Dolphins Trade Deadline Status: Why Brooks' Name Keeps Coming Up

Tuesday was election day in the United States (in case you hadn't remembered despite the 7,341 daily political ads on television), but it also put the countdown the NFL trade deadline at exactly one week.

And the Miami Dolphins still are having some of their players being mentioned nationally as potentially being on the move.

And the names being mentioned are front-line players like Jordyn Brooks and Zach Sieler, team captains both.

They're both mentioned in The Athletic's updated list of the top 50 trade candidates, Brooks at number 20 and Sieler at number 35, and SI national writer Albert Breer suggested the idea of the Detroit Lions calling the Dolphins about Brooks in the aftermath of the scary neck injury that landed linebacker Jack Campbell in the hospital over the weekend with still no specific update on his condition.

For the Dolphins, the decision will remain the same when it comes to their big-name players, like Sieler and Brooks, and it's whether whatever draft pick compensation they can get will be more valuable than having them on the roster beyond 2027 when hopefully they take another big step forward in their rebuilding process.

GM Jon-Eric Sullivan once said he owed it to himself to pick up the phone whenever a counterpart around the league called about one of his players because basically every player has a price.

But that price should be pretty steep for cornerstone players like Brooks and Sieler.

There will be a dead cap hit for the Dolphins if they move either player, though they currently are looking at more than $100 million in cap space for 2027 after they cleared their books this past offseason.

But there's also the symbolic issue with Brooks when it comes to the idea of trading a player who just signed a contract extension because he was considered a "pillar" for the rebuilding project. It's the same principle that would apply to center Aaron Brewer and running back De'Von Achane, though Brewer's name hasn't come up once in trade speculation and Achane obviously won't be on the market after sustaining a torn ACL in the home opener against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 3.

From this vantage point, the most likely move would involve right tackle Austin Jackson because he's in the last year of his contract and might be looking for more money in 2027 than the Dolphins are willing to commit and he might be looking for a change of scenery as well after being asked to take a pay cut this year.

But, again, the Dolphins won't just simply give him away, even though it's fair to wonder exactly what he could fetch.

THE 2019 COMPARISON

Because everything this year winds up being compared to the 2019 season and the big rebuilding project from that year, this is where we point out that the Dolphins traded away only one veteran at the deadline that year.

That player was running back Kenyan Drake, who the Dolphins already had decided did not fit into their long-term plans. So the Dolphins shipped him to the Arizona Cardinals for a fifth-round pick that the Dolphins then traded to San Francisco for another running back, Matt Breida.

The Dolphins also made a trade with the Los Angeles Rams in 2019, though that one was a bit weird and involved salary cap clearing by L.A. That was the deal where the Dolphins acquired cornerback Aqib Talib and a fifth-round pick for a seventh-round selection, and Talib never left injured reserve after the trade and Miami got rewarded basically for taking on his cap space.

Don't be surprised if the Dolphins' trade deadline activity this year looks a bit like 2019 — minus a weird trade like the Talib deal.

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