With the decision to trade DE Charles Harris, the Miami Dolphins have opened up the door to an alternative method to pooling late round NFL Draft picks for next year’s 2021 draft. Considering the Dolphins will not be eligible for compensatory picks due to their spending in 2020, the team is going to have to get more resourceful in order to manufacture extra NFL Draft selections on top of the ten selections they’re already scheduled for, including two in each of the first two rounds.
The trade of Harris is a good start. The Dolphins were able to take a player who was almost assuredly not going to make the team and flip him into a 7th-round draft selection, which Miami could use as a piece to trade up in the draft, flip for a veteran at a discount or use as a lottery ticket and make a selection in the draft with.
Who might the Dolphins be interested in also transitioning away from, but struggle to find a willing market? Here are three candidates who could be at risk of not making the Dolphins’ roster in 2020 but are unlikely to warrant a trade market.
WR Albert Wilson
Wilson’s status as a question mark on Miami’s roster is the same reason he isn’t likely to create much of a trade market. Wilson is expensive. With a cap hit over $10.5M in 2020, the Dolphins could save most of that money by getting Wilson off the books. But the Dolphins didn’t add a lot of speed to their wide receiver group and Wilson did look to find a little bit of the bounce in his step towards the end of 2019.
But let’s be honest, no one is going to be willing to trade an asset for Wilson with his injury concerns, lack of strong play in 2019 and a base salary of $9.5M this season. Teams will wait out the Dolphins and look to sign Wilson once he clears waivers and his contract is null.
OL Danny Isidora
The Dolphins added Isidora last season but it isn’t looking promising for him to make the team yet again this year. Isidora came to Miami from Minnesota for a 2020 7th-round pick — and he promptly played 3 games before landing on injured reserve with a foot injury. If that is what Isidora was worth before last year, it is hard to envision he’ll drum up much interest off the scrap heap when you consider how barren the Dolphins’ offensive line has been in recent years.
CB Cordrea Tankersley
A former 3rd-round NFL Draft selection, Tankersley looks to be another potential numbers game casualty who hasn’t found his footing with Brian Flores’ staff due to injury. Promising play in 2017 led to some optimism regarding Tankersley but a 2018 knee injury has derailed his career entirely. Miami may hope that pre-draft interest in Tankersley would grab someone’s attention in a potential “buy low” scenario, but he’s seen just 29 defensive snaps over the last two years. With so many new bodies in the defensive back group this year, he feels as good as gone.
He just isn’t likely to generate much of a market.