The collaboration between Ryan Tannehill and Adam Gase went as well as anyone could have expected last year. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The Miami Dolphins broke a seven-year playoff drought in Adam Gase’s first season as head coach, bouncing back impressively from a 1-4 start. The team was eviscerated by Pittsburgh in the Wild Card round, but that shouldn’t diminish the achievement of qualifying for the postseason. An optimistic fan would say this is an ascending franchise led by a clever young coach, anchored by a foundational running back.

However, a more pessimistic observer might point out that the Dolphins actually finished with a negative point differential last season (-17) and they were fortunate to pull off a series of narrow wins against terrible teams. But [profane] those guys. Let’s not focus on the doubters just now. The fact is, it’s damn tough to win 10 games in the NFL, regardless of a team’s strength of schedule. Miami deserves plenty of credit.

Quarterback Ryan Tannehill established new career bests in completion percentage (67.1), yards per attempt (7.7), passer rating (93.5) and touchdown rate (4.9) last season, but to some extent those numbers were a product of game script. Gase kept his QB in game-manager mode for most of the season, particularly after Miami’s dreadful start. Tannehill attempted only 3.2 deep passes per game last year, one of the lowest rates in the league. The offense’s conservatism didn’t do much to prevent turnovers; Tannehill was intercepted on a career worst 3.1 percent of his attempts. And his season ended in Week 14 due to a partially torn ACL and sprained MCL.

Tannehill’s season ended in Week 14 due to a partially torn ACL and sprained MCL, but he avoided surgery and, according to Gase, he now “moves around fine.” He should be good to go when camp opens.

The essential problem with Tannehill is that, at this stage, he’s well entrenched in the Schaub Zone — or, if you prefer, the Alex Smith Zone. He’s clearly good enough to win regular season games at the controls of a talented offense, yet he’s pretty clearly not good enough to elevate a team from playoff-caliber to Super Bowl challenger. It’s an issue. For fantasy purposes, Tannehill remains only a streaming option for standard league players. He’s the guy you might consider when your usual starting QB is on a bye.

If you want to make the case that Tannehill can make a sudden jump in value, you should build it around the fact that Miami offers a quality receiving corps and year-to-year continuity on offense.

Another year, another round of DeVante Parker hype

Yup, ‘fraid so. Parker possesses size, speed and obvious athletic talent, and he enters his third pro season having been hyped and re-hyped. He made a respectable statistical jump from year one (26-494-3) to year two (56-744-4), and he’s America’s sleeper entering 2017. Miami’s coaches and beat writers have promoted him endlessly, as if they were trying to build up his fantasy trade value. Parker reportedly dedicated himself to better habits, both on and off-field. Fantasy owners aren’t exactly paying an expectant price, at least in Yahoo leagues (ADP 100.7), so he’s a player to covet in the mid-rounds. If his targets were to increase from 90 last year to, say, 120 or 125, he’d almost certainly produce a 1000-yard, 6-TD season. That’s WR2-level performance at the cost of a WR4.

View photos DeVante Parker enters another season as a well-hyped breakout candidate. (Photo by Eric Espada/Getty Images) More

If Parker is going to take another step forward, then it will likely happen at the expense of Kenny Stills. It’s tough to imagine Stills repeating his 2016 touchdown total (9) on volume similar to what he saw last season (81 targets). He’s a big-play receiver tied to a small-play passing game, which hardly seems great. No player consistently converts 21 percent of his catches into touchdowns. He can’t be drafted anywhere near his positional finish last season.

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