What is up, Dahl fans?

And welcome to the Drive Time podcast.

And on today's show, we're finally going to get into the capsules.

Number one is live, the safety class.

We're going to go top down on the defense and talk about what I think is a very exciting safety class in both the draft

and in free agency and find out how we can help fix this football team for 2026 and beyond.

Let's get right to it.

Let's go ahead and jump into the safety class here.

And we start, as we always do in these capsules.

We're going to talk about the Dolphins current roster, what's out there in free agency,

what's out there in the draft and how it might look in 2026. And we start with the Dolphin Snapshot here. Lots of ups and downs at this position last season with Minka Fitzpatrick coming over and playing rock solid positions, both at safety and in the nickel. then a bit of a mixture of Ifima LaFanwu,

Ashton Davis, both those guys are unrestricted free agents and Dante Trader, with the veterans getting the bulk of the work down the stretch at that position. Both those UFAs, to me,

seem like guys that probably wouldn't be priorities to be brought back, while Minka and Trader under contract here with Trader for three years, Mika for a couple as well.

So you know exactly what you have in one of those guys in Minka.

I mean, intelligent, playmaking, athletic, multiple position player that can really flex what this defense does best in its versatility.

And another one who showed you he's a solid special teamer had some moments this year at the

safety spot, but going to have to get back in the playbook here.

And I think that when he does that, when Dante Trader has a full off season to commit himself,

I think he could play his way into like a big nickel role, kind of that third safety who gets, you know, not the entire bulk of the workload, but a good mix of special teams and sub-package work in the Stolphins defense. But I think he's the kind of guy that will maximize his talent level, which may be a little bit limited in terms of upside. But I think he could well earn that role as the big nickel. And then the other big question on this position on the roster, and really across the entire roster, is who's going to be Minka's counterpart? Or if there is a decision to, you know, mutually part with Minka because I know Minka wants to play for a winner. Is that going to be here? We don't know. And we'll see what happens with that in terms of whether or not he's brought back into the fold at his current contract, whatever that might look like. If you bring Minka back, you know you've got a rock solid player back there. But what do you pair next to him? Because to me, that's been one of the biggest issues on this football team for the last couple of years, whether it was Ashton Davis playing the bulk of the workload, or Jordan Poyer the year prior, or Javon Holland for that matter, or going back to when Brandon Jones was coming off the injury and he wasn't playing his best ball in the Vic Fangio defense. Miami's safety position has been wanting for a few years now. This is a great spot, I think, to add some

youth. I think you could do it very early in this draft. And there are some big names ticketed for

free agency, which typically because of that, and this was the case last year as well, you get

some cheaper contracts back there. Now, Trayvon Merrig got the bag from Carolina. He was a guy we talked

...