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Dave Hyde: Want to feel better about Miami Dolphins’ offseason? Check out the AFC East

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
·4 min read

Somewhere in the past two Miami Dolphins decades — the precise fallen era eludes me — I suggested that somehow, someway, those holding this franchise in the center of the universe will emerge from another squashed season with renewed hope.

And now that way is clear: The rest of the AFC East. It isn’t just in disarray. It’s in freefall. That’s the beacon of light in a dim Dolphins offseason that’s down to a limited draft and signing scraps of possibility. Just look around the division.

The New York Jets were so happy with the results of their 40-year-old quarterback last year they’ve taken that aging-and-injured approach across the roster this offseason. They’ll look great in August, gone by December.

The New England Patriots are in the midst of a walkabout and don’t realize it. Check back in a decade.

The bickering Buffalo Bills, the division champs for four years running, the ones to come the closest and be tortured the most by champion the Kansas City Chiefs, spent $31 million in cap space this past week to rid themselves of receiver Stefon Diggs. Guess counseling didn’t work.

The conversation entering last season was the AFC East as the best division of all. That’s not quite how it played out. Every team slinked into the offseason to repair wounds and rosters. And the question now is if any team has enough of the necessary triumvirate-at-the-top to contend: General manager, coach and quarterback.

Each is a star on championship teams. Does any AFC East team have all those positions right? Any team have it clearly two-thirds right?

New England thinks one role supersedes all others. The Krafts, Robert and Jonathan, father and son, have gone from the best model of owner to the worst in the plunge from two decades of dominance. The best owner makes the one important hire (in this case, Bill Belichick), provides the financially and emotional support for sustained success and understands the good fortune of it all.

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The worst owner thinks he’s responsible for the good fortune. The Krafts produced an absurd docuseries, “The Dynasty,” where the underlying narrative is the partnership of Belichick and Tom Brady weren’t responsible for six Super Bowl titles. They were with Brady. It’s comedy.

Now the Patriots have an unproven personnel guy, a rookie coach and a quarterback to be drafted later. For every Houston Texans team that emerges quickly and spectacularly from such rebuilds, there’s franchises like the Dolphins that haven’t returned because they couldn’t get the triumvirate right. The Patriots look destined to the Dolphins’ sentence.

The Jets are in their latest win-now year. Last year’s model went splat four plays into the season with quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles’ injury. What was their takeaway? They have even less time. So they rolled the dice on the old and injured. Thirteen-year tackle Tyron Smith. Receiver Mike Williams coming off his latest knee injury.

Jets general manager Joe Douglas also basically swapped 25-year-old edge rusher Bryce Huff (10 sacks for New York last year) for 30-year-old Haason Reddick (11 sacks for Philadelphia) and a third-round pick. Go figure.

There’s no figuring Buffalo. Sending Diggs to Houston evidently solves some locker-room problems. You can even say the loss of Diggs and receiver Gabe Davis (to Jacksonville in free agency) aren’t crucial when you break down their recent numbers. Buffalo’s real question is how it resupplies a defense that was gutted by free agency.

The answer: Josh Allen. The quarterback is the answer for everything Buffalo. It’s the best answer anyone has in the division. But he has limits with a limited roster, as recent Bills’ seasons have shown.

Add it all up and the AFC East is a chipped-up division. The way to rise in it, as the Dolphins’ offseason shows, is to go down the least. And the Dolphins win that idea. They’ve gone down by degrees. They only have a minimized draft and summer mop-up to complete an an offseason where more talent left than entered.

Oh, more bodies entered. More positions were filled. But talent?

Even some faithful think the free-agent loss of talent like Christian Wilkins and Robert Hunt signifies a pause from Super Bowl contention. As if they’ve been in contention. As if the NFL franchise on the longest cooler without a playoff win has been a threat to win anything big the past two decades.

Winning the AFC East is another matter. This offseason keeps showing that much.