The Miami Dolphins made the Kyle Louis decision official on Wednesday, and they made two more moves alongside it. The team announced that the rookie safety has been placed on injured reserve, that cornerback Jaylin Simpson has been signed to the active roster from the practice squad and that long snapper Cal Adomitis has joined the practice squad.
The transactions came down while the Dolphins practiced in Napa, Calif., where they are spending the week between road games in Las Vegas and San Francisco..
Louis sprained his MCL in Sunday’s 27-13 loss to the Raiders, and Dolphin Nation covered the injury, the “few weeks” timeline and what Miami loses without him on Tuesday. Wednesday’s move answers the question that story left open: The Dolphins decided the recovery runs closer to four weeks than two, and they wanted the roster spot now rather than carrying an inactive.
When Kyle Louis can return
An in-season trip to injured reserve carries a four-game minimum. That means Louis will sit for the 49ers, Chiefs, Vikings and Bengals games and is first eligible to return in Week 7 against the Jets at MetLife Stadium, coming out of the bye.
The Dolphins also spent a return designation to do it. A team can bring eight players back from injured reserve in a season.
Trey Moore and Kenneth Grant already account for two of those by rule and Louis is likely to be the third. Louis becomes the third Dolphin on IR, not counting rookie defensive tackle Rene Konga, who is out for the year.
That leaves five return slots with 16 games still to play. It is not a crisis on a roster this young, but it is the kind of accounting a rebuilding team has to watch, because a designation used in September on a fourth-round rookie is one that is not available in November for a starter.
The alternative was worse, though. Carrying Louis on the 53 for a month would have meant playing a man short every Sunday.
Who Jaylin Simpson is
Simpson is 6-foot and 180 pounds and played at Auburn. Indianapolis drafted him in the fifth round, No. 164 overall, in 2024.
He did not make the Colts’ initial 53, returned to their practice squad and was later signed by the Jets without appearing in a game that season.
He landed in Green Bay in 2025, spent the year on the practice squad and made his NFL debut in the season finale against Minnesota, where the Dolphins’ release credits him with eight tackles, five of them solo.
That single game came on a defense coordinated by Jeff Hafley, and the connection is the reason Simpson was in Miami in the first place.
Hafley brought him up on his own on Sept. 3, when he was asked whether any of the newly added defensive backs had nickel experience.
“And then on practice squad, Jaylin Simpson, who was in Green Bay, he played nickel and safety,” Hafley said. “I think at Auburn he played both because I remember him coming out and then obviously I coached him in Green Bay, so he played nickel as well.”
Hafley addressed the promotion again Wednesday before practice.
Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley on cornerback Jaylin Simpson, who he had in GB last year, getting the call up from the practice squad. pic.twitter.com/neIPscbAGw
— David Furones (@DavidFurones_) September 16, 2026
The nickel-and-safety background matters because it lines up with the role Louis was being prepared for. Miami moved Louis to safety nine days before the opener with a big-nickel package in mind, and Simpson is the closest thing on the roster to a like-for-like body for it, a corner-sized defender who has lined up both inside and deep.
He becomes the sixth cornerback on the 53, joining Chris Johnson, JuJu Brents, Jason Marshall Jr., Marcellas Dial Jr. and Reese Taylor.
None of that guarantees defensive snaps at Levi’s Stadium. Louis played only three of them in Las Vegas, and the more immediate hole is on special teams, where he was covering punts. Simpson’s first job is likely to be there.
The long snapper insurance policy
The third move is easier to miss and just as practical. Tucker Addington hurt his shoulder making a tackle on a punt return against the Raiders and stayed in the game.
Hafley said Monday the Dolphins came close to using rookie linebacker Jacob Rodriguez, who has long-snapping experience, in his place. The Adomitis signing is a hedge in case Addington cannot go, and Addington and Robert Beal Jr. were the two players whose participation looked limited at Wednesday’s practice.
Adomitis, 28, has played in 58 regular-season games with Cincinnati and Philadelphia plus three playoff games with the Bengals and won the Patrick Mannelly Award as the top senior long snapper in the FBS at Pittsburgh in 2021.
If Addington is ruled out, the Dolphins can simply elevate Adomitis for Sunday without another 53-man transaction.
The cap move underneath the roster moves
Roster churn costs money, and the Dolphins tidied up the books the same morning. Spotrac reported that Miami converted per-game bonus money in the contracts of Austin Jackson and Greg Dulcich and a portion of JuJu Brents’ salary into signing bonus, creating roughly $2.5 million in 2026 cap space, with a fourth conversion on Zach Sieler’s deal.
The Palm Beach Post‘s Nick Pugliese itemized all four: $1.51 million of Jackson’s per-game bonus for $1.2 million in space, $341,000 of Dulcich’s for $272,000, $792,000 of Brents’ salary for $634,000 and $511,000 of Sieler’s per-game bonus for $408,000.
The extra room helps a team expected to be more active than usual in signing free agents during the season, and Wednesday was a small example of why. Simpson’s promotion moves him from a practice-squad check to a 53-man salary, and Louis’ cap number does not come off the books while he sits on injured reserve.
None of the four conversions is large on its own, but pushing money into future years to buy September flexibility is a choice a rebuilding front office makes only if it expects to keep churning the bottom of the roster.
What it means for Sunday at the 49ers
Every player on the 53 was accounted for at Wednesday’s practice and linebacker Ronnie Harrison Jr., who is dealing with a hamstring injury, worked on the side.
Harrison left Sunday’s game with that injury and is the most obvious in-house candidate for the hybrid role Louis was growing into, so his status this week matters nearly as much as Simpson’s.
The official injury report will settle Addington’s availability and Harrison’s.
What Wednesday settled is the shape of the next month: Louis is out until at least the Jets game, a Hafley pupil from Green Bay has taken his roster spot and the Dolphins have used one of their eight IR return chips before the second game of the season.
