The Miami Dolphins' latest transactions Tuesday merely continued to reflect GM Jon-Eric Sullivan's vow to keep churning the roster while the team goes through a transitional year.
The latest moves involved signing edge Rodney McGraw from the practice squad to the active roster, signing kicker Zane Gonzalez to the practice squad, releasing kicker Riley Patterson, and waiving edge Andre Jones Jr. and cornerback Storm Duck.
The kicker switch obviously was noteworthy because it involved two veterans, but Duck is the player who had been with the team the longest and maybe that produced some surprise that he would be let go instead of being activated off PUP.
Duck's three-week window after he returned to practice was expiring this week, so the Dolphins had to make a decision, and the conclusion was that he didn't merit a spot on the 53-man roster.
The moves left the Dolphins with 52 players on the active roster, though one would suspect that Gonzalez eventually will be signed there because it's not like they'll want to be rotating kickers every three games the way they did with long-snappers in 2024.
The Dolphins also have three players eligible to come off IR this week, rookie safety Kyle Louis and linebackers Trey Moore and Ronnie Harrison Jr., though there's been no indication any one of the three has a good chance of playing against the New York Jets in Week 7.
The transactions continued a pretty clear pattern for the Dolphins in this unique 2026 season that's about player development and evaluation above wins and losses.
And that pattern isn't likely to change and should be used to anticipate future moves and what they'll look like.
The most obvious is that newcomers will come in on low contracts and with no financial commitments, and that certainly applies with McGraw.
There's also nothing given to those who were around before Sullivan and head coach Jeff Hafley arrived from Green Bay, which became obvious with the Duck move. After arriving as a rookie free agent in 2024, Duck showed promise and progress to the point where he started the team's 2025 opener at Indianapolis, but it's been downhill from there, with first a high ankle sprain that cost him seven games, followed by a bad knee injury upon his return that cost him the second half of last season.
But the Dolphins clearly didn't see enough from him during those three weeks of practice to keep him on the 53, though perhaps he'll resurface on the practice squad at some point.
Another lesson from Tuesday is to, as we've mentioned here many times, keep expectations realistic whenever the Dolphins either get a player off waivers or off another team's practice squad.
Yes, Zach Sieler has been a resounding success story, but that was an outlier like Brock Purdy playing MVP-level quarterback as a former seventh-round pick also is an outlier.
The reality is getting a player that another team didn't want usually doesn't work out great because teams aren't in the business of dumping good players for no reason.
This is what happened with Jones, who the Dolphins had signed off the Buffalo Bills practice squad.
In their previous set of roster moves last Tuesday, the Dolphins picked up wide receiver Jared Wayne off waivers to replace another player they got the same way, Ryan Miller. The hope is that Wayne will pan out better than Miller, but again keep the expectations modest.
The idea here for Sullivan and Hafley is to take a look at enough young players or reclamation projects that the law of averages can strike and deliver the Dolphins a player good enough to factor into the plans for 2027.
But -and that leads us to maybe the important lesson of all -the foundation of the Dolphins this season and beyond come from recent drafts and that's where the focus should be.
When we talk about evaluation and progress, we're referring mostly to players like the 2026 draft class, the 2025 draft class, the 2024 draft class. Yes, veterans like Aaron Brewer, Jordyn Brooks and De'Von Achane and maybe Zach Sieler figure to be key players for the Dolphins in 2027, but the core players next year and beyond better include a good number of those recent draft picks, whether it be Kadyn Proctor, Jacob Rodriguez, Chris Johnson, Caleb Douglas, Chris Bell, Trey Moore, Kyle Louis, Chop Robinson, Kenneth Grant, Jonah Savaiinaea, etc.
The back end of the roster wasn't great at the start of the season and it's not likely to get much better before the end of the season, though it's not like the Dolphins are going to stop looking for those hidden gems.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/dolphins/onsi as The Important Lessons From the Storm Duck Release and the Dolphins' Latest Roster Moves .
