The Miami Dolphins set the youngest initial 53-man roster in the NFL on Sunday evening, and by Monday afternoon seven of those spots belonged to somebody else.
Miami claimed an NFL-high seven players off waivers when the league processed claims at 1 p.m. ET, then spent the rest of the afternoon cutting eight players to open the room and signing nine of its own weekend cuts to the practice squad.
Add it up and the Dolphins turned over roughly 30 roster and practice squad spots inside 24 hours, a level of churn that would qualify as chaos for most franchises. For this one, it looks more like the plan.
General manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and head coach Jeff Hafley have spent the offseason stripping the roster down to its studs, and Monday was the clearest signal yet that no job on the bottom half of the depth chart is safe just because cutdown day came and went.
The seven new Dolphins
The headliner is quarterback Brady Cook, claimed from the New York Jets. The former Missouri walk-on-turned-starter went undrafted in 2025, then ended up starting four games for an injury-ravaged New York quarterback room as a rookie.
The results were rough — Cook went 88 of 153 for 739 yards with two touchdowns, seven interceptions and a 55.4 passer rating across five appearances while losing all four starts, per Pro Football Reference — but he leaves New York with meaningful regular-season experience that almost nobody else in Miami’s quarterback room can match.
The rest of the class: tight end Justin Joly and defensive back Reese Taylor from Denver, safety Julius Wood from Dallas, defensive back Marcellas Dial from New England, and offensive tackles Chukwuebuka Godrick from Kansas City and Jarrett Kingston from Houston.
Joly is the most intriguing name of the group. The NC State product was Denver’s fifth-round pick in April at No. 152 overall, which made him the highest-drafted 2026 rookie to be waived at cutdown. He caught 166 passes for 1,978 yards and 15 touchdowns across four college seasons and closed the preseason with an 88-yard touchdown in Denver’s finale, but a slow camp buried him on a crowded Broncos depth chart.
Taylor is a slot specialist who spent three seasons bouncing between Denver’s active roster and practice squad. “Reese Taylor is a pure nickel,” Broncos reporter Mike Klis wrote on X, noting Taylor had been stuck behind Ja’Quan McMillian and Jahdae Barron.
Reese Taylor is a pure nickel.#Broncos always said they liked Taylor but he was stuck behind Ja'Quan McMillian and last year's first-round draft pick Jahdae Barron.
Taylor should get a chance with #Dolphins who @schadjoe reported has the NFL's youngest 53-man roster.— MikeKlis9NEWS (@mikeklis9news) August 31, 2026
The Broncos intended to bring both players back on their practice squad before Miami’s claims beat them to it. Wood, a safety and core special-teamer, was claimed from Dallas at final cuts for the second time in his career after posting 18 tackles this preseason.
The cost: eight players out a day after making the team
Every claimed player must go on the 53-man roster, so seven arrivals required seven departures — and the Dolphins made eight moves once a corresponding signing was folded in.
The team released edge Clelin Ferrell and cornerback A.J. Green III, waived cornerback Ethan Bonner, tackle Marques Cox, wide receiver AJ Henning, edge Max Llewellyn and guard Josh Priebe, and waived tight end Ben Sims with an injury designation, moves the team later announced.
Miami also signed veteran defensive lineman Malik Herring, who spent the past four seasons in Kansas City. The brutal part is the timing.
Green, Bonner, Ferrell and Sims all survived Sunday’s cutdown and appeared on the initial 53 the team published, only to lose those jobs about 24 hours later. Priebe’s exit stings for a different reason, because the rookie was set to be Miami’s swing guard before the numbers crunch arrived.
What seven claims say about the rebuild
Seven claims in a single day is an outlier by any franchise’s standard. Even the famously teardown-minded 2019 Dolphins claimed five players the day after cuts, and research shows Miami averaged about 5.5 waiver claims per full year from 2010 through 2025.
Monday’s haul exceeded a typical season’s worth of claims before lunch, and Miami may have submitted even more claims than the seven it was awarded. The aggression is easier to understand in context.
Only 29 players were claimed leaguewide, meaning Miami accounted for nearly a quarter of all claims by itself. A team coming off a 7-10 season with the league’s youngest roster and a winless preseason has little incentive to protect incumbency at the margins, and Sullivan’s front office is treating the bottom 10 spots as a season-long open audition.
The Dolphins had already claimed five players earlier this summer before Monday’s spree.
The Sieler precedent — and the real odds
The reason fans should care about moves this small is standing in the middle of Miami’s defensive line. Zach Sieler arrived as a December 2019 waiver claim and became one of the best value acquisitions in franchise history, and he remains the argument for treating every claim as a live lottery ticket.
The counterweight is the math: Of the 87 players Miami claimed from 2010 through 2025, only 20 ever started a game for the team. Most of Monday’s seven will be practice squad candidates or roster churn themselves by October. The bet is that one of them is not.
The quarterback room flipped twice in 48 hours
Cook’s arrival caps the strangest position-room week of the Hafley era. The Dolphins entered the weekend with Malik Willis — backed by Quinn Ewers, Cam Miller and Mark Gronowski.
By Sunday night, Ewers had been traded to Jacksonville after an injury-marred summer, Miller and Gronowski had been waived, and Kyle McCord had arrived from Green Bay for a 2028 sixth-round pick — effectively the same pick Jacksonville sent for Ewers. McCord will wear No. 14, the number Ewers left behind.
Now Cook joins McCord behind Willis, giving Miami two 23- and 24-year-old backups acquired within 48 hours of each other, while Gronowski — whom the Dolphins waived once already in August — returns on the practice squad. Whether Miami carries two or three quarterbacks into Week 1 is now a genuine question, and the answer will say a lot about how the staff grades Cook’s four starts of NFL tape against McCord’s four-touchdown preseason finale.
Nine practice squad signings, seven spots open
The practice squad started taking shape Monday, too. Miami signed tackle Gottlieb Ayedze, safety Major Burns, tight end Jeremiah Franklin, Gronowski, running back Jarquez Hunter, edge Rodney McGraw, wide receiver Jalen Reagor, linebacker Cam Riley and running back Carlos Washington Jr., moves the team announced.
All nine were Miami’s own cuts from the weekend, and seven practice squad spots remain open, which means the churn is not finished. The Dolphins open the regular season Sept. 13 at the Las Vegas Raiders, 13 days from Monday’s claims.
How many of the seven new arrivals are still on the roster by then is anyone’s guess — but for a front office that just replaced a seventh of its team overnight, that uncertainty appears to be the point.
