The Miami Dolphins exited the 2019 season with a promising young cornerback who served as a source of optimism for the coaching staff and the defense alike. His name? Nik Needham, the 2019 undrafted rookie who improved by leaps and bounds from the start of training camp to the end of the season. Needham’s transformation was impressive, showcasing the Dolphins’ coaching staff’s ability to coax better play out of those who buy into their teaching style and system. But much of the credit here belongs to Needham, who went uninvited to the 2019 NFL Combine out of Texas-El Paso and was forced to endure going undrafted after an alarming 40-time at his pro day (4.67 seconds) seemed to turn teams off to his potential.
But Needham’s commitment resulted in steady improvement and seemed to indicate he’d be holding down a spot in Miami’s secondary next season. And then the offseason came.
First, it was the Dolphins signing Byron Jones to a record-setting contract in free agency. That move pushed Needham from a potential outside starter opposite Xavien Howard and into the nickel, where he could compete with Bobby McCain if the team was resided to moving McCain back to cornerback. They weren’t; which was good news for Needham — at least that is until the team promptly drafted another cornerback, Noah Igbinoghene, in the 1st-round of this year’s NFL Draft. Igbinoghene will presumably compete to earn the starting nickel job, leaving Needham as a primary depth option for the Dolphins if all goes according to plan.
Did the Dolphins hastily spend and were they wrong to ignore Needham?
Not necessarily. It would be foolish for any NFL team to put all their eggs in one basket at such an important position, especially when the sample size for Needham is only one season’s worth of games on a bad roster. A good general rule of thumb is good prospects shouldn’t prevent you from taking on great talent. Needham is the former — a promising young talent who, despite athletic limitations in the way of long speed, had a good rookie season in 2019. But he’s not great and he in no way should have served as a barrier to adding Byron Jones. And if the Dolphins feel Noah Igbinoghene can also be great (and he was reportedly the team’s top player available at pick No. 30), then they were right to draft him, too.
For Needham, that should serve as his motivation and inspiration to improve as much in Year 2 as he did in Year 1. The good news for Miami is this: there’s no such thing as having too many good cornerbacks.
