It is widely accepted that the Miami Dolphins are one of the most improved teams in the NFL this offseason — the team added hoards of new players and is looking to put all of that talent to work by hopefully finding the momentum they ended the 2019 season with. The Dolphins spent aggressively in free agency, they loaded up on draft picks and they also made coaching changes to put their players in the best position to win.
And yet despite all of these changes and upgrades, things got ugly when ESPN sat down to rank each of the NFL’s 32 rosters from 1 through 32 at each position group.
The Dolphins’ best position group, as ranked by ESPN’s Mike Clay, is the cornerback position. Miami checked in with a top-five overall ranking there (4th overall). But that position is the only position on the roster in which the Dolphins are ranked in the top half (16th or better) of the league. That includes quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tight end, offensive line, interior defensive line, edge rushers, off-ball linebackers and safeties. After cornerback, the next best ranking you’ll find for Miami is 19th out of 32 (both tight end and edge rushers ranked here). And in all, the Dolphins were ranked as having the 4th worst roster in football (29th overall).
If it serves as some silver lining, this ranking is for the 2020 season only and does not account for long-term forecasting, but the team got hammered hard none the less for their running backs (30th), offensive line grouping (31st), linebackers (29th) and safeties (32nd).
There’s clear paths for each of these units to outperform the ranking granted to them by ESPN’s exercise, however. A healthy Jordan Howard can offer Miami productive, though largely unspectacular play. The line needs Miami to call well balanced games to avoid disaster and, with the team figuring to implement a lot of RPO concepts, they have a decent chance to do exactly that. Kyle Van Noy and Jerome Baker paired up in off the ball situations makes it tough to buy Miami has a bottom-five LB group and if Eric Rowe repeats his performance in the second half of 2019, Miami’s safeties won’t be the worst in the league.
It’s a good thing the games aren’t played on paper, because if they were, Miami would be looking at a tough season ahead according to ESPN.