Miami Dolphins GM Knows How Difficult QB Situation Is
The Miami Dolphins are not in a good spot at quarterback. They have a lame-duck expensive player there, a seventh-round backup, and the incorrect draft capital to find a solution in the first round. Tua Tagovailoa isn't the answer. Neither is Quinn Ewers.
Moving on from Tagovailoa is one thing, and it'll be really hard and probably costly. What can the Dolphins do now to fix things for the future? According to the GM, whatever they do will take a lot of hard work this offseason.
Miami Dolphins GM opens up on QB issues
The Miami Dolphins benched Tua Tagovailoa for a seventh-round draft pick, essentially bringing his Dolphins tenure to a close. He's highly likely to be traded or released, even if it means taking on a historic amount of dead cap.
GM Jon-Eric Sullivan knows it's going to take a lot of work to get things fixed. "We need to get the quarterback situation in place, but we're not going to do it in an irresponsible manner where we sacrifice building the infrastructure of this football team," he said via ESPN.
When they fix the situation, Sullivan believes the next quarterback can be successful. "We've all seen teams that go about it maybe in a questionable manner and you get a really good quarterback, but he can't stay healthy because he's getting killed or he doesn't have anybody to throw to," he said.
Sullivan remains confident
Despite the challenges, Miami Dolphins GM Jon-Eric Sullivan is confident in his ability to find the right quarterback to succeed Tua Tagovailoa and lead the Dolphins into the next era. He qualified that "our guy" could mean Tagovailoa or Quinn Ewers, but it's extremely unlikely that it ends up being one of those two.
Sullivan worked with the Green Bay Packers. They are notorious for getting quarterbacks early and never having a period of questions. Instead, they just transition from one to the next without a whole lot of fuss.
"I've learned if you can help it, don't wait until you don't have a quarterback to find one," he added. "If you think about what we did with Aaron [Rodgers] ... You've got to remember, Brett [Favre] was still in place and playing at a very high level, and there were a lot of people in that building that didn't think drafting a quarterback who was going to sit for an extended amount of time as a first-round pick made a lot of sense was where we were as a team ... the history speaks for itself."
The GM added that QB is the "most important position in sports," but absolutely the most important in football if nothing else. "We're going to invest in that position every year if we can," Sullivan added. "Now, depending on where we are as a football team, it'll be at different values. But we will draft quarterbacks every year, if not every other year, because I think you have to. If you hit on a guy, great, and if not, if you hit on two, you have trade value."
Aggressive strategy
This strategy might seem a bit aggressive, but Sullivan has experience working with an organization that's had three superstar QBs in a row since the 1990s. It's hard to find a person better suited to find a new quarterback than him.
"I can't say enough about the importance of it, and we'll be very active in acquiring quarterbacks to make sure that that room is as deep as we can make it," he concluded. Now, the Dolphins have a few options. There are some interesting free agents, including, ironically, Aaron Rodgers.
They may also find a swap for Kyler Murray. The most likely path is via the draft. However, the Dolphins may pick too low to grab Ty Simpson or one of the other first-round QBs not named Fernando Mendoza.
