Dolphins Are Suddenly Stacked At The Offensive Skill Positions

As the Miami Dolphins’ roster continues to transition and evolve, the team now finds itself in somewhat of a quandary: what to do with all of the talented backs and receivers they find themselves with. Simple arithmetic would indicate that they can’t possibly keep all of them on the 53 man roster in September, yet many of them would also surely be poached by other teams if they ended up on the practice squad.

Just looking at the running back position, once you get past the top two guys, Drake and Gore, you’ve still got Senorise Perry, Buddy Howell and fourth round rookie Kalen Ballage, all of whom have performed well thus far, plus unheralded youngster Brandon Radcliff. The Dolphins have assembled a versatile group of players, all of whom seem capable in both receiving and blitz pickup. The folks who claim that the preseason should be reduced to two games have obviously never had to deal with having so much young talent to evaluate in such a short period of time.

Miami’s receiving corps has often been criticized in recent years as not being up to NFL caliber; my main beef with the unit has mostly been that the team has expended far too much draft capital in it. No other NFL team has ever used a first, a second and three thirds on WR’s in a three year period. Of the draft picks used in that orgiastic spree, former second rounder Jarvis Landry has already left town and 2015 first rounder DeVante Parker doesn’t look to be far behind him, unless the Fins’ front office can ink him to a relatively cheap contract extension. 2016 draft pick Leonte Carroo, who cost Miami two thirds and a fourth, is going to need a small miracle to even be considered for one of the final WR spots on the team at this point. I took some heat on here for my bitter criticism of the Carroo pick, in particular, but my philosophy is very simple: I want the players my favorite team selects in the draft to either be good enough to justify where they were picked or bad enough to justify my anger at where they were picked.

That’s the bad news; the good news is that the Dolphins now have a veritable arsenal of players at the position who could probably make a lot of teams. Once you get past the ‘big four’ of Kenny Stills, Albert Wilson, Danny Amendola and Parker, you’ve got the speedy Jakeem Grant, underrated dark horse Isaiah Ford, who looked more like a Ferrari against Tampa Bay, Drew Morgan, Rashawn Scott and Francis Owusu. Owusu is listed at 6’3”, 223 and looked like a keeper against the Bucs. The rap world has ‘Lil Boosie’; perhaps in the regular season, the Dolphins will have ‘Big Woosie’.

All of this bodes well for Miami as they prepare for the season opener in a few weeks, and should cost the bookmakers in Vegas quite a bit of money, if they don’t change their over/under for the Dolphins’ projected win total. If the team’s defense and offensive line can improve on last season’s performance, which isn’t asking a whole lot, if we think about it, this team is going to surprise some people. It’s an exciting time to be a Dolphin fan.