The Miami Dolphins introduced nearly a dozen rookies to their roster just two weeks ago, an infusion of talent that the team hopes will serve as a springboard to more success in 2020 and beyond. What do we know thus far? The Dolphins prioritized the secondary and the trenches in this year’s draft — an indication that what Brian Flores got out of his team in 2019 was no where near his expectations on those fronts.
And now, we also know that former Georgia offensive guard Solomon Kindley is the first to officially make the leap and become a Miami Dolphin. It was announced that he signed his rookie contract last night.
Kindley’s deal is for four years and worth $4.1M, which is standard for the NFL’s rookie wage scale. Having a wage scale in place makes contract negotiations much more straight forward these days and serves as a catalyst to get rookies signed quicker — thus allowing them to transition into professional life much more smoothly than the days of old, when contract negotiations would sometimes drag into training camp.
There are still instances of these rookie holdouts on account of fine print, but that definitely won’t be the case for Kindley and the Dolphins should expect most of their other rookie negotiations to be fairly straight forward as well. The one deal that may get interesting is that of No. 5 overall selection Tua Tagovailoa — the prized pick of Miami’s draft class plays the most important position in football and has powerful agent Leigh Steinberg in his corner.
There is still plenty of time to agree to terms, however. More than anything Miami should be excited to see one of their rookies put pen to paper and formalize his status as a member of the team.
One down, ten to go!
