The Miami Dolphins would love to bring free agent wide receiver Kenny Stills back, but that looks like it might not be plausible any longer.
It's becoming abundantly clear that wide receiver Kenny Stills will command far more money than the Miami Dolphins can or should pay him heading into the free agency period. According to Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald, Stills is set to pull in a contract paying him somewhere "in the $12 million-a-year" range. There is no way Miami will ante up that kind of money, especially when they have more important players to extend like their top wide receiver Jarvis Landry.
The bottom line is guys like Juice, Reshad Jones and Kiko Alonso among others are just more crucial to the team. As I've mentioned before when speaking on the Stills situation, teams that over extend themselves financially on wide receivers rarely find success in the terms of winning championships, which is of course the ultimate goal.
To give Stills $12 million would be insane, considering that would set the market for Landry to make even more. Not to mention, you just invested multiple valuable draft picks on Leonte Carroo just last year in the 2016 NFL Draft and a first-round pick on DeVante Parker in 2015.
Currently, it looks like the Philadelphia Eagles are the favorites to land Stills, which seems like a move the Eagles would make. Miami can't fall into that same trap. The Dolphins have been a dysfunctional and unsuccessful franchise for almost two decades now. They are at a crossroads where they have a real chance to turn the corner and return to glory. The Dolphins were a premier franchise from the early 1970s through the 90s and have a shot to get back on track right now.
While Stills was a valuable asset in the Dolphins making the playoffs this season, he's far from irreplaceable. Speedy deep-threats can be replaced and rely on their surrounding parts more than most other players on the field. This is why it's so difficult for them to live up to their massive contracts when they go from one team to another. Miami knows this first hand from the whole Mike Wallace fiasco, who quite frankly was more productive than Stills when in Miami under lesser offensive minds and with a less developed Ryan Tannehill.
The Dolphins can't pay $12 million for Stills, and shouldn't even pay $9 million for his services. It's time to move forward and function like a successful franchise who knows what it's doing.
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