The Dolphins cleared four spots on their 90-man roster Thursday.
They announced that they have released long snapper Blake Ferguson and waived three others. Cornerback Ryan Cooper Jr., defensive tackle Neil Farrell, and offensive lineman Chasen Hines are also out in Miami.
Ferguson played in 72 regular-season games and two playoff contests for the Dolphins over the last five seasons. He had eight special teams tackles a fumble recovery in that action.
Farrell has played in 19 games for the Raiders, Chiefs, and Dolphins. He had two tackles in seven games for Miami last season.
Neither Cooper nor Hines appeared in a game for the Dolphins.
Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill made his second visit to the operating room of the offseason.
Hill had wrist surgery in February to repair an injury that he played through during the 2024 season and he posted pictures, via David Furones of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, from a surgical bed to social media on Tuesday. Hill captioned one of the Snapchat photos “surgery #2" and another showed him with his wrist bandaged along with the caption “mission successful.”
Marcel-Louis Jacques of ESPN.com reports that Hill had screws removed from his wrist in a procedure that was part of his initial treatment plan.
Word at the time of the initial surgery was that Hill would be ready to go for training camp and there’s no sign that anything has changed on that front.
When receiver Tyreek Hill arrived in Miami three years ago, he made some over the top claims about quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. Hill claimed, for instance, that Tua is the most accurate quarterback in all of football.
Recently, Hill was asked to list his top five quarterbacks in the NFL. Tua didn’t get a mention.
The top four are easy, for anyone — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow. The fifth is open for debate. Hill went with Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield over Tua.
Does it mean anything? Well, how can it not? He has gone from being fully committed to hyping his quarterback to not making the obvious and predictable claim that the guy who throws him the football is among the best throwers of footballs.
It comes at a time when an uneasy vibe lingers between Hill and the Dolphins. After the 2024 regular-season finale, Hill said he wanted to leave Miami. On the Friday of Super Bowl week, he launched an impromptu toothpaste-back-in-the-tube tour on radio row.
Trade talks haven’t happened, as far as anyone knows. There was chatter that, when Cowboys owner Jerry Jones boasted about two “substantive trades,” Tyreek was one of the targets. (They acquired George Pickens instead.)
The window opens on June 2, if there’s a trade to be done. That would shift the bulk of the cap charge into 2026. And it would send his $25.85 million in fully-guaranteed pay to a new team.
It’s worth paying attention to the situation. Miami’s interest in trading cornerback Jalen Ramsey emerged out of nowhere last month. It could happen with Hill, too.
Of course, someone would have to want to trade for him. G.M. Chris Grier has said he wouldn’t hang up the phone if someone offered two first-round draft picks. The question is whether the Dolphins would bite on something less than that.
Quinn Ewers was the 13th and final quarterback taken in the 2025 draft, at pick No. 231 in the seventh round. Some teams had him rated higher than that, but they didn’t take him.
Agent Ron Slavin told Todd Archer of ESPN.com that, the day after the draft, Slavin reached out to “half the league” to figure out why Ewers slid so far.
“They thought he was a third- or fourth-round pick, but too big of a name to be a clipboard holder,” Slavin told Archer. “Which I think is chickenshit.”
It’s one of the unintended consequences of the NIL eras. Some players get enough endorsements, and attention, to make it awkward to make him a backup quarterback.
Basically, if a big-name college quarterback doesn’t get drafted high enough to be a starter, it becomes difficult to draft him to be a developmental quarterback.
As explained after Ewers slid, he won’t be trying to return to college football for another year — even though he left millions on the table by coming to the draft. He’ll now get a slotted contract payable to one of the last players selected.
In Miami, he’ll be behind Tua Tagovailoa and backup Zach Wilson. It won’t be easy to leapfrog Wilson. It will be impossible, at least until 2027, to jump Tua. His contract carries two more years of fully-guaranteed compensation.
Before the draft, Rams coach Sean McVay said he’d never eliminate the possibility of bringing back cornerback Jalen Ramsey. Now that the draft has come and gone, McVay says that a trade for Ramsey remains possible.
Appearing with Adam Schein of SiriusXM Mad Dog Radio, McVay initially said there’s no update on the possibility of a Ramsey reunion. It then became very clear that McVay would welcome it.
“He is a total stud,” McVay said, “and you look at — obviously he has continued to play at a really high level. He and I have kept in great touch even since we ended up trading him to Miami. Special competitor, great person, great father.
“And so there are a lot of layers when you’re talking about a player of his caliber, alright, with regards to the contract, the compensation that they would be looking for in exchange for receiving a player of his magnitude. And so those conversations are ongoing as I’m sure they are with multiple teams. And we’ll see, but we’re never gonna shy away from opportunities to increase the competitiveness of our roster or add great players as long as it fits within the framework of everything that an acquisition like that would entail.”
At this point, the Dolphins should wait to trade Ramsey until after June 1, when a $25.213 million cap charge would drop by $18.468 million.
It still won’t be easy. How much of Ramsey’s $20.513 million in 2025 will be paid by the Dolphins?
Given that the relationship seems to be irrevocably broken between the Dolphins and Ramsey, the Dolphins won’t have the leverage they need unless multiple teams are competing for Ramsey. As McVay explains the situation, maybe there will be.
