Miami Dolphins Safety Jordan Poyer at a Crossroads
Jordan Poyer just finished a rather forgettable first season with the Miami Dolphins, and it’s fair to wonder whether he’ll be joining longtime safety partner Micah Hyde in retirement this offseason.
Hyde made official Tuesday what already had been revealed, that he’s retiring after 12 seasons in the NFL.
Poyer and Hyde weren’t just teammates with the Buffalo Bills for seven seasons, they entered the NFL in the same year (2013) and moved from another team to Buffalo also the same year (2017).
Hyde retired after spending the end of the 2024 season on the Bills’ practice squad, but never getting the call to play in a game, regular season or playoffs.
The two safeties were part of the Buffalo cap purge of last offseason, but Poyer was able to find another team when the Dolphins signed him to a one-year contract last March.
Poyer started 16 games for the Dolphins and his coaches praised him for the intangibles he brought to the secondary, such as leadership and getting players lined up in the right spots, but his performance also was spotted.
Pro Football Focus ranked him 97th among NFL safeties, and his opponent passer rating when targeted was an unsightly 111.2, per Pro Football Reference.
He didn’t record an interception for a second consecutive season after having nine in 2021 and 2022 combined, and his season unfortunately will be remembered most for the costly unnecessary roughness penalty that kept alive the Bills’ game-winning drive in the Week 9 at Highmark Stadium.
Poyer has given no indication he’s heading toward retirement, but his declining performance the last couple of seasons likely will limit his market, if not completely erase it. Even if he decides he wants to continue playing, it’s questionable whether the Dolphins would want to bring him back because they likely would prefer going younger.
The one caveat might be the Dolphins not wanting to break in two new starting safeties with Jevon Holland expected to command big money on the free agent market and the team probably not likely to spend big money on him.
Truth is, there would be something poetic about Poyer retiring in the same offseason as Hude if that’s how it winds up playing out.
Poyer isn’t the only member of the 2024 Dolphins roster for whom retirement has to be considered a possibility.
The three who jump out here are Calais Campbell, Terron Armstead and Kendall Lamm.
Campbell’s performance in 2024 might give him incentive to keep playing, though he said on the NFL FIlms mini-doc on his season that halfway through it he felt it would be his last season.
Armstead said last June he had considered retirement the past few offseasons, so there’s no reason to think that things will be different this year. His contract situation, with a current cap number of $22 million for 2025, also complicates things.
As for Lamm, he said after re-signing with the Dolphins last offseason that 2024 would be his last season, but then pulled back that stance and said after undergoing season-ending back surgery he would take some time before making a final decision.
