Finsmob Unleashed

When I first heard the news that the Dolphins waived/injured our 5th RD pick Curtis Weaver I was furious. Sometimes I can’t help myself, I think “same old Dolphins”. I thought for $670K we could have put the kid on I/R and next year we’d have ready to go and see what he can do. Take a look at the picture up above, the dude is flexing and my modest biceps are bigger than that dudes, he looks soft. Still, Weaver was productive and many draft experts gave us high marks on that pick, a great value in the 5th RD. The Browns, who claimed Weaver have put him on I/R. To be fair, I thought Flores looked especially and unusually uncomfortable when asked about Curtis Weaver. Flores is pretty quick and direct and during the interview, he labored to answer why Weaver was cut which leads me to think there’s something more than we may ever find out. In any case, Weaver is a Brown now and you know what that means to me. (I’ll spare you the expletives)

Kalen Ballage’s career as a Miami Dolphin is also over. He leaves much like one other promising RB draft pick of the past left, in disappointing fashion. Daniel Thomas never fulfilled his potential and Kalen Ballage who I once thought could be our version of David Johnson “light” yet turned out to be David Johnson 20,000,000 gallons of helium. So with the waiving of Curtis Weaver and then the release of Kalen Ballage, the Dolphins signed DB Deatrick Nichols and claimed RB Salvon Ahmed, a former Washington Husky RB. I can’t blame Kalen Ballage completely because our organization doesn’t have a ton of cred evaluating RB’s. We traded away Ajayi (Gase), we traded away Kenyan Drake (who is flourishing with the Cards) and now gave up on Kalen Ballage. If Ballage does well elsewhere, that will amp up this feeling.

The camp battles so far are encouraging. Big Robert Hunt and Solomon Kindley are making noise, winning some battles and losing others but making a splash nonetheless. I like that last years 3rd RD pick Michael Deiter is getting a lot of reps at center and is most likely being groomed as the replacement for Ted Karras who is here on a 1 YR show me contract. I can actually see light at the end of the tunnel with this O-line. Eventually, I see Jackson – Flowers – Deiter – Kindley – Hunt, or maybe Jesse Davis continues his elevated play at RT and holds off Hunt and Hunt moves inside to RG and then Kindley is a very nice depth player to have. The QB’s have all had ups and downs and rookie phenom Tua Tagovailoa is not immune to that. This is expected, anyone who thought Tua was just going to ride onto the field on a unicorn and throw rainbow TD’s every throw was due for disappointment. He’s just getting started and I’m sure there is a lot the kid is trying to absorb at this point. He’s got talent, let him get up to speed. Honestly, I expect some play from mostly everyone with the limited amount of work players and coaches are able to get in. Hopefully as the season progresses, things will look better. If that happens, that’s a good thing. I think teams that have mostly the same personnel and coaches back have a clear advantage over teams with many new p-layers, new coaches and new systems. The Dolphins check all of those boxes so keep your early expectation low.

GO DOLPHINS!!

#staythecourse