Omar Kelly: Dolphins have half a dozen areas of need headed into NFL draft

Omar Kelly, Miami Herald on Apr 4, 2026

Published in Football

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MIAMI — The Miami Dolphins own 11 selections in the 2026 NFL draft, which is an impressive bounty of resources, especially when considering seven of those picks are among the top 100 selections.

Problem is, the roster newly hired general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and head coach Jeff Hafley are constructing features about a dozen vacant starting spots, and probably two dozen roster needs when position depth and special teams are factored in.

The bottom line is, the math is not mathing, which means the Dolphins must have a sensational draft class to help fill the team’s numerous roster voids if the 2026 team is going to be competitive.

How bad are things?

Not one receiver on the Miami Dolphins depth chart has established anything worth bragging about throughout their professional careers, and Miami’s two frontline wideouts — Tutu Atwell and Jalen Tolbert — are both career backups.

And has Malik Washington proven he’s anything more than a return specialist in his first two NFL seasons?

Who are Chop Robinson, Josh Uche, Robert Beal Jr. and David Ojabo, and what do those quarterback hunters bring to any defense, which seemingly lacks a proven, reliable, consistent three-down defensive end — 4-3 or 3-4 scheme — or edge player on the Dolphins’ predraft depth chart.

And that’s just one of the many troubling holes on Miami’s defense, which completely gutted the secondary from the 2025 season by not re-signing Rasul Douglas, Jack Jones, Kader Kohou, Ashtyn Davis and Ifeatu Melifonwu, and trading safety Minkah Fitzpatrick.

Miami has 11 cornerbacks under contract heading into next week’s start of the offseason program, and the odds of every one of them — from Storm Duck and JuJu Brents to Darrell Baker Jr. and Ethan Bonner — being released in late August are just as high as any of them becoming one of the team’s three starters at that position.

And the safety spot isn’t much better considering the entire unit collectively has 27 starts on their NFL resume. And 22 of them come from Lonnie Johnson’s first three seasons with the Houston Texans, before he was declared a second-round disappointment, and relegated to special teams work for the past four seasons.

Impressive stuff, right?!

Just in case you felt Miami’s roster voids were all on defense, keep in mind the Dolphins don’t have a proven, established starting tight end on the roster.

Sullivan might be intrigued with what Greg Dulcich did in the second half of last season, and is intrigued to see what the 26-year-old could become, which explains why he was the second free agent addition who got more than the NFL minimum from Miami. But Dulcich is far from a proven, finished, reliable commodity.

He’s no De’Von Achane, who Miami is still flirting with the idea of trading until a contract extension gets done before the second day of the NFL draft. And during last week at the NFL owners meeting Sullivan openly admitted the entire right side of the Dolphins’ offensive line needs to be rebuilt, even though the often-injured Austin Jackson is slated to return as the team’s starting right tackle. It is universally understood that a good NFL draft class produces three players who lock down starting roles, and perform well in them, during their first three years. But that level of success is typically designated for a team that owns seven or eight draft picks a year.

Miami’s needs double that.

The Dolphins’ recent roster purge, which led to the trades of pass rusher Jaelan Phillips (who went to the Eagles for a 2026 third-round pick), Fitzpatrick (to the New York Jets for a seventh-round pick) and Jaylen Waddle (to the Denver Browns for a first- and third-round selection and swap of fourth-round pick) puts Miami in a position where it needs to hit on more than half this draft class to have a chance at being competitive.

While the 2026 draft isn’t the finish line on NFL roster improvements, especially since free agents such as Douglas and Jones could be added to the team after the draft, and provide instant unit upgrades, it’s clear the Dolphins want to go about building this franchise’s future with younger, more impressionable and cheaper talent. That means patience is required, and precision — if not perfection — in talent evaluation is needed.