By Ronn Burner • on February 12, 2010
Holy crap! Paul McCartney had less difficulty breaking away clean from Heather Mills than the Dolphins are having splitting from Joey Porter. About an hour or so ago I posted that as a shock to no one the Dolphins finally expedited the inevitable and cut Porter thus making him a free agent sparing the Fins the $4.6 million he was set to receive on March 7th.
Adam Schefter of ESPN has reported that due to League rules the Dolphins releasing of Porter prior to March 5th actually would count against their 2009 salary cap thus forcing him back onto the Dolphins roster until then. Apparently Miami only has $4.2 million in cap space and the move would have triggered a $4.8 million hit.
My initial thought was “Wow! How on earth are we that stupid?” Not one person in the entire organization was aware of this? In all the years that Bill Parcells and Jeff Ireland have been in this league this has never been something that has previously come up? Just when things seem to be looking so good for Miami and after so many fortuitous things have fallen our way, umm hello Mike Nolan, then we go ahead and do something like this that makes us look completely incompetent. We are stupid or at best we “look” stupid.
That was my original thought until NFL whispers began stirring that Miami may have done this intentionally. On purpose? Huh? Well, it would certainly make more sense since you absolutely know that Bill Parcells either knew the rule himself or has people that do to not let this happen publicly. The genius behind it lies in the fact that by making an announcement that we are realeasing Porter knowing full well that the League would step in and prevent it from happening until March 5th. Doesn’t matter, the rest of the NFL is now aware that Porter is a certainty to be cut on that date thus giving any interested team three full weeks to pick up the phone and start proposing trades to the Dolphins to obtain him and his current contract rather than risking not getting him signed in a Free Agency bidding war or his desire to play elsewhere. In essence, we have nothing to lose. We’re cutting him anyway so may as well dangle him like a carrot and see if we can get any bites and get something, anything, in return while publicly embarrassing as slight as it may be in the process.
Turns out we’re brilliant!
The Dolphins just released this statement after I wrote the above content. “The release of Joey Porter was determined to be an invalid termination, therefore at this time, Porter reverts back to the Miami Dolphins roster.”
