Miami Dolphins REPORTEDLY Telling Teams That RB Devon Achane Is Staying Put

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All right, Miami, welcome to another episode of Lockdown Dolphins, I'm your host, Kyle

Krabs.

Today on the program, we are diving into some free agent bummers for players that sign might

have liked to see the dolphins be involved in.

You fall out from the Jaylon Waddle trade, but starting first and foremost with the news

that came out this morning courtesy of ESPN's Adam Schefter, that the Miami Dolphins have

told teams across the league that they are not interested in trading Devana H&N.

This, of course, kicked off a flurry yesterday with the Jaylon Waddle deal of fan bases

and speculation about the fire sale in Miami and realistically, is it a fire sale or is

it just an outstanding price for a player that maybe you would have liked to have kept?

This seems to give some reinforcement of the ladder with this news that came out.

So Adam Schefter and ESPN's Marcel Luiz-Jacques collaborated on a report that came out this

morning.

Teams that have recently called the dolphins to inquire about trading for H&N have been

told that the start running back is not available sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

So collectively, let's all take a deep breath and relax.

This is good news for the, we want to have something to work with offensively club,

which is where I find myself, right?

And you could tell me that a team is going to give you two suites and two hard to pass

up offer for Devana H&N at that point.

I'd probably advocate trading Devana H&N as well.

But if you're going to bring quarterback Malik Willis into the fray of this football team

in 2026, and he's going to be given the chance to be your starting quarterback, obviously,

they've had some behind the scenes evaluation of him, but you don't want to just strip

the whole thing down to the point where you have a very early draft pick in 2027, and

you can't have an ability to evaluate your quarterback.

I think it gives you a chance now with some continuity along the offensive line, right?

Patrick Paul at left tackle, Aaron Brewer at center, Austin Jackson, they chose to bring

back Jonas, I and I will be back and competing for a starting job.

They get a swing tackle with familiarity in Bobby Slowick with Charlie Hick.

They're bringing in Jamari Salier to compete for a starting job.

I'd still probably add a starting caliber guard, and I'd go from there, right?

And that would be an early draft choice.

I would draft early at offensive guard.

You have that plus HN, familiarity with Greg Dullsitz, who worked with this infrastructure

last year under Mike McDaniel, but Bobby Slowick obviously knows what he's capable of doing.

And then I think it's easier to project the Packers way at wide receiver with the Packers

conglomerate that's now running the dolphins, right?

A lot of day two investments at wide receiver would expect a double dip at wide receiver.

And if the dolphins do that, then I think you will have the opportunity to evaluate your

offense and how your offense runs and evaluate your offensive coordinator and evaluate how

your quarterback executes an offense.

But if HN goes out with it, that's my biggest concern.

It's not, oh, I don't want to trade Devon HN.

I would very much like Devon HN to be here.

Jon Erick Sullivan said the same thing.

The quote from the combine was, he's a marvelous player.

We wanted to be here.

Part of this thing moving forward.

We'll have those discussions with him as well as some other guys as we move down the

road.

But that's going to be later in the summer.

I think he's phenomenal player.

I think he's a great talent.

It's kind of guy that you can revolve a large portion of your offense around.

I understand the economic debates about paying running backs and not paying running backs

and how replaceable they are.

But the ones that have and retain their value contribute to the game and more than just

what they do carrying the football, right?

And that's where HN with his versatility and what he can do is a pass catcher in the

places he can line up.

And maybe you won't get all of that with Bobby Sloak that you would get with Mike McDaniel.

But at the end of the day, you can still use his versatility to present a plethora of

problems and prevent teams from matching your personnel because he can line up in the

slide.

He can be motioned out of the backfield.

He can be split out wide as a man tell zone and run take off goes.

And if you've got a linebacker out there, you can pull up and throw throw the ball down

field, right?

So I'm not worried about HN's ability to have a value and a snap share that warrants

a contract extension.

I see that part with him.

I'm more worried about the identity of the offense versus getting an offer that's too

going to be true.

And if you're going to move on and give up completely the other identifying piece of

the offense, you better get an offer that's too good to be true.

And it is a bad running back class behind Jeremiah love.

That's one thing the dolphins.

If they're going to slow play this thing out.

And if they're going to continue to insist that Devane Chan is not available while simultaneously

also picking up the phone and listening to offers.

If that's how they're going to play this, I think it be hooves them to hold out and any

offer that you take has to be too good to deny.

Too good to be true is my opinion of where your frame of mind should be with Devane

Chan is 24 years old.

He's obviously coming off of a season or a career high as far as the workload.

He had a career high 238 carries and then he had 67 receptions on 85 targets.

He's had 85 or more targets in each of the last two seasons.

It very well for himself kind of coming back to the exposed to playability.

The way that he hits home runs.

He's had at least a 59 yard run in each of his first three seasons in the NFL.

So obviously that home running ability is very well established.

And I also think you have to consider the trends across the league where everybody's playing

too high.

Everybody wants a limit explosive plays.

If you do that.

The answer to that is running the football and that's something that I know we we took

some exception with throughout the court last year that the dolphins didn't do consistently

enough when they got too high.

So that's the Devane Chan situation the dolphins told are telling teams that are calling

he is not available for acquisition for now.

I'm inclined to believe them because when John Arick Sullivan did his first interview

with Travis Wingfield.

He named four players as as building blocks and it was Devane Chan, Aaron Brewer, Patrick

Paul and Jordan Brooks.

Those were the four that he mentioned by name when out of his way unsolicited to mention.

So I believe this report and I believe to be true and if I had to tell you right now

and if I had to guess I would guess Devane Chan's back with the dolphins and gets a contract

extension.

Jaylen Waddle will not be ready to talk a little bit more about the Jaylen Waddle fall

out.

What it means for the dolphins and their salary cap, we got some updates on what the financial

terms are for what Denver's paying spoiler.

It's all of it.

But we're going to talk about that.

There's a wrinkle there with how his contract construction a lot of messy stuff down

tag.

We're going to do that next during the show, make sure you guys take this college basketball

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So the Broncos are going to pay all of the money that is owed to jail and water this

year, which is like 17.2 million dollars.

Okay, that's good news for Miami, right?

Like if you're going to make splash moves and you're going to move on from players, the

cash cutting element is obviously huge deal, right?

So the dolphins from a cap space perspective, they lose cap space.

So here's how this works.

Wattles contract had an option bonus with a deadline that was the end of last week, beginning

of this week, some point over the weekend.

And the option bonus takes 15 million dollars of his compensation this year.

And it treats it like a signing bonus automatically, where if you use it, it kicks it out of

it into like the rest of the years remaining on the contract, right?

So the dolphins elected to use the option bonus, but they did not pay the money yet.

So what that did from an accounting perspective was it said, okay, jail and water schedule

to get 15 million dollars.

I'm going to use round numbers here, 15 million dollars in compensation as a payment that

they're going to pay in mass.

And that will be how they account it against the salary cap books is $3 million as a part

of their cap accounting for jail and water's contract in each of the next five years

against salary cap.

Even though they haven't paid it.

Once they exercise the option and acknowledge that they intend to use it and then they trade

jail and Wattle and the Broncos pick up the contract as it exists.

The dolphins can't make that one fifth charge of the option bonus go away.

They don't that that's the way option bonuses work.

It's treated like a signing bonus.

You can't get it back even though they didn't pay the cash.

So the way that the league gives it back to you is it gets credited to your salary cap

the following year.

So whatever the salary cap is, whatever the like the league wide threshold and spending

threshold is the dolphins are going to get a $3 million credit on top of whatever

the league maximum is for the salary cap to get the credit back for what they're now

stuck with for the Wattle contract that they traded.

So the Broncos are paying all the cash.

This year the dolphins amongst the $11.5 million in cap space that they lose with jail

and Wattle because he was on the books for 15 and he's going to carry $26 million at that

cap chart.

So when you do the trade and that gets finalized and that presumably gets finalized today,

you're going to lose $11 million in cap space from what they had.

So they're going to have to move some money around elsewhere to stay salary cap compliant,

which also probably means they're done in free agency until June.

Like they probably won't even sign their rookies.

So you have this awkward limbo where you're going to trade him and lose the money even

though you didn't pay him the cash, but then you get a kick back into 2027.

So that's how the cap implications are going to hit the dolphins.

They're going to carry $26 million debt cap charge for a wide receiver in jail, Wattle,

that they originally scheduled to carry on their books for $50 million this year.

And then they'll get $3 million of it back.

And then the rest of the dead cap is from payments that he received in 24 and 25 for the

first two years after he signed his contract extension in the spring of 2024.

He's following.

So what do the dolphins have at their disposal to become compliant?

The most obvious and low-hanging fruit things that they have at their disposal is they

can do a salary conversion and take base salary and put it into a bonus for Aaron Brewer

and Jordan Brooks.

Those are two guys that they've already kind of stated their intent on working on contract

extensions for.

They're in contract years, yes.

But those contracts also have void years on the back end of them that you can spread

the money out into.

And then when you sign the player to an extension, it just becomes absorbed into the cap charges

for the new years on the contract.

That's the easiest path of least resistance.

No brainer approach that the dolphins can take to move money around in those two contracts

to ensure that they can execute this deal and become salary cap compliant.

That hasn't been reported is what they're doing, but that's my expectation on what they

will do.

Because it's not like they can facilitate a bunch of savings elsewhere.

They really don't have a lot of other wiggle room in places with flexibility at this stage.

So I'm going to pull up their calculator on over the cap dot com just because it lists

out all the base salary.

So exact sealer, he's got a 1.3 million dollar salary.

He's got an option bonus structured in in the same way that Jalen waddled it.

And automatically pro rates out this compensation for accounting purposes.

Brooks has almost $8 million in base salary.

Brewer has $6.5 million in base salary.

Devon HN has 5.767, but he's in a rookie contract and he doesn't have wood years on the

back end because you don't void, you don't have wood years on rookie contracts.

So they don't really have a lot of flexibility there.

Unless they were willing to completely restructure his contract with a bunch of wood years on

the back end and you need player consent to be able to do that and that might be a little

too messy.

I don't expect anything with a chance contract to be how they free anything up.

The only other player north of $2 million in base salary, which is what you can move

around within the contracts is Tyrone dots and at 2.3.

And again, they're they're like $7 million over the cap with this waddled development.

So I would expect a brewer and Brooks to be the levers that are pulled to ensure that

they're compliant.

And then any of the signings that they do along the way, we got the David a job in the Jalen

toll work numbers.

They surprise their veteran salary benefit guys.

So they're going to cost $1.2 million each against the cap.

So you lose $400,000 in salary cap space with those two over the guys that were 50th

and 51st on the cap books for the dolphins.

So they could still do some like veteran salary benefit signings with this kind of approach,

but they're pretty tight.

And they don't have a lot of wiggle room between now and June 2nd when the Bradley Chubb

money kicks in.

And then they have to sign those rookie contracts.

And one thing that I need to figure out is because now they've got a pick at 11 and

they've got a pick at 30 and they got a pick at 43 and they got a pick at 75 is 7 total

top 100 picks, right?

I need to figure out what the cash and the cap obligations are for those players because

when it's all said and done, you have to have operating cap throughout the course of

the season.

And if you have too many high draft picks, they could eat up your cap space and you

could be in a cap crunch the other way.

So they might be in a position where they have to try to either move down the board and

pick up some future capital or find some extra flexibility that way as well.

Speaking of over the cap, which we used for the calculator, there's a couple of free

agency ads that I wanted to acknowledge is guys that I think are pretty good deals

when it's all said and done and then maybe you wish the dolphins could have had a little

action on.

We're going to talk about that next.

Make sure you guys stick with us.

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The cater co who one jumps out in a big way.

Cater ended up signing with the Kansas City chiefs excited to see what he does with that

opportunity given the fact that what they they moved on from Trent McDuffee who's had

some inside outside experience and flexibility.

And I think that could be a great opportunity for cater to really kind of re-infuse himself

into the conversation what he's physically capable of doing.

But when you find out what cater co who signs for kind of kind of makes you wonder, he's

signed for $1.8 million according to just botrack.

So a one year $1.8 million contract for cater co who is a dollar amount that I probably

would have at least shown interest in it.

I understand right like you're in a supreme cap crunch.

You're going to have $175 million in debt cap.

I get it right.

But this that whole thing for me goes back to why my strategy with with moving on from

two would have been moving some money of his base salary into a new bonus.

And then having him stick around until June 2nd and then releasing him thereafter because

you could have a little bit more flexibility and kudos to them for the cap space that they

they're going to turn around and create here right I mean right now they're going to have

north of $150 million in cap space in 2027 right while also being kind of up against

it and having they're almost going to have as much cap space next year as they have

dead cap this year and they're $175 million in debt cap this year and when it's all said

and done when Bradley Chubb and Tui talking about the roster right.

But that was my perception of if you're going to get rid of chubb and if you're going

to trade jail and wildland take that cap charge and you're going to have jail and Ramsey

and Tyree kill and Tron Armstead what's left to his retirement money when you process

that post June 1st last year and James Daniels and Jason Sanders and now he laid the whole

group.

You're going to have the whole group taking $10 million less of two is dead cap this year

versus next year really is secondary and it would have given you some ability to kind

of play in that end of the pool for if we want to offer cater co who a contract but we

can't go to 1.8 because we're going to give everybody veteran salary benefit contracts

and I get it and I think the strategy is smart right I don't want this to be misconstrued

as me second guessing the regime that's coming in and very clearly has a plan and is being

very deliberate with how they're going about getting the books in a healthier spot and

building infrastructure for the team right because those were the state of goals.

So I don't dispute that at all.

But I do look at what cater co who I think can be and say dang you know is he's out

of our budget by like half a million dollars but we could even go there because we're

playing with veteran salary benefit contracts and that that's kind of our default setting

right now for agency this year but that's a dollar amount that that you hear and say

that that would have been a very easily digestible proposition in in my mind for something

for the dolphins to do.

I think that also gets applied to some of the what the waters let me filter out the

water severs.

Some players here that didn't go for super cheap and that's pretty pretty rare for

wider severs to to not go crazy I mean there's been some years where some guys have just

got absolute crazy dollars tycoon Thornton right he was on the blueprint he went for five

and a half.

I don't think that was that was a little higher than what I had budgeted but I think that

would have been a very easily attainable dollar amount right.

Joanne Jennings is still out there hasn't signed yet but you don't have the you don't

have the bandwidth to make a play for a guy like that at least at this stage.

I wouldn't expect that you do given what your limitations are with with the cap situation.

So those are a couple names that that stand out to me at wide receiver where obviously

we have created an even bigger need for ourselves with the trade of jail a lot and again I get

it they're probably going to end up circling back to that position twice in the draft.

And then there's this kind of gaggle of the edge rushers that kind of pops off to me

for guys that didn't sign for huge money but signed for two and a half to five million

dollars on an annual average salary on a dedicated from Atlanta age 27 sign for 4.3 that's a

player would have had some interest in at that dollar amount I would have guessed he would

have been significantly more than that.

And I get you want to kind of stay young right.

So advocate he's 20 say age 27 season Don Robinson from Chicago signed for three in Houston.

I would have been a player would have had some interest in Sam Williams resigned in Dallas

for two and a half.

So you see and I would even mention Brent Cox who signed for 1.6 to go back to Green Bay

and I get you're kind of bidding against the familiarity of Green Bay.

Those are just some names that I look at that didn't get what would qualify for veteran

salary benefit contracts that I thought were pretty reasonable dollars that could have

had some upside that just frankly wasn't in the cards with what the strategy was this

year for the dolphins.

And that's not complaining it's the strategy.

I think this strategy is sound and fiscally responsible and like we said it's going

to give this draft class a lot of a lot of opportunity to play especially now that

you've got even more picks to work with.

So that's going to do it for us here today on the show Kyle Krabs appreciate you guys

as always check out the show you can keep it locked in right here on life on dolphins.

It is your team every day.

Make it a great rest of your Wednesday and I'll be back to talk to you all again tomorrow

fins up.