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The dust has settled from the Miami Dolphins’ decision to trade linebacker Raekwon McMillan to the Las Vegas Raiders — the news of McMillan’s potential departure swiftly crept in over the weekend and within hours McMillan had gone from a potential starter to being shopped to being off the team completely. And, once the initial shock wore off, it became clear that this move made a lot of sense for the Dolphins.
In a lot of ways it mirrors Miami’s tendencies under general manager Chris Grier since 2019, too. First and foremost, Grier got creative with compensation in his efforts to bring Miami back the most highly coveted asset they could. The next step for Miami will be to hope that the Raiders stink in 2020 — as this pick has the potential to sit right on the edge of the top-100 selections if the Raiders are among the worst teams in the NFL this season. But, in a very Chris Grier type of move, the Dolphins flipped an established player for the promise of an extra bargaining chip to play with in the future. And, as a bonus, Miami no longer has to make the difficult decision on how much to pay or offer McMillan for his services as a limited player in coverage.
That is someone else’s problem now. Between Laremy Tunsil, Kenyan Drake, Robert Quinn and now Raekwon McMillan, Miami has been persistent in their efforts to offload players in the face of signing off on a new deal and avoid paying premiere prices to keep players in town if they don’t fit the long-term vision of the team. And sure, Laremy Tunsil would have been a player Miami would have loved to have. But Tunsil also got $22M per season in Houston and Miami paying that money out for a team in the early stages of a rebuild is admittedly a bit illogical. McMillan is a less severe example of the same school of thought.
And, furthermore, Miami’s draft day strategy mirrors the thinking here. The Dolphins’ draft was a tale of two halves — the first half of the draft saw the Dolphins stubbornly stand firm, coveting volume of high draft picks and making all of them count instead of trading up and getting fewer players. The second half of the draft saw Miami wheel and deal — starting in the 4th-round with the effort to draft Solomon Kindley.
The McMillan deal mirrors both of those schools of thought: the Dolphins are coveting getting more high draft selections (hence giving up the 5th-round pick to get this deal done instead of simply taking a 5th-rounder by itself) and the team is also wheeling and dealing Day 3 assets once again. The longer this rebuild goes, the better idea we’ll have on Grier’s tendencies. But the McMillan deal certainly gives us another glimpse at Miami’s ideologies in action.