Defensive end Olivier Vernon, who has had to step up for the Dolphins with Cameron Wake out for the season, didn’t have a sack on Sunday against the Eagles, but he had an impact on the game, recording a handful of quarterback hits and hurries.
Vernon’s latest solid performance has Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald wondering why the Dolphins aren’t more inclined to engage in at least preliminary extension talks with the defender’s camp during the season. Vernon isn’t the Dolphins’ only notable free-agent-to-be, and Miami doesn’t make a habit of discussing new deals during the season. However, as Salguero writes, waiting until the offseason and having to decide whether it’s worth using the franchise tag on Vernon could cost the team much more.
Here’s more from around the NFL’s East divisions:
- Head coach Jason Garrett didn’t want to go into any specifics about a report on Greg Hardy being late for a Cowboys‘ meeting last week, but he also didn’t deny it happened, as Todd Archer of ESPNDallas.com writes. “Suffice it to say that we have standards here with the Cowboys, that if a player were to miss something or be late for something, we address it in-house, and we address it the right way,” Garrett said. According to Archer, the penalty for such a transgression would be a fine, per team rules.
- With a game against the Dolphins on tap this weekend, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones admitted in an appearance on 105.3 The Fan that his team previously tried to hire Dan Campbell as its tight ends coach, according to Charean Williams of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Twitter link).
- The Dolphins are hosting former Patriots linebacker Cameron Gordon for a visit today, tweets agent Brett Tessler. While the Michigan product spent some time on New England’s roster, he has yet to appear in an NFL regular season game.
- Jets quarterback Geno Smith exercised poor judgment once again in the wake of last week’s loss to the Bills, and it’s the latest example of why he doesn’t have a long-term future with the organization, according to Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News.
- Several Philadelphia News staffers, including Les Bowen and Paul Domowitch, evaluated the performance of Chip Kelly as the Eagles‘ general manager, with none of the 23 poll respondents giving Kelly better than a C grade.
You’d have to think that Cameron Wake is either going to be released or asked to take a pay cut. If he’s released, that’s more than $8MM in cap space that could be put towards a Vernon extension.