At the end of every season, I like to do a bit of a post mortem, so to speak.  I go back and take a look at the stats, comb through my notes, and try to figure out what we did best, and where we fell short.  This way I can try to make an educated guess about how the offseason will play out, what free agents we may go after, and which players we might target in the draft.  I’m just about wrapping up my initial overview, and the indications so far are that this team still needs help EVERYWHERE.

In fact, I can give you a list right now of the only players on this team who are safe for next year:

- Offense:  Chad Henne, Lousaka Polite, Jake Long, Davone Bess, Brian Hartline, Vernon Carey, Joe Berger & Nate Garner

- Defense:  Randy Starks, Kendall Langford, Phillip Merling, Sean Smith, Vontae Davis, & Yeremiah Bell

Thats 39 spots that I consider still upgradable on our roster- and positions include running back, tight end, nose tackle, outside linebacker, inside linebacker, safety, offensive line, punter, kicker, return man, and wide receiver. The Dolphins were mediocre to bad almost across the board- in fact, looking  back at how we performed, I’m almost impressed we ended up 7-9.

In fact, the only major stastical categories that saw the Dolphins in the top 10 were yards per rush (with 4.4 per carry, good for 8th) and sacks (44 sacks, good for third).    You can see the full story here:

As you can see, not very impressive in any particular area.  It gets worse though too.  Remember above where I said our only two positive areas are yards per rush, and sacks?  Well with Ronnie Brown ending yet another season on IR (and having his contract status up in the air),  Ricky Williams going on what seems like his 20th year, Joey Porter being completely unproductive on the field and extremely disruptive off of it, and Jason Williams definitely going on his 20th year, even the statistical areas that we managed to dominate are still up in the air for the 2010 season!

What exactly does this mean?  Simple, it means yet another unpredictable draft/free agency period.  The Dolphins could make a case for taking a game breaking WR at #12 overall, or they could take a stout nose tackle to solidify the middle of the defensive line.  In a way though, this can be kind of a blessing.  Instead of being in a position of a team like say, the Rams - who will probably have to reach for a QB at the top of the draft, the Dolphins can simply take the most valuable player available while at the same time still filling a position SOMEWHERE on the team that needs help (even if it is not necessarily the MOST dire need on the team).

There are really only two mitigating factors at work here:  1.) Our offense will probably do better next year even if we make zero changes, just due to the fact that Henne will be more experienced- and thus ideally will make fewer mistakes, more big plays.  Of course this is assuming that the Trifecta feels that Henne is the QB of the future;  they could throw us all for a loop and go in a completely different direction.  2.)  If you look across the board, even though our offense is not all that good, it is still generally better performing than our defense.

For those two reasons, I tend to think that we will favor the defensive side of the ball overall in this draft (even if we don’t go D with our first round pick).

With all this in mind, I will be posting my pre-Senior Bowl mock draft some time later this week, and start breaking down potential Phins draft targets.