AFC East Notes: Dolphins, Tannehill, Suh, Pats

New Dolphins head coach Adam Gase is giving Ryan Tannehill more freedom to change plays and making more of the playbook available to him at the line of scrimmage, backup Matt Moore tells Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald.

“Maybe it’s not the entire playbook but there’s a lot of things we can get to very quickly,” Moore said. “[Gase] really instills in your mind that if there’s something you don’t like, you can get into it or out of it at your will. We have a lot of answers to a lot of different looks. If Ryan sees something he likes, it’s very easy to get to it. That’s probably the biggest thing…The whole offense can be done at the line of scrimmage. It’s very simple to get from one thing to another. In other offenses, it’s small packages or a couple plays here or there. Everything is on the table at all times [now].”

Here’s more from the AFC East:

• Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap ran down the best and worst contracts on the Dolphins. The best deal on the team, he says, is the team’s deal with strong safety Reshad Jones. Miami inked Jones to a four-year, $28MM deal back in 2013 with $15MM guaranteed. It turned out to be a very team-friendly deal and, of course, Jones was holding out earlier this offseason in an effort to get out of it and draw up a new deal. Ultimately, however, Jones caved and returned to the team midway through the June minicamp. Fitzgerald’s only criticism of the deal isn’t really a criticism at all – he says Miami in hindsight should have made it a five-year pact rather than a four-year agreement.
• On the flipside, Fitzgerald says that Ndamukong Suh‘s six-year, $114.375MM deal with $59.95MM guaranteed is the deam’s worst deal. In fact, he believes that the deal could go down as one of the worst in NFL history when all is said and done. Even if Suh is the best veteran defensive tackle in the NFL, he’s still arguably the worst value in the league at this exorbitant rate, Fitzgerald argues.
• Brandon Marshall has a new four-year deal, worth $8MM in average annual value with the Broncos and Phil Perry of CSNNE.com wonders how that might impact the deals that Patriots linebackers Dont’a Hightower and Jamie Collins can expect in the near future. Perry notes that the advanced metrics have been very impressed with the work of both players. Collins graded out as the No. 5 linebacker in the league in 2015, according to Pro Football Focus, and was No. 6 in the year prior. Hightower, meanwhile, was ranked at No. 10 and No. 5, respectively, in those years. Since his rookie season in 2012, Hightower has never graded below No. 24, according to PFF.
• Bills owner Terry Pegula told WGR 550 that the NFL has asked him about his plans to build a new stadium. “Obviously, we’ll look into that,” he said (link via ESPN.com’s Mike Rodak). He added that he listens to other owners’ thoughts but, ultimately, he’ll make his “own judgment.”