The Wallace and Stills trades: Is Stills worth the hefty price?

The Dolphins were desperately looking to unload Dannelle Ellerbe and his $8.425 million dollar contract, and they finally made it a reality. They just traded him and their third-round pick to the New Orleans Saints for wide receiver Kenny Stills, the 2nd year pro out of Oklahoma.

Most football gambling fans would agree that the Dolphins are happy that they were able to get something for Ellerbe, however, throwing in a valuable third-round pick at the time seemed just a bit too generous on the Dolphins’ side. Well to be fair, in the big picture the Dolphins have in essence traded Mike Wallace(a trade that had to be done), a third and seventh-round pick for Stills and a fifth-rounder, which is better than nothing, but the success of this move is contingent upon whether or not Stills can be equal to Wallace in terms of production(which is hard to say), but he definitely is superior in terms of attitude and price. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that Stills has plenty of upsides. Stills is very young and has been quite productive in his first two seasons in the league with a total of 95 catches for 1,572 yards and 8 touchdowns. He is a quick, and tough receiver and will definitely be an upgrade over both Hartline and Gibson.

The biggest thing that Stills can bring to the table is his ability to gain yards after the catch. In 2013 he had a 20 yard per catch average, and in 2014 he had a 14.8 yards per catch average. Both averages would have led the Dolphins in yards per catch in each of the aforementioned seasons. It is clear that Miami is aware that they lacked the chunk yardage plays on offense last season and the signing of both Cameron and Stills reflects Miami’s goal to improve that.

The only thing that bothers me about this trade is that we gave up a third and 7th round pick to get Stills and a 5th rounder. This upcoming draft is well known as being a very deep receiving draft, so it is a bit bothersome that they didn’t decide to keep their third-round pick and draft a premium wide receiver talent rather. Clearly the Dolphins’ thinking is that Stills is still very young and that next year he will be better than any receiver in the draft that they could select in the third round. I can not totally disagree with this philosophy, considering Stills has at least been a consistent producer in the NFL, and there is no guarantee that a rookie in the 3rd round will be able to produce right away. Also, I do like his toughness, which is another trait that Miami clearly is focusing on acquiring this off-season. What does the rest of Miami Dolphins news circles think about this trade?

11 comments

  • Dunner

    Miami again got maybe 3 birds with one stone with Wallace trade. First, they got ride of a HUGE salary, second they got ride of a locker room headache, and third they traded Wallace to a team that was in front of them in the draft which many had Minny taking a WR at 11, now Minny doesn’t need a WR there, allowing said WR to slip to the 14 spot. Great move all the way around!!!

    • Diego

      Great point with the Minnesota #1 draft pick. I think the plan to get rid of Wallace was set in motion a long time ago, and further solidified after the reported talks of his unwillingness to restructure his contract. Wallace may have played nice nice with Hickey at lunch, but just from the scheduled reports of the Dolphins desire to bring back Clay, we can already see that Lazor wants to open the playbook even more up the middle. Misdirection. Point is, Wallace was probable going to get less targets and we can only imagine this problem getting worse. His signing was just a bad move from the beginning. We all wanted it. But you need to have an Offensive line that gives you at least 3 seconds to throw the football. Criticize Tannehill all you want, but hitting a receiver that fast, with a small catch radius, with pressure in your face is probably like hitting a three point shot in basketball from the free throw line on the opposite side of the court, while getting tackled. The front office saw that his particular strengths were not suited to this offense and after the Suh trade actually happened they were able to justify it as a cap move. I believe this organization has been knowing they are going to take one of the top WR for quite some time to help solve our red zone inefficiency. I for one, am ready to take Green-Beckham at #14 if Parker and White are gone. His upside is greater than Strong’s. Can anyone imagine how Wallace was going to behave this year if that is really the case.

      • Dunner

        I like Green-beck ham over Strong, I don’t see this staff taking a chance on GB when Strong has no risk attached. I don’t think we could go wrong with either WR at 14.

        • Diego

          True. But GB’s baggage is not that terrible if you really look at it. Plus, you can kind of sense that right now Tannenbaum is the one calling the shots down there, and he doesn’t seem to mind a little baggage. You can kind of tell already that Philbin was not the one pounding on Ross’ door to sign Suh. He can either like it or suck it up. Can you imagine the jumbo package with 3 TE sets: Cameron, Sims and Lynch, Clay (hopefully still) at H-back, and DGB out wide. How do you defend that?

      • Jimmy Bourbon

        I say that the move is a big signal that we will be drafting a wide receiver in the first round

  • Dunner

    all I know is that, Mike Tannenbaum, Dennis Hickey and Dawn Aponte are putting on a clinic in the start of the 2016 NFL season. Hopefully signs of things to come. They have cleaned up Ireland’s mess, non the less.

  • Good choice! at least he is not a quitter like Wallace>

  • ralph

    I think we could still draft a receiver with the 14th pick in the draft. Then that would make Wallace expendable and we could open up 10 Million is salary CAP space
    Also after all the bad rap on Wallace I think we fans are ready to say goodbye and good riddance to Wallace.
    I know we have other needs but we can address them in the draft, except maybe CB
    We need to get another CB to play opposite Grimes. I prefer a proven good CB in free agency, as opposed to a project in the draft that might take years to be ready like the 2 Ireland drafted. This draft is not that deep on CB’s.

  • Dunner

    i like the move. They got two birds with one stone here. Got ride of Ellerbe and his huge salary, creating salary cap relief. Freeing up almost 6 million dollars in cap space. This move may have also set up the release of Wallace, another issue possibly taken care of with this trade!

    The new NFL year has been real good for Miami so far. We have almost washed away all of Ireland’s signings. Still hope they target one of the top 4 WRs (White, Cooper, Parker, Strong) w/the 14th pick.

    • dji

      i agree with this except i don’t think they will get rid of wallace. looks like they will keep him to me.