Here is Barnwell's analysis of the Dolphins. I think he's absolutely awful analyst/prognosticator, but wow is this negative. I take solace in the fact he seems to know very little about the players on the team.
Wallace vs Marshall? why relevent? its Wallace vs Bess (second leading WR last year). hartline vs hartline. gibson vs fasano.
Grimes is a lot better than Smith and can play in a zone scheme as well as m2m. smith sucked bad in a zone.
Clabo/Martin vs long/Martin is TBD, but saved the team $5M
Dansby couldn't rush the passer and struggled mightly end of last year. ellerbee will be upgrade
the Dion jordan pick is TBD, but Barnwell seems to not realzie that jordan will be 3rd down pass rusher who can also cover making pre-snap reads 5x tougher
reggie Bush caught 35 passes in 16 games...a HUGE safety net for tannehill?!?! I will say losing Keller hurts in that regard
Miami Dolphins
2012 Record: 7-9
Pythagorean Wins: 7.1 (underperformed by 0.1 wins)
Record in Games Decided by Seven Points or Fewer: 3-5 (0.375, ninth-worst in league)
Strength of Schedule: 0.473 (10th-easiest in league)
Turnover Margin: Minus-10 (tied for 24th in league)
2013 Out-of-Division Schedule: AFC North, NFC South, vs. Chargers, at Colts
My sentiment toward the Dolphins and the moves they made this offseason are covered at great length in
today's edition of the Grantland NFL Preview Podcast, but in short, Jeff Ireland seems like the kind of guy who might have inquired about purchasing a cabana on the
Titanic as it sank. Is Mike Wallace an upgrade on Brandon Marshall? Are the Dolphins better off with Brent Grimes than they were with Sean Smith? Is Dannell Ellerbe really better than Karlos Dansby? Would they really rather have Tyson Clabo at right tackle and Jonathan Martin on the left side than Jake Long on the left and Martin on the right? I don't know the answers to those questions, and I don't think Ireland knows them, either, but the shiny newness of those first options are enough to justify spending tens of millions of dollars, apparently.
Even more curious was the move to trade up and select Dion Jordan with the third overall pick of this year's draft. Miami was excited afterward that it only had to pay
half-price to acquire the pick, but the draft chart the Dolphins were likely referring to is outdated in a number of ways. Jordan, meanwhile, isn't exactly a can't-miss prospect; he had just 14.5 sacks in a little less than three seasons as a "Joker" pass-rusher for Oregon, which seems awfully low for a player who was taken well before SEC superstar Jarvis Jones. He enters into an excellent situation in Miami in the sense that he gets to play across from Cameron Wake and the double-teams Wake draws every week, but is Jordan the missing link that can help the team succeed in 2013? Probably not. And 2013 matters because Ireland is probably going to get fired if he doesn't deliver a trip to the playoffs this year.
The thing that I would still be concerned about, were I a Dolphins fan, is the lack of a safety net for Ryan Tannehill. Last year, Tannehill had Long at left tackle, Reggie Bush catching checkdowns as a pass-catching back, Davone Bess going over the middle and offering safe throws into and out of the slot, and Anthony Fasano as the grizzled tight end. This year, all of those guys are gone, and there's no obvious replacement. Dustin Keller suffered a season-ending injury in August, leaving a camp battle for tight end that's still raging. Long's replacement, Martin, is a question mark. Bush is gone to Detroit, with Lamar Miller taking over. There's no slot receiver in Bess's league still on the roster. In short, all of Tannehill's safety valves are gone.
In a way, the Dolphins are trying to serve two masters. They want to develop that young core of Tannehill, et al., but they also want to win now with all the veterans they've just gone and spent tons of money on in free agency. Good teams hold on to their draft picks and gradually retool as the years go along. Bad teams don't have that sort of bigger picture in mind. The Dolphins might just be in a no-picture zone altogether.
Best-Case Scenario: Tannehill improves quickly with Wallace at the helm, and Jordan breaks out without any double-teams in his way.
Worst-Case Scenario: Tannehill regresses a bit without any checkdown target, and the streets of Miami run red with Ireland's blood.