With the start of the league year just a few weeks away, you get some pretty wild trade rumors. The rebuilding Miami Dolphins being a seller would not be surprising, but there also seems to be some kooky talk going on.
Yes they cut Tyreek Hill, who's old, a headache and coming off major knee surgery. They're going to find a way to move on from Tua Tagovailoa, painful though his contract will make it.
But now we've got Jaylen Waddle trade rumors, with Pittsburgh's interest at the trade deadline being mentioned and so forth. That's where I draw the line at logic. Miami is still going to field a team in 2026, right?
Free agency and the NFL Draft are ahead, but Miami would presumably like to enter those periods with one functional NFL starting wide receiver. Trading away Waddle would leave them without a player who fits that profile.
Table shows all Miami wideouts to see even 5 targets in a season the last four years, other than Hill and Waddle. Table sorted by targets per year; 2025 guys are in bold. I guess the No. 1 would be Malik Washington, who last year averaged 25 total yards per game. There's just no way.
| MIAMI WRS AFTER HILL/WADDLE, 2022-2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | Tgt | No | Rec | TD |
| 2025 | Malik Washington | 65 | 46 | 317 | 5 |
| 2022 | Trent Sherfield | 51 | 30 | 417 | 2 |
| 2023 | Cedrick Wilson | 38 | 22 | 296 | 3 |
| 2024 | Malik Washington | 36 | 26 | 223 | 1 |
| 2023 | Braxton Berrios | 33 | 27 | 238 | 1 |
| 2025 | Nick Westbrook-Ikhine | 20 | 11 | 89 | 0 |
| 2024 | Odell Beckham | 18 | 9 | 55 | 0 |
| 2022 | Cedrick Wilson | 18 | 12 | 136 | 0 |
| 2022 | River Cracraft | 14 | 9 | 102 | 2 |
| 2023 | River Cracraft | 12 | 9 | 121 | 1 |
| 2025 | Theo Wease | 10 | 6 | 139 | 1 |
| 2025 | Cedrick Wilson | 9 | 5 | 44 | 0 |
| 2024 | River Cracraft | 9 | 7 | 66 | 0 |
| 2025 | D'Wayne Eskridge | 7 | 4 | 62 | 0 |
| 2023 | Robbie Chosen | 6 | 4 | 126 | 1 |
| 2025 | Tahj Washington | 5 | 3 | 37 | 0 |
Writing this of course could mean Waddle will promptly get traded; maybe embracing a season-long tank for the top pick in 2027 is the plan.
But to me this just highlights how every trade rumor at this point of the year should be taken with a hefty grain of salt. For everything with a shred of truth there's probably several others started by people just spitballing, trying to get their name out there by guessing right. I'm gonna choose to be skeptical about things that seem as irrational as this one.
Of the guys still there, let's take a look at Theo Wease in the preseason. The undrafted wideout who played his college ball at Oklahoma and Miami got a chance late last season, catching 6 passes for 139 yards in the final three games, including a 63-yard touchdown in the upset win over Tampa Bay. He has good size (6-2, 210), and as is clear from the table, Miami doesn't have much else.
But pretty likely they'll still have Waddle.
--Andy Richardson
