Are the Dolphins in on the Tom Brady sweepstakes?

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It’s currently looking like Tom Brady will be choosing (and perhaps has chosen) between the Buccaneers and the Chargers. But it’s hard to completely dismiss the Dolphins.

Rumors of Brady to Miami percolated throughout January. Some thought that owner Stephen Ross would, after hosting the Super Bowl, be selling the team to Bruce Beal, who has contractual dibs on buying it. Beal would have then signed Brady and, separately, sold Brady and his wife, Gisele Bundchen, a slice of the franchise.

Ross threw water on that talk on the Friday before the Super Bowl, saying he won’t be selling the team and raising the question of why Brady would want to play for a rebuilding franchise. Coach Brian Flores echoed the latter sentiment last month at the Scouting Combine; the Dolphins are rebuilding, why would Brady want to play here?

Now that he’s looking for a new home and with no clear-cut, obvious choice for 2020 that would put him on the fast track for a Super Bowl appearance (the Chargers compete with the Chiefs in the AFC West, and the Bucs are a middle-of-the-pack franchise in a top-heavy conference), would Miami make sense?

His wife surely would welcome living there, due to the fashion industry and the proximity to her native country of Brazil. And to the extent that Brady’s exit from New England contains any hard feelings toward coach Bill Belichick, playing for the Dolphins would give Brady a chance to stick it to Belichick, twice per year.

Then there’s the familiarity with coach Brian Flores, who presumably has begun implementing the Patriot Way. Which will make the transition less jarring for Brady, who won’t have the benefit of an offseason program in order to get up to speed with a new team.

The Dolphins are spending money (signing cornerback Byron Jones, tackle Ereck Flowers, and linebacker Kyle Van Noy) and they have more than enough draft picks to keep adding to the team’s young nucleus. They could even draft a guy like Tua Tagovailoa and let him learn from Brady over the next year or two (or three), with more than enough draft picks to address other areas of need.

So why would Brady want the Dolphins? Why not? It could be the best place not necessarily to win now, but to win eventually. And to deliver losses to Belichick along the way.