Miami Dolphins Front Office Shakeup Continues As Team Splits With Two Major Figures After Bills Win

Miami Dolphins Front Office Shakeup Continues As Team Splits With Two Major Figures After Bills Win

Turns out the Miami Dolphins were not done with inseason front office changes when they moved on from Chris Greer. You are Locked on Dolphins, your daily Miami Dolphins podcast, part of the Locked On Network. Your team every day. All right, Miami. Welcome to another episode of Locked On Dolphins. is your team every day here on the Locked On Network. I’m your host Kyle Krabs, a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan, host of Locked On Dolphins, co-host of Locked on NFL scouting, author of Touchdown Miami on Substack, NFL staff, writer for a toz sports. I want to give you all a special thank you for making the Locked On Network the number one sports podcast network. Appreciate all of you who are everyday and tune in with us because it is your team every day. We don’t just say it, we live it. on the Locked Onet. Today on the show, some significant departures for the Dolphins. We’re going to explore them. We’re going to talk about transition of power. We’re going to talk about a lineup change I really want to see this week against Washington as well. Today’s episode of Locked on Dolphins is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you have $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. So, let’s start with the news that came out last night. Uh, and it came out courtesy of Tom Palisero around five o’clock in the afternoon. Uh, Dolphins have parted ways with co-directors of player personnel, Adam Eng sources. So, team mutually agrees on Halloween to part ways with Chris Greer, the longtime nine-year general manager of the Miami Dolphins. 25 years in the organization, right? 25 plus years in the organization. Cham Kelly goes to interm. The move of engra and hunt away. It’s really difficult to say with any level of confidence just how big of a deal it is on the day-to-day operations of the Dolphins or from a player scouting process perspective. But these were two of the higherups underneath the general manager title. Now, of course, the Dolphins had an assistant GM in Marvin Allen. They had player personnel uh or they had senior personnel, executives like Champ Kelly, uh on the the hierarchy that was listed, but it was Chris Greer at the top, gone. You had an assistant GM, somebody that came from the outside in being Champ Kelly. Jam Kelly’s been elevated to the interim GM position and now your co-directors of player personnel which are kind of like the lieutenants uh for pro scouting, college scouting, free agency, all of that stuff. Um these guys have a hand in that and they’re kind of the as the directors they they they coordinate a lot of the process as it works from the top down. So, I can’t sit here and tell you because I’m not in the building. I don’t know what their scouting processes is like. But uniquely, as somebody who does locked on NFL scouting and somebody who’s been a part of the draft realm and as somebody who when I started down this path in 2012, by and large, my goal was to work into a front office structure. So, what I could tell you is is these titles are meaningful titles near the top of the food chain. And this is a continuation of the transition from kind of the the status quo from an a player a player evaluation standpoint. Big- time changes. And throughout the course of this past offseason, there were changes to uh some of the analytics department and the people that were in the analytics department. uh those people were transitioned out of season and now you’re in season and a lot of the people that are responsible for coordinating your effort for identifying talent are no longer here. I mean this this is three significant names on the upper to very top of the food chain in Miami’s personnel department in Adam Angra Anthony Hunt and obviously Chris Greer. So the question everybody has is like what does this mean? Who makes this decision? Why now? Um and I think to to understand that you need to be Stephen Ross, Champ Kelly, Tom Garfinkle, right? I think those maybe Mike McDaniel has some feedback in this at this point, but I’d be surprised because his hands are full, right? Like they did the whole trade deadline thing with Brandon Shore, Champ Kelly, and Mike McDaniel talking about potential offers and the only decision they made was the decision that had an expiration date in Jaylen Phillips because he’s an expiring contract. Everybody else that was not an expiring contract still here. Um, and I know a lot of people are wondering what does this mean? Is Champ Kelly kind of taking over? is Champ Kelly kind of taking advantage of his position with being the interim GM to make changes and and better align himself to keep the job long term. I don’t think that’s necessarily what’s at play here. I I think the honest conversations and and look, Champ came in from the outside in this year. He came over this off season after being with the Raiders and he was the assistant GM. And you could go back and listen to some of the interviews the champ did as the assistant GM in Las Vegas both before and after he served as the team’s interim general manager when they moved on from Dave Zagler and then he’s the interim GM and then they hire Tom Tlesco, right? He was the interim through that transition in power and he stayed on the staff after they hired Tom Tlesco. But the things he talked about why he was brought to Las Vegas in the per first place was to overhaul the scouting department and the scouting processes for the Raiders, right? And then they there’s a whole bunch of wholesale changes and the criteria in which they’re grading and and searching for players changed three times in three years because it was Dave’s Eagler and then it was Tom Tlesco and then they made another GM change and that was kind of what spurred Champ to leave the Raiders in some some capacity. So the question is what what did those experiences for Champ and there’s some clues in some of the interviews that he’s done with the Raiders media as the assistant GM or as the interim GM or before he served as the interim GM. there’s some clues about how you go about this process. And I think that’s what makes it valuable to have somebody in the interim chair who’s been in the interim chair before and to know that the the criteria that the Raiders targeted Champ to come into their process and to join their front office was because they wanted him with his insight to overhaul their scouting department. We kind of have some clues here. The Champ Kelly um the evaluation of what is happening since arriving here earlier this year would seem to indicate champ probably in the midst of that evaluation process and understanding what needs to be different. And that’s not to say that he’s the GM, but he is acting as he is the serving general manager of the team. And there’s some context clues about how it played out in Las Vegas that I think are probably going to be applicable for Champ that make these, if they’re deemed to be necessary changes, changes that that probably should be happen. We’re going to get in that next here on Locked on Dolphins. Make sure you guys stick with us. If you’re a business owner, here’s the truth. SAS promised to make work easier, but now the average company is buried by hundreds of apps that slow down your teams and simply do not work together. That’s not SAS, that’s sad software as a disservice. And that’s why you need Ripling. 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I don’t think the Dolphins are making these changes with Adam Ingro and and Anthony Hunt because they’ve already decided Champ Kelly is going to be the next general manager of the Dolphins. He’s the current serving general manager of the Dolphins. And I would be willing to bet a whole lot of something when the dust settles, Cham Kelly will probably be on the scouting department and in the front office in some capacity at least through May. And the reason why is transition in power. Champ talked about and there’s an interview that he did with the Raiders media and he talked about the scouting staff and having to retrain because there was wholesale changes in Las Vegas with the Raiders, right? And that included the general manager change. There were wholesale changes that were made midway through the scouting cycle. And make no mistake, we are in the dead heart of the scouting cycle right now. That’s why usually you see it’s an awkward intersection where a lot of times front office changes they happen in May. It’s called black it’s the it’s the the summer black Monday and it’s where all the front office people are dismissed because it’s at the very end of the scouting cycle and the very beginning of the next scouting cycle. But that doesn’t line up with the NFL calendar where you make coaching decisions in January. So then you make coaching decisions with the schemes that you want to run and then the draft is four months later and then the scouting cycle starts two weeks after that theoretically. So you’re working on different calendars and different calendars creates challenges for when do you fire an executive. A lot of times they’ll wait till the end of the season. More often than that, it feels like now the trend is they’ll let that GM finish that cycle out while really seeding the the decision-making power to the coach more often than not in big personnel moves. And then they’ll dismiss the GM after the draft because it’s a chance for a new GM to come in, put in their scouting cycle, whatever, right? Champ Kelly is in a position now which is the least path traveled. We are in the dead middle of a scouting cycle and you’re going to in two months or two and a half months from now when the All-Star games are happening, the college all-star games are happening, player declarations are happening, you got to start doing pro scouting and getting ready for free agency. Then two a month after that you got the the NFL draft and the NFL combines tucked in there. It’s a very busy, chaotic window and that is where there is value and where Champ Kelly provided value for the Raiders in the midst of their transition to say I was the conduit between the way it was being done at the start of the season and then they fire the GM and then we fold a new GM into our process and somebody has to marry those two things together for how the scouting effort works. So the new general manager can make educated decisions on the personnel from both a pro and a college scouting side based on what we need, based on what kind of schemes we’re running. So if I’m reading between the lines and and that’s what Champ Kelly described his value as as the interim GM and then they bring in Tomlesco and instead of everybody on the fly even closer to the draft having to tear up everything that they did, right? Because there there’s examples Chip Kelly, right? Chip Kelly comes into Philadelphia uh 15 years almost 15 years ago and he’s hired as the head coach and Howie Roseman’s the the GM at the time but Chip Kelly comes in as their big head coaching hire and they the there’s been stories I’ve talked to people that were on that Eagles front office as scouts and they said how Chip came in and tore everything that we spent all year prepping for players tore it to shreds and we saw a lot of players that Chip was familiar with from his time in college were the players that got prioritized. They had certain he had certain thresholds for positions that if you didn’t meet them, you weren’t eligible to be picked in the first round. That’s how they picked Marcus Smith, the pass rusher out of Louisville in the first round in 2013. That’s how that happens. And that’s what you don’t want happening with a transition in power for a new GM to come and say, “Hey, I don’t know how you guys have been doing it, but this is how we’re doing it. We’re doing it right now.” as compared to Champ saying to a new GM while being kept on the staff through at least the draft if not on a on a permanent position in some capacity. Hey, this is how these guys have been working. This is what the information gathering process has been like. This is how they catalog it. How can I and this again this is this is educated guessing. I don’t have any intel here, but in listening to Champ talk about it and trying to read between the lines, Champ as the interim can serve as the conduit between I was here. I was evaluating these guys before I was put in as the interim GM. So, I’m familiar with what the processes were like. I then assume a little bit more of the power obviously as the interim GM throughout the the rest of the regular season. You’re now being brought in. This is how you want it. How can I help you interpret what they’ve done and make it as valuable as what you need it to be for you to make the best decisions while we finish this cycle that has been interrupted with personnel changes. So, I don’t think this is, oh, Champ Kelly, chaos is a ladder. Chris Greer gets fired. Now he’s getting rid of a bunch of people so he can just be the GM and Steve Ross decided on a week on the job that Champ Kelly’s here because he wants to keep my I I don’t think so. I think that would be seeing the absolute worst in a lot of people if that’s the assumption. I don’t think that’s what’s at play here. But I do think Champ and taking on some more of the coordination of the college and the pro scouting efforts from the people that have been here that he’s worked alongside and been familiar with what they’ve been told and how they need to go about going about their jobs. Him being more hands-on with that now that the trade deadline is passed should help whenever they make their decision, whether it’s Champ or whether it’s somebody else. And I got a list. I got a hot board of 30 names. And there’s about 12 of them that I’m like, these would be the people I would want to interview, but I would understand interest in any of these 30 names. And we’ll get into all that, right? I want to get past the trade deadline. And then they beat the Bills. So, we got to talk about it. But then we got a bye. We got a whole bye’s worth of content to talk about the front office structure and the GM search. And we will. I think that’s what’s applying what Champ said in the past, looking at the people who are leaving and understanding the decision that looms ahead for the Dolphins. That would be my educated guess on what is at play and what is not at play. I got Dolphins fans hitting me up freaking out and they’re just they’re really just gonna roll with Champ, huh? I don’t I don’t think that has anything to do with this. I think Chant will be on the the front office structure and hierarchy after they hire a GM, but I don’t think this means anything for him just being the next GM. Lineup change. Got what I want to see. We’re going to get that next here. Locked on Dolphins. Make sure you guys stick with us. Today’s show is brought to you by our friends over there at Pelaton. Look folks, it’s time to break through the busiest time of the year with a brand new Pelaton cross trainining tread plus that’s powered by Pelaton IQ. It’s Pelaton’s most elevated technology and equipment yet that gives you real-time guidance and it gives you endless ways to move whether you want to work out by yourself or if you want to work out with your favorite instructor like my personal favorite Alex Tousant. He always gets me fired up to tackle the day. And the thing I like about Pelaton, it helps me achieve more in less times. They have features that help you plan, stay motivated, track your progress, and Pelaton IQ also provides personalized workout plans and recommendations. That’s something that I use right now during the busiest time of the year covering the NFL. They plan my workouts for me based on my mood, my vibe, and also my favorite instructors. So, make sure you check it out and use it because it also helps you correct your form in real time, and it maximizes your reps. It counts your reps so that you can do it smarter, safer, and more efficient. Let yourself run, lift, flex, push, and go. Explore the new Pelaton crossraining tread plus at onepliton.com. So, the Dolphins had a lineup change thanks in part to some injuries. We got a chance to see Juju Brent play almost 60 snaps at corner in week 10 against the Bills. Uh he came into week 10 with nine defensive snaps. And here’s the deal with Juju Brent, man. draft in top 50, 25 years old, elite length, elite short air explosiveness, four five guy, not a not a true blazer, but super physical. Was targeted five times against the Bills. Gave up 17 12 yards in coverage, less than 20 yards in coverage. It was a passer rating under 50 allowed on five targets by Josh Allen. made five tackles, including several that were open field tackles that required good form tackling. I don’t know how you don’t I don’t know how you you take him off the field and you Mike McDaniel said yesterday he’s expecting Russul Douglas will be back this week. Great. Then play with two physical corners, right? And Jack Jones has had some high water moments. There’s also been some low moments in coverage and and penalties and grabbiness and consistency. Juju Brent is under contract with the team next year as a 25-year-old former top 50 pick who missed all but 60 snaps last year because he tore miniscus and had an MCL tear and the Colts cut him going into year three because they made a head coach or a defensive coordinator and uh scheme change. This is the kind of cat you want to figure out. You might have a you might have a dude here. A very talented player. It’s never been a talent issue. He played 500 snaps as a rookie and was up and down because he was a rookie from Kansas State and then he played 60 snaps a second year. Defensive coordinator change doesn’t make the 53. The irony of course is they go out and they they trade two first round picks for S Gartner. I’m not saying Juji Brent is Sauce Gardner by any means, but I’m saying he’s built like Sauce Gardner. And I’m saying he played a hell of a football game against Buffalo Bills for a 25-year-old corner who’s under contract with the team next year. Jack Jones will be 28 in December. Rul Douglas is 30 already. And both of them signed a one-year deal. They’re both free agents after this year. Brent, you got under contract. You got him off waiverss with going into the third year of his four-year rookie contract as top 50 pick. He’s got salaries of he’s got a salary under $2 million next year is what will be a 26 year old corner. I want to find out if this cat can play. I think he can play. I know what he looked like at Kansas State. I know what the physical profile says. I know what the tape against Buffalo looked like. Play him. I don’t know how you take Junior Brent off the field, especially because there is a positive reinforcement with the film this week. So, it’s a short-term win for Miami, but it could also be a long-term win because who are your corners long term? Kater Co, who’s coming off of an ACL and is an expiring contract. Russell Douglas an expiring contract. Jack Jones an expiring contract. Lord knows I’ve seen enough of Eat the Honor. Storm Duck who was not particularly good last year in the opportunities. They very clearly like him that he’s a smart guy, but he hasn’t stayed healthy all year and his season is over. You might get a a better body of work out of Julius Brent with an actual draft pedigree instead of an undrafted free agent guy. you you could add him to the conversation and competition to win a starting job. Now, I wouldn’t give Juji Brent a starting job, no questions asked, off off the next two months, tape, but you might feel like, hey, we got a young guy in a contract year who’s in the prime of his career physically, we think can play, add him to the competition pile. If Juju Brent is in the Storm Duck position that they had Storm Duck in all year this past year where they keep talking about they want him to win a job. They so desperately wanted Storm Duck to win a starting job and corner for this football team. I didn’t see it on film last year. Very quick turnaround as far as being on the field against the Colts. Who knows what the player development looks like there? But you have chance for more inroads in player development with a better tools player in Brent now and you’re guaranteed next year as a young player. Play him. You got to play him. Let’s find out together. Let’s find out what he’s got. And I think that for me is um the lineup change I’m hopeful to see knowing that it probably comes if Russell Douglas is healthy at the expense of Jack Jones. I want to see Juju Brunt start the rest of the way until his play indicates otherwise because he gave you one of the more consistent performances at the catch point at the line of scrimmage and run support as a tackler. I discipline we’re we’re looking good. That’s going to do it for us here today on Locked on Dolphins. It is your team every day. Appreciate you all for checking out the show. Make it a great rest of your Tuesday. We will be back again tomorrow. Get you ready for Washington in week 11. Take whatever other news we get along the way. Probably not any more front office changes this week, but you never know. It is the season for the Dolphins, it seems. So, come back, see us again tomorrow, hit subscribe, watch us on YouTube, wherever you listen your favorite podcast. Cow crabs. I’m out of here. Go Fins.

On this episode of Locked On Dolphins, Kyle Crabbs breaks down the latest in-season front office shakeups for the Miami Dolphins. After the departure of longtime GM Chris Grier, the Dolphins organization continues to see significant changes, including the exit of co-directors of player personnel Adam Engroff and Anthony Hunt. Kyle Crabbs dives into what these moves mean for the team’s structure, the transition of power to interim GM Champ Kelly, and what history tells us about Kelly’s role during organizational overhauls. Later in the show, he talks about a key defensive lineup change he’d like to see moving forward, specifically advocating for more playing time for young cornerback JuJu Brents. The episode also features insightful discussion on roster building, college and pro scouting processes, and what’s next for Miami as they head toward Week 11.

00:00:00 – Significant Departures and Front Office Changes
00:08:13 – Sponsors: Rippling & FanDuel
00:10:03 – Transition of Power & Interim GM Champ Kelly’s Role
00:17:01 – Listener Concerns & Next Steps in Front Office Search
00:18:24 – Sponsor: Peloton
00:19:26 – Lineup Change: Juju Brents at Cornerback & Future Implications

Miami Dolphins Front Office Shakeup Continues As Team Splits With Two Major Figures After Bills Win
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