Omar Kelly: Lose to Chargers and Dolphins should trade players for picks

Omar Kelly, Miami Herald on Oct 9, 2025

Published in Football

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MIAMI — We’re approaching the point of no return.

The Miami Dolphins can either push all their chips in the center of the table this month, or we begin the process of tearing this poorly built roster down and sell it off piece by piece.

Either beat the injury-depleted Los Angeles Chargers (3-2), who are starting backups at both tackle spots and a third-string tailback (Hassan Haskins) after making a cross-continent trip to play the Dolphins at Hard Rock Stadium at 1 p.m. ET, or begin the NFL auction of talent.

Keep losing and everything of value must go by the Nov. 4 trade deadline.

That gives Miami three weeks, and four games — Chargers, at Cleveland, at Atlanta and home against a watered-down Baltimore Ravens team — to turn this season around.

There have been three teams in NFL history who have begun the season 1-5 and rebounded to qualify for the playoffs in the modern era of the Super Bowl.

The Kansas City Chiefs did it in 2015, starting 1-5 and finishing 11-5. The Indianapolis Colts did it in 2018, finishing 10-6. And the Washington Commanders did it in 2020, finishing 7-9, but winning the NFC East.

There has been one team, the Cincinnati Bengals, who began the 1970 1-6 and managed to make the playoffs at 8-6 after winning its division.

A similar turnaround for the Dolphins isn’t impossible. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Miami very well could win three of the next four games, improving the record to 4-5. The season still has a pulse at that point, and maybe the returns of James Daniels, Austin Jackson, Liam Eichenberg and Andrew Meyer help Miami’s struggling offensive line improve.

McDaniel’s team started 2-6 last season and finished 6-3. So let’s not say a turnaround is impossible.

But based on how Miami’s playing defense this season, and the realization that things have changed on offense without Tyreek Hill, its safe to conclude the odds aren’t in this team’s favor.

So if things go south it’s time to host a player sale, turning the team’s top players into early draft picks.

Teams in need of pass-rushing help can pick from Jaelan Phillips, who is playing in his fifth-year option and set to become a free agent next offseason, Bradley Chubb, who has 14 tackles and four sacks in what will likely be his final season in Miami since he’s due $19.2 million (nonguaranteed) in 2026, and 2024 first-round pick Chop Robinson, whom we’ve discovered is a limited pass rush-only player.

Needed a 1,000-yard receiver? Jaylen Waddle could probably be had for a second-round pick since his $19.2 million a year price tag drives his value down.

De’Von Achane, who has accounted for 435 all-purpose yards and scored four touchdowns, is going to be pushing for a lucrative contract extension at season’s end.

Maybe the Dolphins should get something for Achane now while his value will never be higher.

Let’s be honest and acknowledge that Minkah Fitzpatrick has been acting like a hostage. The former Pro Bowl safety ran from this franchise’s troublesome culture in 2019, only to return five seasons later. And wouldn’t you know very little has changed.

Jordyn Brooks, the team’s leading tackler, and Aaron Brewer each has one more year on a current deal, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility to think a linebacker- or center-thirsty team could have interest in acquiring either.

General manager Chris Grier had previously said nobody is exempt from being on the trade market. His tune changed when teams called about acquiring Waddle a couple years back, but these are different times.

Losing to the Chargers, dropping the record to 1-5, would cement these Dolphins as a bottom-weller in 2025.

It would provide more evidence — as if we needed more — that this franchise rebuild, which began in 2019 with trading top players such as Laremy Tunsil, Kiko Alonso and Kenny Stills, has failed.

Keep losing and it’s only a matter of time before everyone switches to survival mode.

The franchise should enter it too, and if there’s one thing we know Grier is good at it’s making trades.

So lose on Sunday and it’s time to for him to get to work breaking this team apart for draft picks, or building blocks who have more upside than what this roster presently possesses.

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