market, and in fact, you could make the argument that it is the worst job potentially on the market.

The Dolphins’ list of candidates for the job grows by the day, where I believe they have identified 11 people. The thing is, I don’t see a lot of people jumping for this job. John Harbaugh, the Dolphins, looked into it and is the biggest candidate out there until the New York Giants put the full-court press on him, and is probably going to take that job. I don’t think he was ever interested in the job because of reasons he was looking for a quarterback established, salary cap space, and draft pick.

Unfortunately, the Dolphins have none of those. 

The Dolphins will probably go with another first-time head coach and hope that person can turn things around on the field, but it will take time for whoever takes the job. 

 The Dolphins are projected to be $20 million over the salary cap going into the offseason, and they can get under with a few roster cuts, particularly wide receiver Tyreek Hill and some other cuts, but hard decisions will have to be made, and the Dolphins won’t have any room to improve the roster in free agency.

The Dolphins will have to acquire players in the draft, and with the draft comes rookies with inexperience and growing pains. Just like this year with the defensive line, which took them a good half a season to turn things around, and the hope is that they will get better. The Dolphins are going to be less talented than this year’s team, and a new coach is going to have to really coach this team up to compete. 

 The Dolphins also don’t have a quarterback as they are going to move on from Tua Tagovailoa, but they will have to pay a hefty price against the cap, and options will be limited. The Dolphins will have Quinn Ewers returning, and maybe he improves, but I wouldn’t count on that because he is more of a backup than a franchise quarterback.

The Dolphins won’t have much to spend on a QB in free agency and will probably have to find someone at a bargain price. Good luck with that. On top of that, the NFL Draft doesn’t have a strong class. It was propped up after last year’s draft to be better, but most of those QBs didn’t play well and decided to stay in school and get more NIL money while also working on their game.

There is probably 1 quarterback drafted in the first round this year, and after that, it’s anybody’s guess who goes where, but the Dolphins shouldn’t be desperate and reach. The quarterback situation alone makes the job bad. 

However, the job does come with a coach working with a new GM and an owner who is willing to spend, but who also realizes this team needs to be rebuilt, so owner Stephen Ross will probably give a new coach a long leash. The problem is that in the NFL, you rarely see a team keep a coach for a few years, and there have been instances over the years of getting fired after one year.  

Would any coach want to go through that potentially? I’m sure a lot of guys are waiting for their chance to become an HC for the first time, because there are only 32 jobs in the NFL. 

The Dolphins can offer a warmer climate and no state taxes, but that only goes so far. 

The bottom line is that coaches want to win, and the Dolphins aren’t ready to compete for a championship, let alone make the playoffs. Whoever takes this job is going to have to go through a tough year because of the cap and the teardown this roster will have to do. 

The question is, is there a candidate who will be willing to do that? There is, but it won’t be the first choice. The Dolphins must hope that they find someone who can coach this roster up and be willing to go through the grind of the process of building this team from scratch, and nowadays, that’s hard to do.