The Miami Dolphins added a quarterback to their roster on Wednesday that has significant experience and has a connection to head coach Mike McDaniel.

Unfortunately, it’s a move that happened about a month too late.

The team announced on Wednesday that it added QB C.J. Beathard to the practice squad, along with WR Tarik Black.

Beathard has been in the league since 2017, when he was drafted in the 3rd round by the San Francisco 49ers.  He spent his first four seasons with the Niners, where Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel was the run game coordinator.  He served as Trevor Lawrence’s backup over the last three seasons in Jacksonville.  He has a career mark of 60.4 completion percentage for 3886 yards and 19 touchdowns with 14 interceptions in 32 career games with 13 starts.

Beathard surely isn’t going to come in and give you starter material, but that’s not what the Dolphins need right now with Tua Tagovailoa set to return to practice this week and likely play on Sunday.  And that’s not what the Dolphins needed back five weeks ago.

They needed someone who could give them simply average quarterback play.  That would surely have been enough to win against Indianapolis last Sunday, and it might have been enough to help keep them in games against Tennessee and Seattle that got away from them in the second half, mostly due to a completely incapable offense stemming from inept QB play.  None of Snoop Huntley – who the team added back on September 17 – Skylar Thompson, or Tim Boyle have been able to do anything to help generate a passing attack with arguably the best WR duo in the league.

The Dolphins surely hope they’ve gotten their QB position settled for the rest of the season with Tua back, but with his concussion history, that’s a very unknown proposition.  They hope they don’t have to find out what they have in Beathard, but it’s very likely at least as good as their other options and quite possibly better.

Too bad that realization wasn’t made earlier.