2017 IDP Projection Marking: Miami Dolphins

Tom Kislingbury Posted On January 28, 2018

Hi everyone and welcome to the fantasy off-season. It was a wild ride in 2017 and I’m still recovering, but there’s no real off-season in the dynasty world. In the summer I made projections for every IDP in the league I thought would be relevant. You can go back and read all of the 2017 IDP Projections here.

I was right in some places. I was wrong in some places. But either way, it’s important to be accountable and honest so I can figure out why and make adjustments in the future. I’ll be going through every team and noting where I was right and where I was wrong. To do that I’ll show what my projections were, how players actually performed, and how big the discrepancies were.

This was a disappointing season for the Dolphins. I know Adam Gase is supposed to some kind of genius, but honestly, I haven’t seen much of it in two seasons in Miami. At times, the offense was amongst the worst in the league in 2017. Losing the quarterback for the season is always a disaster, but I’m not sure the gap between Ryan Tannehill and Jay Cutler was actually that huge. We saw a ton of reports about the players not executing the perfect game plan (I wonder where those were leaked from?) but at some stage, the head coach has to make things better or take responsibility.

I’d love to see the Dolphins improve and be a contending team. A young, hungry team in the AFC East trying to knock the Patriots off their perch would be great. But this team needs to improve a lot to get to that stage.

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mia team

Defensive Tackle

The unit lives and dies by one man – Ndamukong Suh. He earned $20m for playing this season and the Dolphins like to extract every penny by leaving him out on the field for just about every snap. He finished just one solo and four assists away from the prediction although he did manage three fewer sacks than expected.

Davon Godchaux was the breakout player behind Suh. He had a couple of high-impact games and compiled an excellent 26 solos – eight above what I expected. Often with linemen (especially rookies), this indicates teams targeting him as a matchup more than sustained excellence and I’d say this was the case here. Unless you play in a start-two DT-premium league I don’t see him as worth owning. However, he clearly emerged as a better option than Jordan Phillips who has severely underperformed as a Dolphin. Sadly the predictions on him were accurate and he was pretty poor.

Defensive End

There was an error in playing time here. I expected two “starters” to dominate playing time (Cameron Wake and Charles Harris) with relief from the others. In the end, it was a very flat distribution.

Wake was a really good player without even considering his age. His 11 sacks were scarcely credible as I thought the prediction of eight was bold. He was better as a pass rusher though and underdelivered by eight solos and ten assists.

Charles Harris had exactly the sort of rookie season I was worried about. He was fairly promising as a pass rusher but pretty poor in the run game. Yannick Ngakoue is a really good comparison here I think. Regardless of real ability, my numbers were too high across the board for him.

Linebacker

I’m having flashbacks to the off-season here. All the Dolphins fans were convinced that Lawrence Timmons couldn’t really be the team’s plan at middle linebacker. Admittedly, Raekwon McMillan was hurt, but Timmons was also given a two year guaranteed contract. I thought it was clear he was always going to play. He did.

798 snaps was pretty considerable for an older player and he didn’t hold up brilliantly. 58 solos from that volume is a fairly poor return (although very close to the projected 62). His assists were also low with 26 against a prediction of 33. He also managed no sacks, no interceptions, and just three PDs.

Only ten inside linebackers played more than Kiko Alonso and he had a fine season. His 78 solo tackles were very impressive and only one out against my number. He underdelivered in assists but I can live with that. What’s more surprising is that he only managed to make one coverage play (a solitary PD). I expected eight including a pick and given his strengths as a player I’m still surprised he didn’t manage more.

Cornerback

This was a pretty good unit as a whole. The only issue was that I did not see Byron Maxwell being cut or factor rookie Cordrea Tankersley in for significant playing time. Those two together shook the depth chart up a lot. Still, the predictions were pretty close on Maxwell and Bobby McCain.

Safety

Hands up. Reshad Jones was one of my biggest misses of the season. I thought he’d be adapted into a more flexible player with more split safety looks. His age and injury history would simply feed into the need for him to be exposed less as a battering ram. I was wrong. Way wrong. He put up 94 solo tackles where no other safety had more than 81. Only three LBs managed more than he did. Jones was a true difference-maker as an IDP and I failed to see it coming.

Behind him, T.J. Mcdonald emerged (after his suspension) as the other favored option. Nate Allen was on IR by that point, but I suspect it would have happened anyway. Again, I underestimated McDonald’s production significantly.

In summary

I was happy with my performance across the whole team here aside from Reshad Jones. The linebacker situation, in particular, was a bit murky and I was very accurate in terms of solos.

I’m sure some significant changes will be coming ahead of 2018. Cam Wake and Lawrence Timmons aren’t getting any younger and I expect improvement from Charles Harris and solid production from Raekwon McMillan. Again I’d love to see a competitive Dolphins team but I worry about the possibility of building one with that absurd Suh contract (he counts $26.1m against the cap in 2018) hanging over the team.

Thanks for reading.

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Tom Kislingbury

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Being from England Tom only discovered American Football in the late 90s. From there he's gone from casual defender to devoted obsessive and likes to delve into deep data primarily about defensive players. He spends his days trying to pretend the spreadsheets and graphs he makes about football are actually work for his day job. No-one is fooled.

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