Breaking Down the One Unexpected Miami Dolphins Free Agent Move
Dealing with exclusive-rights free agents is a pretty simple process because all it takes is a qualifying tender for a team to keep the player.
The Miami Dolphins did that with two of those players Wednesday, but declined to do the same with wide receiver Grant DuBose, which unfortunately very well could be related to his late-season concussion.
The Dolphins thought enough of him to claim him off waivers from the Green Bay Packers right after the cuts to the 53-player limit, but he was limited to three games because of two significant injuries.
The first was a shoulder issue in the Week 2 Thursday night loss against the Buffalo Bills, and the second was the concussion he sustained against the Houston Texans as the result of a nasty open-field hit when he was the target of a Tua Tagovailoa pass.
DuBose was placed on injured reserve for a second time after the Houston injury, which landed him in the hospital before he was able to fly back to South Florida.
After the season, DuBose was quoted in a South Florida Sun-Sentinel story as saying he was “induced into a coma” after the injury and said he still was dealing with the effects of the injury some three weeks after the fact.
This is where it’s logical to think the concussion is a possible reason for the Dolphins not to extend the qualifying tender.
The tender is for a hair over $1 million, which really isn’t a significant amount, and it doesn’t guarantee DuBose’s contract for 2025.
So the Dolphins essentially could have brought him back for another look in the spring and summer before having to commit what, again, is a very low cap number.
And let’s remember that DuBose has the kind of size (6-2) that’s massively lacking in the Dolphins wide receiver corps at the time. The only wide receiver under contract for 2025 with any NFL game experience who’s over 6 feet is Erik Ezukanma.
In his three games, DuBose wound up playing 50 offensive snaps, though he wasn’t used on special teams despite that supposedly being an area where he could excel.
The bottom line here is it’s hard to believe the Dolphins saw enough in 2024 to decide that DuBose wasn’t even worth bringing back for another look, and this is where we go back to the idea of the move being related to the late-season concussion.
Of course, the possibility certainly exists the Dolphins will re-sign him eventually, but this still normally would have been a no-brainer from the start.
