In the immediate aftermath of the NFL’s opt-out deadline passing on Thursday, the Dolphins now officially know which players will be remaining in the picture for the 2020 season — which is shaping up to be a challenging year from a personnel perspective.
The Dolphins will likely be pressed into making some changes offensively after Albert Wilson and Allen Hurns elected not to partake in the 2020 season — and it seems as though the team’s first move is to see if they are comfortable with any potential replacements on the free agent market. According to Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald, the Dolphins summoned two free agent wide receivers to the team facility in Davie yesterday to participate in physicals — former Dolphins receiver Ricardo Louis and former Indianapolis Colt Chester Rogers.
Louis spent the 2019 season with the Dolphins but has not played in a game since the 2017 NFL season, he injured his neck and missed all of 2018 recovering from the subsequent surgery — and then hurt his knee and was forced to sit out the entirety of the 2019 season while under contract with the Dolphins. Louis was cut as Miami looked to trim down their roster ahead of the start of training camp, which isn’t a great endorsement of Miami’s thoughts of Louis entering 2020.
Rogers, on the other hand, has been an intermittent starter for Indianapolis — he’s a fifth year pro who enjoyed a career year in 2018 with Andrew Luck — he logged 53 receptions for 485 yards and two scores that season. His production plummeted in 2019, however, a troubling indicator that he may have plateaued as a player.
Miami may end up needing the depth, however. The team’s de facto WR3 is now Jakeem Grant, who has struggled with durability over the course of the last few seasons despite never logging more than 362 snaps in any of his four NFL seasons to date.