“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is one of the all-time greatest hits of The Rolling Stones. And it also may be the mantra of the Miami Dolphins next Monday (and Wednesday) upon the opening of free agency across the NFL. Because as much as the Miami Dolphins may have ambitions to go out and swing for the fences much like they did in 2020’s free agency window, the Dolphins will not have the luxury of vast cap space available to them to do so. And we’re in a different chapter of the Miami Dolphins’ rebuild — a critical window in which too much of anything can be a good thing.
Too much money spent? It could handcuff the team’s future flexibility. Too much money saved? The Dolphins’ progression could get stale. Too much aggression could limit the ability to cover their tracks and retrace mistakes, whereas too much faith could see the Dolphins bypass opportunities to upgrade their roster.
It isn’t an easy puzzle to navigate.
So when Brian Flores, who met with the South Florida media this morning, was asked about their mentality going into free agency and he teased that classic hit by The Rolling Stones? It seems to indicate that Miami will take a middle ground approach to spending in free agency this offseason. Sure, Miami would ideally love to pluck a No. 1 running back, a top-flight receiver, a starting interior offensive lineman, a pass rusher and a starting linebacker while also giving out extensions to several key players and also securing a new backup quarterback.
But all of those moves are going to cost Miami valuable cap space. Thankfully the Dolphins aren’t set to be cut out at the knees by the 2021 cap reduction. But the reduction in cap has cost Miami valuable wiggle room relative to where they were expecting to be in spending power when the team embarked on their rebuild back in early 2019.
This isn’t how the rebuild plan was supposed to proceed — the Dolphins were supposed to have ample spending power yet again this offseason to invest heavily on their weak points.
But as Brian Flores said this morning, you can’t always get what you want. And the inspiration for where the Dolphins go from here can be found in the very next line from that same Stones classic:
“You can’t always get what you want,
but if you try sometime you find,
you get what you need.”
Take the weekend, Miami. And then next week, you can still get what you need. It just won’t look the same as what Miami’s initial rebuild plan had drawn up.