National Site Suggests Zach Sieler Trade; the Pros and Cons from a Miami Dolphins Standpoint

The Miami Dolphins will have an awful lot of tough personnel decisions to make over the next several months and even into next season between maneuvering around the salary cap and dealing with the many contributions in need of new contracts.

And, yes, it may be that one way to deal with those personnel issues is trade a veteran or two.

And this brings us to a recent story on Pro Football Network suggesting three trades for the Detroit Lions to push them over the top in the NFC North after their strong finish of 2022, with one of those trades involving Dolphins defensive lineman Zach Sieler.

The story suggest that Sieler could be on the trading block because of his desire for a new contract as he enters the final year of a contract due to pay him under $3 million in 2023.

As a hypothetical trade, this is what PFN NFL analyst Dallas Robinson wrote: "The Lions have two third-round picks in 2024 as a result of last year’s Hockenson trade. They could offer the Dolphins the lower of those two selections for Sieler and agree to a pre-trade contract extension before officially acquiring him."

WHY THE DOLPHINS WOULD AND SHOULD NOT EVEN CONSIDER TRADING SIELER

Yes, the Dolphins have a looming issue on their hands with their salary cap, where they're already over the projected 2024 limit by some $30 million based on their current commitments.

And, yes, Sieler wants a new contract and likely is looking for a huge pay raise, which is why he didn't participate in any of the offseason practices even though he did attend.

But here are the two reasons why the chances of this kind of trade happening are somewhere between slim and none, and probably closer to none.

Look at how the Dolphins have put together their roster for 2023; does this look like a team that's going to trade a solid starter for a future third-round pick when all the moves suggest it's going all out for a Super Bowl run?

Just as importantly, one look at the Dolphins roster should tell anyone that the thinnest part of the roster is on the defensive line.

Not counting edge defenders, whose role clearly is different, the Dolphins roster has Sieler, Christian Wilkins and Raekwon Davis as pure defensive linemen, along with Josiah Bronson, Jaylen Twyman, Anthony Montalvo and Brandon Pili.

The combined NFL experience of those last four players is eight regular season games — all by Bronson over the past two seasons. And Montalvo and Pili both are rookie free agents.

So what sense would it make for the Dolphins to trade Sieler now and only exacerbate the depth issue along the defensive line?

THE DOLPHINS DILEMMA ON THE DEFENSIVE LINE

Having said that, the Dolphins absolutely have an issue on that defensive line that's going to have to be addressed because it's not only Sieler who's heading into the final year of his contract; the same goes for Wilkins and Davis.

Wilkins is scheduled to play under his fifth-year option salary of $10.7 million in 2023 and the Dolphins ultimately will have to decide how much they're willing to pay him moving forward, a decision that's not been made easier by all the big-money deals that defensive tackles have signed around the NFL this offseason.

And that's even before the Jets' Quinnen Williams and the Chiefs' Chris Jones get their new deals.

Like Sieler, Davis is on the books for a relatively modest amount in 2023 in the final year of the rookie contract he got as a second-round pick in 2020.

Whether all three stay with the Dolphins for the long term remains to be seen, but it says here they most definitely will be together in 2023 because Miami has positioned itself to make a deep playoff run, one concern is depth on the defensive line, and logic says that moving a player at that position would make zero sense.