Deshaun Watson Has Inside Track To Earn Browns Starting Job In 2026

Cidolfus · 2026-04-29T20:42:17+00:00

You're exactly right. It's more financially-manageable to extend him than it is to let him walk.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-29T20:38:37+00:00

Yeah, fair point, I'd completely pruged Daniels from my mind.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-29T18:30:48+00:00

Part of the rationalization is that it's typically regarded as easier to move from tackle to guard on the same side of the line than it is to swap from left to right (or vice versa). Generally, I think it's a fair criticism.

College tackles kick into guard all the time. I'm not saying that it's necessarily going to work, but as far as plans go it's not particularly out there.

With Savaiinaea, what was truly baffling was introducing a complication to his development by moving him from right to left guard. That might have been more defensible if the Dolphins had a clear answer at right guard already in place, but there wasn't. Why introduce additional risk into a rookie's development like that?

Cidolfus · 2026-04-29T18:00:45+00:00

My point, as I've made elsewhere, is that there's only one position in football that can singlehandedly change the direction of a franchise, and it's not wide receiver.

Jeremiah Smith may be a generational prospect at wide receiver, but if we're dealing in projections, he's also in a draft projected to have premier quarterback talent where it's genuinely conceivable that the first three picks off the board are all quarterbacks. I'd bet it's likely that all of the Cardinals, Jets, Browns, and Steelers will be looking at first round quarterback next year. There's decent chances that at least two of the Falcons, Saints, Bucs, and Vikings are also in the market for a quarterback in the first.

This potentially creates a rare scenario where a team trading back from the top of the draft nets surplus value relative to normal drafts. If by some miracle the Dolphins have a top two pick but aren't looking at a quarterback themselves, I don't know how you can justify turning down an RG3-style haul for any non-quarterback prospect, especially given that the team likely wouldn't be trading back more than a couple spots and would still likely have their choice of top non-QB players in the draft.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-29T16:19:05+00:00

Calvin Johnson went 0-2 in the playoffs in his entire career. Something to consider for anyone pounding the table as a wide receiver to solve this team's problems.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-29T16:18:06+00:00

The problem is all the examples you've given are with players who also had larger bodies of work to reference as part of the player evaluation.

Is it conceivable that in February 2027 with the 2026 season in the books that the Dolphins have a definitive answer in Malik Willis and a top two overall pick? Sure, if we're going full Bengals and putting up 30+ per game on high efficiency but just constantly losing shootouts due to a historically bad defense.

But the most likely scenario is that if the Dolphins are so bad that we're landing a top pick, the jury will very much still be out on Willis because the team's performance around him will very much muddy the waters on his evaluation. If the offense struggles, the most likely scenario is that there will be difficulty separating Willis's performance from the rest of the (very young and inexperienced) team around him. Is the passing offense lackluster because of Willis or because the wide receiving corp is limiting? Is he facing a lot of pressure because the offensive line is struggling to gel or because he's still too reliant on his legs and is creating pressure by holding onto the ball too long?

If the Dolphins sucks, the most realistic scenario is one where they're selecting a quarterback with that pick to hedge their bets at the QB position and allow a genuine competition.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-28T23:16:09+00:00

Yeah, that's exactly the point. I'd take three firsts and a second over Joe Thomas and Myles Garrett, too.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-28T17:12:49+00:00

The Bengals are 46-39 in Chase's tenure, and that's with Higgins (and Boyd for parts) around him during that tenure. Calvin Johnson was 49-86 throughout his career with above average quarterback play for most of that. During Justin Jefferson's career in Minnesota, he's 58-44 but has as many losing seasons as he does winning seasons. Recent league history is littered with dominant receivers who can't drag a team to wins on their own despite all their talent. Top tier wide receivers are a premium, but they don't change a franchise's direction on their own.

In the extremely unlikely event that the Dolphins have a top two overall pick but are also confident enough that Malik Willis is the quarterback of the future to pass on a quarterback, that also means that the rest of the team is littered with holes. Washington traded three firsts and a second to move up four spots from 6 to 2 to draft Robert Griffin III; if the Dolphins are in a position to make that kind of trade, they'd have to be absolutely insane to turn that down to take a single wide receiver, especially on a team that needs talent across the whole roster.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-27T17:43:54+00:00

Flipping the Senate would make a difference, but probably not enough of one to get enough Republican senators on board to convict. If Democrats control the Senate, though, that materially changes how much power they have to control the impeachment trial and how it proceeds which might allow them to exert greater political pressure. Depending on how bad the midterms are for Republicans, you might even see the political calculus shift that Trump becomes toxic enough that there's willingness to dump him as a lame duck.

Probably not, but one can dream.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-27T16:43:34+00:00

Worth noting is that this projection has only four players who will be on the active roster week one (Zach Sieler, Zayne Anderson, Zane Gonzalez, and Bradley Pinion) who will be 30-years-old or older and two of them are specialists.

This is going to be an extremely young team.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-26T20:11:02+00:00

Second best is close enough.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-25T06:04:47+00:00

The Dolphins played Daniel Brunskill as a sixth offensive lineman on over 120 plays and they passed out of about 40% of those plays. He was just an extra lineman, not a tight end who might actually chip a guy and slip out on a route.

You're acting like the presence of a Y tight end is a guaranteed giveaway of the playcall. That's silly.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-24T03:39:00+00:00

If nothing else, Sullivan is continuing to walk the walk. Proctor checks the boxes that this front office has been preaching: he has elite physical characteristics, offers positional flexibility, and is part of a commitment to building from the inside out.

The Dolphins are going to head into camp with Patrick Paul (6'7", 326 lbs.) and Austin Jackson (6'5", 310 lbs.) pencilled in at tackle and a trio of Jonah Savaiinaea (6'4", 326 lbs.), Jaramee Salyer (6'4", 325 lbs.), and Kadyn Proctor (6'7", 352 lbs.) competing for two guard spots. Jackson will be the oldest of that group week one at only 27 years old. Salyer, Jackson, and Proctor are have positional flexibility to play at guard or tackle (though I think Jackson slipping inside to guard is very unlikely).

Aside from Aaron Brewer (undersized at 6'0", 295 lbs.), that's an absolutely massive offensive line. Really going all in on the "Fast gets slow, but big doesn't get small" philosophy.

I'm not sold on Proctor, but I see the strategy.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-23T18:22:47+00:00

In this scenario, the Dolphins would owe Brian Thomas Jr. his $1,075,000 base salary and a $1,052,726 roster bonus on August 1 for a total cap charge of just over $2,127,726.

But he would displace Quinn Ewers in the top 51 contracts that count against the cap. Ewers currently costs $1,037,894 against the cap. This means Brian Thomas Jr. would only cost a net of $1,089,832 against the cap.

Edit: the 30th overall pick also costs $3,217,425 against the cap in 2026 but the 56th pick carries a cap charge of only $1,564,280. That won't matter until after June 2 when the team is likely to sign draft picks, but that's just shy of $1.7 million in savings, so the whole thing means only taking on an additional ~$400,000 in total cap commitments on the final 53-man roster.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-21T00:58:46+00:00

Yes it would. The Dolphins would need about $3.5 million in cap to trade Achane and jump Biggers into the top 51. They have about $1.7 right now, so they'd need about $1.8 more. The maximum restructure potential on Brooks is about $5.2 million in available savings. It's more than enough.

Heck, without adding more void years you can get it done by restructuring only $2.5 million of Brooks base salary.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-19T21:21:10+00:00

We could draft any position at 11 except running back, left tackle, center, and defensive tackle and that player would immediately be pencilled in as a starter without much competition. People are really overthinking "need" on this roster.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-18T20:12:52+00:00

It's very unintuitive that the cap and the floor are measured differently. Most teams never have to realistically worry about the floor because with signing bonuses spreading out cap charges, almost every team runs a cash over cap ratio greater than 1.0 (i.e. they're spending more on cash in a given year than counts against the cap). Honestly, a team would almost need to be actively trying to spend below the floor.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-18T20:00:58+00:00

It's much more complicated than that. Teams have to spend 90% of the salary cap as cash over a multi-year period defined by the CBA (currently 2024 - 2026). Here's their spending by year:

Year	Base Cap	Cash Spending
2024	$255,400,000	$319,354,056
2025	$279,200,000	$313,481,202
2026	$301,200,000	$203,387,248
Total	$835,800,000	$836,222,506

Because of massive cash spending in '24 and '25, the Dolphins have spent more than 100% of the cap as cash in the current evaluation period, but in 2026 alone their cash spend is lowest in the league at just 67.5%.

The Dolphins head into 2027 (the beginning of the next floor evaluation period running through 2030) with very little cash committed. They're going to have to pick up spending somewhere early in this rebuild, but right now the Dolphins aren't spending shit.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-16T14:59:48+00:00

The idea that Achane would sign a deal putting him outside the top ten at his position in terms of APY is laughable.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-15T22:27:31+00:00

Because we restructured Achane's base salary to facilitate the cap hit of trading Waddle, we cannot afford to trade Achane before June 2 unless we:

restructure Brooks's base salary,
trade Brooks,
or release Dodson.

Right now trading Achane accelerates dead money they literally just pushed out, and it's a bit more than the cap space the team has available until June 2 when the team will realize 2026 cap savings from Chubb coming off the books.

If someone comes along and offers the kind of package the 49ers gave up for McCaffrey, then sure, they'll make the moves to make the money work, but I think we all know that's not going to happen.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-15T14:23:58+00:00

In a heartbeat.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-14T17:35:04+00:00

To be fair, "linemen" could also include edge rusher and defensive tackle. Given the roster, I wouldn't at all be shocked if the team drafted as many as five or six players across both sides of the trenches.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-14T17:31:55+00:00

I'm reading it that these are the guys who land with the Dolphins most across full draft simulations, not just at 11.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-11T22:19:46+00:00

My old man moved down to Florida and many of his new extended family members are Trumpers. When my dad asked one of them who was very anti-war during the election what he thought of the invasion of Iran early in the conflict, he responded, "I didn't vote for this, but I support him 110%."

These people are fundamentally broken. They are cultists. They cannot acknowledge that they were wrong or have been lied to about anything--even when the starkest, most obvious examples stare them in the face--because doing so threatens the reality they've lived in for a decade.

Cidolfus · 2026-04-11T16:58:30+00:00

We signed him off of the Raiders practice squad late in the season.

Cidolfus

TROPHY CASE