Dolphins 2022 Offseason: The Biggest Storyline at Each Position on Defense

The Miami Dolphins will go into the 2022 league year with a new head coach and some important decisions to make

The Miami Dolphins have their new head coach following the hiring of Mike McDaniel, so now the focus turns solely to trying to improve the roster to make the 2022 season as successful as possible.

That will mean first analyzing the players on the current roster, evaluating the free agents who'll become available on the market once the league year starts March 16, and of course evaluating and later drafting college prospects in the hope they can make an impact (ideally sooner rather than later).

Having said that, we examine the biggest storyline at each position heading into the 2022 NFL scouting combine. After looking at the offense in a previous installment, we now take a look at the defense.

Defensive Line: What's Going to Happen with Emmanuel Ogbah?

By keeping defensive coordinator Josh Boyer on McDaniel's first coaching staff, the Dolphins clearly have made a statement that they like where the defense was in 2021. But a big reason for whatever success they enjoyed was the performance of Emmanuel Ogbah, and now the Dolphins are going to have to decide how much it's worth to them to make sure he's back in 2022. The Dolphins are scheduled to have 26 free agents (UFA or RFA) at the start of the new league year, and it says here there's nobody as significant in that group as Ogbah — and, with all due respect to Mike Gesicki — there might not be a close second. Ogbah has been by far the Dolphins' best pass rusher over the past two seasons and his uncanny ability to bat passes at the line of scrimmage has only increased his value. In a best-case scenario, the Dolphins sign Ogbah to a new long-term contract, but he's in line for a substantial raise after earning $7.5 million in each of his two seasons with Miami. The Dolphins always could use the franchise tag on Ogbah to make sure they keep him, but that would come with a price tag around $20 million, per overthecap.com. The bottom line here, though, is that losing Ogbah would create a massive need for a pass rusher and the team already knows what it has, so why not just find a way to make it work with him?

Linebacker: Free Agent Decisions Abound

The Dolphins currently have 10 linebackers on their roster, but exactly half of them are scheduled to become free agents March 16 — Duke Riley, Brennan Scarlett, Elandon Roberts and Vince Biegel as UFAs and Sam Eguavoen as an RFA — though it could be argued the three most significant players at the position are Jerome Baker, Andrew Van Ginkel and Jaelan Phillips. So maybe another way to present the issue is to wonder whether the Dolphins should feel comfortable enough with this nucleus to re-sign some of their free agents and move forward with that group or they should think big to land a potential difference-maker. One strong argument toward the latter is the fact the Dolphins haven't had a linebacker selected to the Pro Bowl since the 2010 season when Cameron Wake was lining up as an outside backer in the team's 3-4 scheme at the time.

Secondary: Revisiting the X Factor

For the second consecutive year, Xavien Howard was the Dolphins' lone Pro Bowl selection and he also should have repeated as team MVP instead of Jaylen Waddle (who did have a great rookie year). But now we're pretty much back to where we were last summer with Howard and his contract because the solution to resolve a problem that led to him requesting a trade on Instagram was a temporary one. And remember that in addition to moving money around there was an agreement to revisit the deal in the offseason. Well, it's the offseason, and that means there will be (if they haven't already taken place) conversations about Howard's contract, which has three years remaining. Trading Howard beyond June 1 would save the Dolphins almost $14 million in cap space and produce only $2.5 million in dead money, per overthecap.com, so the Dolphins ultimately might decide they no longer want to carry two high-priced cornerbacks and move on from Howard, who likely would bring in more in a trade than Byron Jones. But the Dolphins should think long and hard before going that route because Howard is the best player on the team and he might not be so easy to replace on a team that puts a lot of pressure on its cornerbacks.