Front office pushes hard after 53-man cutdown
The Miami Dolphins reopened their roster just hours after finalizing a 53-man roster, making seven waiver claims Monday and adding Malik Herring to the active roster as the club continues to hunt for pieces ahead of the season.
The signing of Malik Herring to Miami’s active roster is an official team move. Tennessee released Herring during final roster cuts on Aug. 30, and the Dolphins moved quickly to add him to the group brought to South Florida in the wake of cutdown day.
The Phinsider reported that Jon-Eric Sullivan made the seven waiver claims Monday — the most of any team this week — and that he stayed busy afterward compiling Miami’s initial practice squad for the season. Yardbarker’s early rundown of the additions underscored the scale of the overhaul, noting that Miami’s early wave of moves included a 2026 fifth-round rookie picked up on waivers.
Who arrived, who was let go
Yardbarker’s list of waiver claims headlined 2026 fifth‑round rookie tight end Justin Joly. The outlet also noted the Dolphins supplemented those waiver claims by signing defensive end Malik Herring to their active roster after he was released by the Tennessee Titans.
Those inbound moves came alongside a wave of releases. The Phinsider reported that the club cut a number of players during the reduction, including Mark Gronowski and Jalen Reagor among others. The turnover represented a noticeable shakeup to the bottom portion of the roster in the immediate aftermath of cutdown day.
Yardbarker noted that, taken together, roughly 15% of Miami’s 53-man roster was replaced in this early round of post-cutdown activity — an aggressive rate of churn as the front office re-evaluates depth and fits.
Roster construction under the new regime
The moves come as Miami’s front office, operating under a new regime, has been active in early roster construction — trimming the roster to 53 players, making seven waiver claims and signing Malik Herring while compiling its initial practice squad.
The Dolphins’ initial 53-man roster lasted less than 24 hours before these major changes began, a rapid succession of transactions that illustrates how fluid the team’s personnel picture remains. The Dolphins’ coverage noted the pace of transactions and suggested the team has been particularly active in seeking players who fit the vision the staff wants to build.
The Miami Dolphins’ reporting also presented an opinion that the club “appears to be taking that process particularly seriously,” a characterization of the front office’s urgency during this phase of roster construction.
What Malik Herring brings and expectations for new additions
While the team officially signed Malik Herring, the organization’s reporting emphasized that Herring brings championship experience, having spent time with multiple Super Bowl-winning teams in Kansas City — a trait that adds veteran postseason seasoning to a roster with a younger core. The Dolphins’ write-up described Herring’s arrival as a targeted move, saying the club “moved quickly once [he] became available.”
The team also projected that Herring will now get an opportunity to show Miami why the front office was eager to bring him aboard, framing the addition as both a short-term depth move and a chance for the player to compete for a role in the new scheme.
Immediate implications and roster flexibility
The scale and velocity of Miami’s activity — seven waiver claims and an immediate free-agent signing following cutdown day — signal a willingness to continuously tinker with the bottom third of the roster. With Jon-Eric Sullivan overseeing waiver work and practice-squad construction, the Dolphins have signaled that the post-cutdown period will be a working process rather than a pause until the regular season.
Yardbarker’s reporting that the Dolphins effectively picked up a fifth-round-level rookie on waivers underscores how teams can use the waiver wire to acquire cost-controlled, draft-grade talent without spending draft capital — a useful tool for a club managing significant dead-cap burdens.
As the Dolphins move players in and out, the practice squad and depth pieces will likely be the chief areas of experimentation. The combination of financial constraints and a new regime’s roster preferences gives Miami latitude to cycle players quickly in search of fits the staff deems compatible with its plans.
For now, the sequence of additions and cuts is a clear signal: the Dolphins are still actively shaping the roster, and the first 53-man list was only the beginning of a fast-moving personnel process.
