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Dolphins cornerback Xavien Howard is in the building, but he still wants out. And he’s still not practicing. At some point, the Dolphins need another body on the field at the position.
Toward that end, the Dolphins brought four cornerbacks in for tryouts on Thursday.
Via Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald, they looked at Lafayette Pitts, Trevor Williams, Alexander Myers, and KJ Sails.
It’s unclear when and if the Howard standoff will end. He’s not happy with the contract he signed two years ago, a five-year extension that gave him decent short-term money but that he has since outperformed. If a trade happens, the new team would have to be willing both to give Howard what he wants and to give the Dolphins a sufficient trade package.
The easiest path would involve working things out in Miami, where only half of that equation would need to be addressed. The Dolphins, however, have yet to recognize that they dangled a contract in 2019 that looked good on the surface but that had real flaws. It was enough to get Howard to bite, and his ascension coupled with the passage of time have exposed how bad of a deal it was.
So the Dolphins can either continue to refuse to relent, or they can recognize that this situation flows directly from the situation they helped create by luring Howard to sign a team-friendly contract two years ago — and they can fix the situation.
If another team becomes willing to pay Howard what he wants and to trade for Howard, the message to Miami becomes clear. They should just pay him what he wants and keep him on the team.
