Dolphins’ new head coach reveals reason for cutting ties with Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, and Tua Tagovailoa originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Miami Dolphins made some tough decisions during the offseason, including firing head coach Mike McDaniel and moving on from Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, and Tua Tagovailoa.
The Dolphins will have to decide over the next few months if they want to continue building this thing from the ground up or try to make a few blockbuster moves to get things up to speed as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately for Miami, it has found out over the past few years that making big moves doesn’t necessarily mean a team is going to be good. It all starts with being tough up front, and that’s something the Dolphins haven’t been.
Speaking about the decision to move on from guys like Hill and Tagovailoa, since they were released rather than traded like Waddle, it sounds like a lot went into it, and the cap situation was the biggest factor.
The new Dolphins head coach even admitted that the cap situation was difficult, a problem the Dolphins have been trying to navigate.
“Obviously, Jon-Eric (Sullivan) and I had a lot of conversations about that, and, you know, it’s truly the situation that we walked into. I think there were over 33 free agents on the roster when we got here.
“The cap situation was really difficult, so we had to get in a healthier spot as far as the cap goes, so we had to make some really hard decisions with some really good players, who I have a ton of respect for, and they are still going to have a lot of success in this league. We just weren’t in the situation where we were able to keep them as we build this thing going forward. Hard decisions were made, really good players had to leave the team, and now we find ourselves in a position where we just drafted 13 players… We’re going to be young,” Jeff Hafley said, H/T Heavy.
The 2026-27 season will probably be a wash for Miami.
If it were to have a good season, it would be because of what the Dolphins did in this draft, and Malik Willis hopefully being as good as Miami is expecting him to be.
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