Questions surrounding Miami Dolphins this offseason

Only one team gets a chance to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy after the Super Bowl. So, for the rest of the 31 other NFL teams, they’re attempting to find a way to reach the ultimate pinnacle of the league.

Unfortunately for the Miami Dolphins, they are in the boat with the 31 other teams looking to improve their team this offseason. In their final press conference of the season, Dolphins head coach Adam Gase, general manager Chris Grier and executive vice president Mike Tannenbaum spoke to reporters and didn’t give a lot of clarity on possible positions the team will be targeting this offseason.

“For us, the process now starts (with) evaluating our own players,” Tannenbaum said. “I think an underrated aspect of building a team, something that (General Manager) Chris (Grier), Adam and I talk about all the time is to try to correctly evaluate your own. For us, we haven’t really even begun that process. We’re going to take the next couple of weeks to thoroughly evaluate our roster and that’ll help set our game plan moving forward.”

Miami had one of the best turnarounds in the league this season as they finished 6-10 in 2015 and even began this season 1-4. They would end the season winning nine out of their 11 games to finish 10-6 and qualifying for the playoffs. Last weekend, the Dolphins were steamrolled by the Steelers 30-12 to end their season as the game wasn’t an indication of how lopsided the score was.

Now the Dolphins will need to determine what positions they will target during the offseason and in April’s NFL Draft. Even though the team has many needs, their first major decision may be if the team releases veteran left tackle, Branden Albert.

Last year, the Dolphins selected Laremy Tunsil with the 13^th pick in the draft. Instead of placing Tunsil at left tackle where Albert plays, the team moved him to left guard and he did a solid job shoring up the left side.

Miami can gain a little over $7 million in cap space by releasing the 32-year-old Albert and moving Tunsil over to left tackle, his natural position. When asked about that, Tannenbaum and Gase wouldn’t commit to Albert being on the roster next season.

“We’re still going through … We haven’t even started our evaluation process of what we went through this year,” Gase said. “I’m still in the process of meeting with our position coaches (and) coordinators. I’ll see how things shake out for the next few days. Our guys are going to take some time off and then when we come back, we’re going to evaluate really what happened through the entire year. We want to make sure that we give all of our guys that fair shake of not just focusing on the last couple of games but the entire season and what they accomplished – whether it be started off strong, didn’t finish as well, had a good middle of the season, had a strong end of the season.”

If the Dolphins were to release Albert, they would need to find two starting guards on their offense instead of just one on the right side because Jermon Bushrod is an unrestricted free agent. Other positions the Dolphins will possibly look at in free agency and the draft will likely include linebacker, defensive end and possibly defensive tackle. Miami’s rushing defense finished 30^th in the league as they allowed an average of 140.4 on the ground.

Along with attempting to upgrade their talent, Miami will also need to make a final decision on former 2013 third overall pick Dion Jordan.

According to the Miami Herald, Jordan has “played his last game for the Dolphins.” Jordan was suspended twice in 2014 as he missed six games that season for testing positive illegal substances and recorded 20 tackles ad one sack in the 10 games he played. Then he was suspended for the entire 2015 season and did not play in 2016 as he was on NFI the entire season.

Tannenbaum was very mum on Jordan’s future with the Dolphins.

“He’s still under contract with us,” Tannenbaum said. “He finished the season on NFI (non-football injury list) and that’s where he is, as of now.”

Twitter: @antwanstaley