On Sunday, the Miami Dolphins made a switch with the Houston Texans who switched from DE Shaq Lawson to Pro Bowler 2018 Benardrick McKinney, according to several reports. The deal also included an exchange of options from the last round.
Lawson was one of Miami’s biggest free agent hires last year, as he was hired to help be a consistent racing fighter and occasionally pass rusher. Lawson’s first season in Miami was similar to the beginning of his career, when he played for Buffalo Bills. He ended the season with 32 tackles, 4 sacks, 18 QB hits, 1 forced fumble and 1 fumble recovery (statistics courtesy of Pro-Football-Reference.com). He was a solid contributor to the team, but he was not a decisive defensive talent.
In exchange for Lawson, Miami is hosting McKinney, who was elected to the Pro Bowl in 2018. That season, McKinney had 105 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 1 interception and 7 defended passes. He had similar numbers in 2019, but did not get the same national recognition. In 2020, McKinney suffered a shoulder injury that made him miss most of the regular season. With this exchange, the Dolphins are betting that McKinney can recover from his shoulder injury and put him in another dominant year as an internal defender.
With regard to the impact of this trade on the draft, Miami seems to have solved one of its defense problems by taking the draft of a quality internal linebacker when healthy. Many mocks chose Miami with a defensive player in their choice of runoff and many targeted an EDGE rusher, like Gregory Rousseau or Kwity Paye, or an internal linebacker like Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.
With that move, and before any other free agent dominoes start to fall, I could see that pushing Miami to hit one of the biggest rushers with 18 in total. If McKinney could recover from his shoulder injury, Miami would be getting a quality internal linebacker at his peak (he is 28 years old) who could really thrive with Jerome Baker as his running mate and Andrew Van Ginkel flying over the edge of this defense. If Miami were to add a Paye or Rousseau to it, its linebacking corps could be one of the most complete units in the league.
Miami must still try to direct a development perspective to the internal linebacker later in the draft, but this change changes the perspective expected for Miami’s draft plans on days one and two of the next draft.