I think Parcell’s & co aren’t in scramble mode. His track record will make a more than a few agents pause. As well, as I said before, there are them one or two (hell, three) vets out there that want in.
God, I wish I knew the plan. Husker, Finz, Nick, & others hit on it….

from seeing some comments all over the web and news sites, my take is basically that if they let some of this FA´s go it is because this regime, more than wanting to strictly rebuild through the draft or not wanting to overpay this guys, just dont think this players are good enough. Maybe to Bill and Sparano and Jeff, Kendall Langfords and Philip Merlings and Donald Thomases are the prototype of players they want to build their franchise around. So I think the most important key here is that we are seeing this from a couple of points of view:
1- we want to win now or at least keep being competitive- we look at yeremiah bell or andre goodman (both who arent getting any younger) and say “gee, this guys are good at their position dont let them go”.
2- we are forgetting that we are in a 3 year rebuilding process, which means two things we just havent been able to understand through this couple of weeks:
 a) You cant throw huge contracts at FA
 b) You have to get YOUNG and that means that eventhough you want to keep good enough players on the team, you have got to let them go and RENOVATE through the draft, to get the kind of players that will fit your mold.

And who are we kidding, neither Bell or Goodman or Crowder are great players, they are good at best and helped our rookies into the line up. And if we stay in the same line we are drafting wise, even if we let Bell , Crowder and Goodman go, our next Langford could be a stud CB, our next Bell could be a 4th round parcells type of guy, and our next Crowder could be even Laurinatis or Maualuga. And now you got what you want out of a rebuilding process ; 1- Young players, and most importantly 2- Young players that you chose because they are your type of guy. Parcells guys and most importantly one day Dolphin prototype players.

just said precisely what I spent a good ten minutes typing up, haha..kudos for efficiency.

I wouldn’t worry about it. There is plenty of depth in this year’s draft for the OL, so letting Carey walk might not be the worst thing. Besides, like he said, the regime just might believe he isn’t worth the salary. Think about it. If we get a player in, say, the third round, he could be up to Carey’s caliber in a mere season or two, and cost much less while still under the draft contract. It’s smart business, and even though we want to see a win-now mentality because of the hardships we’ve endured waiting for this franchise to turn around, letting players like Bell and Hill and Goodman go may actually be our best move.

Besides..who knows..maybe the release of Carey/Bell/Crowder gives us the room to sign a Jason Brown, who, while paid a ridiculous amount of money, is extremely young and extremely talented with a high ceiling. He might bring a pricey tag, but he’s a Parcells type of guy build-wise for a center and is precisely what the OL needs to bring the power running game back to Miami.

That’s not to say I expect them to sign him..but employing the top-paid C in the league might be an option these guys are willing to utilize because of the positives, and if letting go of our top free agents allows that to happen, I’m all for it. That being said, we’ll probably forgo any huge signings and bring in the Bobby Carpenters of the league in the offseason before drafting a Mack or Unger in April. But I sure hope I’m biting those words in a week.

lol…….that was just awesome. Yea, its a crap shoot…but, we have some pretty good players rolling the dice don’t we? MauMonta did great with his post……and I’ve posted elsewhere that this is still year 2 of the rebuild. Patience, and testicular fortitude from us the fans as well. I have a strong feeling, going into camp we’ll all be saying…….“ahhh, I see what’s going on now….”

but remember last year, when all we did was continue to purge guys from the roster, and it never seemed like we were getting anything back, or filling the holes we were creating by letting guys go.. then by the time the next season started, we all saw the direction this regime was going in.

I think that may happen again this year. Some of our FA’s will be purged, and it will appear that more holes are being created than are being filled, then, through smart FA moves and shrewd drafting, we’ll once again start next season better than last. I know that we all (me included) want to see our guys return, because we followed them for the last year or so, and feel like they can positively contribute to our team… but Parcells and Co. are all about results, and if they feel like they aren’t getting the results they want from a player, they won’t waste time with him. He’ll be gone, and they’ll bring in somebody they think can get it done.

other than that I agree 100% with the guys above. It’s OK to look at the situation and worry but to be fair I don’t think any of the guys you mention are worth the kind of money they’re going to demand IMO. If someone else is prepared to offer big money then fair enough, they walk. I think this FO has a clear plan and if they really were keen to keep any of these guys around it’d have been a done deal right now. Keep the faith Matty :)

Maybe I’m just being paranoid – something that happens when you’re a Dolphins fan and you’ve lived through some of our past regimes.

The past 8+ years have been really damaging to any Dolphins fan’s “psychology” as far as just being able to trust what the front office and coaching staff are going to do. And who knows, maybe we do end up taking 1 step back- but I feel in the end it’ll still be 2 steps forward after even if it isn’t immediately apparent.

1 year is not enough time to put up a true proven track record, I will give you that. But they have shown so far that they do their homework. In the end, none of us know what these guys really look like on game tape, how they take to coaching, act in the locker room, or really bring to the team. The only ones who know all the facts are the guys in the FO, and if they say they are only worth X amount of dollars then I have to believe it until its proven otherwise.

Besides- we lived through ZT and JT getting dumped, and they were two of the greatest Phins of all time. Now we’re gonna get all worried for dumping an injury prone Safety who is closer to my parents age than my own? Or a RT who can hold his own but never really flashed an ability to dominate? Like I said, even if we suffer a temporary setback in the W-L column, we will ultimately be getting ahead by getting younger players who learn to do things the way we want from the start.

We didn’t do a particularly good job in FA last year and we turned out better then OK.
We missed out on Calvin Pace, let Zach go, signed highly productive players like
Chris Crocker, Josh McCown and Ernest “T Bass” Wilford. So leave no doubt we’ll fill some holes get younger and better.

I dont really know how I feel but I know you get what you pay for,I still think we need Bell and Carey back I will be happy with just those two and just like Matty said we cant expect to fill all our holes through the draft and expect them to come out and be big players we need to spend some kind of money I know thats not the trifecta way but look at thiseven though some may say we did not have the biggest signings last year and lost ZT and JT.Now Channing did a ok job for replacing ZT as for JT our only real pass rusher came from Porter our d-line did not do a good job at creating pressure,our secondary got burnt,Thomas played all but 2 quarters and we lost Joe to a broken leg and Samson did not have his best year.So it looks like we may be looking for a RT,gaurd,center,NT,CB,FS or SS,WR,and ILB thats alot.
Say what you will but really last years team played how many games against teams with a winning record we had it pretty easy.Now this year we play only 2 teams that had a losing record filling these holes with rookies and second and third tier guys aint going to cut it.

I pretty much agree with all of the above posts, but i just want to add that, Matty, for the couple of years I have known you through this blog now, you tend to go through this from time to time. I will choose to call it “passion” as opposed to “paranoia”. You remind me of a late, good friend of mine. The guy was sharp, had a great heart, and was pretty rational… until you touched on football, which was a passion of his. And then, if things didn’t seem to be going right, he could get spun up faster than a 78 record.

It’s not so much that I believe that the front office are making all the right moves right now… it’s just that when i look back at last year there was a lot of the same criticism of how they handled several things, from the lack of a big FA participation (remember the expectations when the Fins jumped on Smiley out of the gate, and then…. virtually nothing?), to the ZT cut and the way they handled JT. But the end result worked out pretty well. So as far as I’m concerned, they proved to me last year that they deserve the benefit of the doubt. I might be scratching my head wondering how it is going to shake out, but until they screw it up, I’m not going to assume failure.

All that being said, I DO think they are doing the right thing right now. I don’t think replacing VC through the draft if needed, is that big a deal. Especially if we solve the RG issue. Likewise with Crowder. I don’t expect an 11-5 season next year… Husker’s analogy of building the team being like a Rubik’s cube… sometimes it looks like you are close to putting it all together, but then you have to mix it up again to get all the pieces to fall in the right place. This might be the mixing up phase, and maybe we go 8-8 this year, in order to challenge for the SB next?
Let is play out and let’s see where we end up going into the season.
=)

I hear Matty’s unease on the trifecta not blinking or compromising their philosophy in the face of the unknown offseason…. draft, free agency, etc…. Look, the reason we have Parcells is because we trust his track record to make the right moves in the offseason. EVERY offseason is scary because there is always uncertainty, but if our front office acted out of desperation, it would be bad in the long term. We can’t just sign Yeremiah and Channing just because we’re afraid of the unknown. Doing this would only serve to revert us back to the desperate Wannstedt days of trading for Lamar Gordon and AJ Feeley.
We need to trust the trifecta here. Obviously we don’t have the benefit of hindsight, but this regime believes it can upgrade, and I put my confidence in them. Yes, I will miss Yeremiah Bell’s presence, but it merely is not good practice to overpay an aging, injury prone player merely because we’re afraid in our abilities to find a suitable replacement.

A good example would be the Steelers. They’ve always been a team that believes in their principles. It seems like every year, going back to the Greg Lloyd and Kevin Greene days, they’ve always lost key players to free agency, and the following year we’re all amazed that they continue their steady play. Even when they lost Joey Porter, they were able to replace him with James Harrison. Miami fans would be up in arms if we had lost Joey. I think perspective and trust in the trifecta is the right frame of mind here.

No one would pay him Ed Reed Money