![\"Miami](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1862621828-e1773941870619.jpg\")
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The Dolphins signed a former Atlanta Falcons key contributor<\/p>\n
The Miami Dolphins<\/a> are currently projected to have a tough 2026 season after their offseason decisions have resulted in many of the team\u2019s top players departing to new teams.The moves will provide the Dolphins with salary cap relief over the next few years, along with increased draft capital following the Jaylen Waddle trade<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from losing signature players like Tyreek Hill, Tua Tagovailoa, Jaylen Waddle, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Bradley Chubb, the Dolphins have also lost specialty players like their fullback and their primary special teams players.<\/a> In their place, Miami has opted to sign veterans at a lower cost.<\/p>\n Despite this, the Dolphins will aim for competitiveness on the 2026 roster.New head coach Jeff Hafley emphasized the culture of competition. He said<\/a>, \u201cThe culture of competition, hard work, resilience and love for each other will bounce off the walls of this place day in and day out to where you can\u2019t deny what we\u2019re about.\u201d Now, Miami has signed another player who will be getting ready to compete for a starting job next season.<\/p>\n Miami Dolphins Sign Punter<\/p>\n NFL Network insider Mike Garafolo <\/a>reported that the Miami Dolphins had signed punter Bradley Pinion. Pinion spent the last four seasons with the Falcons<\/a>, where he averaged 46.2 yards per punt.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pinion signed a one-year contract with the Falcons prior to the 2022 season, and was then re-signed on a three-year, $8.6 million contract. He has spent 11 seasons in the NFL<\/a>, where he has earned over $20.9 million in his career, according to Spotrac.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Pinion is the second punter the Dolphins have signed in free agency, as they also signed former UFL punter Seth Vernon<\/a> to a two-year contract. Last season, Vernon was the punter for the Michigan Panthers<\/a> of the UFL, before the league decided to leave Michigan. He punted 23 times for the Panthers, averaging 45.4 yards. Vernon has never appeared in a regular-season NFL game, while Pinion has 179 games of experience.<\/p>\n After averaging back-to-back seasons with 47.0 yards per punt, Pinion\u2019s average went down last season as he averaged 45.1 yards per punt. However, he did have a career-high 53.1% of his punts land inside the 20.<\/p>\n Punter Competition<\/p>\n Regarding the upcoming punter competition, Sports Illustrated\u2019s Alain Poupart wrote<\/a>, \u201cPinion is much more likely to be on the roster in 2026 because his competition in camp will be former UFL punter Seth Vernon.\u201d<\/p>\n Poupart added, \u201cHe\u2019s coming off a productive 2025 season where he had 34 punts inside the 20 against only three touchbacks, a better than 11-to-1 ratio that was the fourth-best in the league.<\/p>\n Pinion also had kickoff experience and handled that role for a time with the Falcons last season before, ironically, Gonzalez came on the scene and took over that assignment.<\/p>\n The arrival of Pinion also means a Dolphins-Falcons punter swap because Jake Bailey left Miami this offseason for Atlanta when he signed a three-year contract and, of course, special teams coordinator Craig Aukerman also made the Miami-to-Atlanta move this offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tJose Esquer<\/a> Jose Esquer is a Mexican-American sportswriter and communications student based in San Diego, CA. His work spans football, basketball, baseball, and soccer. He has written for platforms like RotoWire and DolphinsTalk. You can find him on Twitter\/X @JEsquer8, usually talking Dolphins, world football, or both. More about Jose Esquer<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMore Heavy on Dolphins\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tLoading more stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty The Dolphins signed a former Atlanta Falcons key contributor The Miami Dolphins are currently projected to have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-198121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}