| Projected Record | 12-5, 2 playoff wins |
| Weighted DVOA Offense (2022) | 10th |
| Weighted DVOA Defense (2022) | 13th |
| Early Down DVOA (2022) | 1st Down – 2nd, 2nd Down – 19th |
| Explosive Play Rate (2022) | Offense – 5th (Run 14th, Pass 5th), Defense – 10th (Run 15th, Pass 7th) |
| Key Additions | Mike White QB, Braxton Berrios WR, Robbie Chosen WR, Tyler Kroft TE, Isaiah Wynn OL, David Long Jr. LB, Eli Apple CB, Jalen Ramsey CB, DeShon Elliott S, Jake Bailey P |
| Key Departures | Teddy Bridgewater QB, Trent Sherfield WR, Mike Gesicki TE, Cethan Carter TE, Adam Shaheen TE, Hunter Long TE, Eric Fisher OT, Brandon Shell OT, Greg Little OT, Michael Deiter IOL, Elandon Roberts LB, John Jenkins IDL, Melvin Ingram EDGE, Trey Flowers EDGE, Sam Eguavoen LB, Byron Jones CB, Clayton Fejedelem S, Eric Rowe S, Clayton Fejedelem S, Thomas Morstead P |
| Rookies to Watch | De’Von Achane RB, Cam Smith CB |
| Early Injury Report | Jalen Ramsey CB, Robert Jones IOL, Elijah Campbell DB |
Quarterback
When I started the 2022 season, I was optimistic on Tua Tagovailoa: I believed that Mike McDaniel would bring a ground game and improve efficiency through the Shanahan system that would allow Tua to keep his aDOT* low but efficient, unlocking more variety from Jaylen Waddle and building from the ground up. Then, the team traded for Tyreek Hill, and I believed that they would utilize him to create horizontal space far more than running wind sprints down the field (still, by the way, proving Tua had something in the tank as a deep passer). I could not have predicted that I would be writing about the #1 rated passer in the league last year. It’s thrilling to have a real QB in Miami, officially putting together the best season since the retirement of Dan Marino. The kid made good. Tua was spectacular in so many passing metrics that it’s hard to compile them all. PFF ranked him in the 94th percentile out of clean pockets and on standard dropbacks. He ranked in the 95th on 1st and 2nd down (in no small part thanks to obscene 55 yard bombs on early downs) and without play action (wild considering…he threw obscene 55 yard bombs off of play action). These are stable metrics, typically repeatable from year to year. Can Tua do THAT again? Probably not: so many of his plays were made through catching defenses unaware, and defenses did indeed adjust in his final four games. But Tua’s play was no gimmick. He was also surprisingly good in some unstable metrics, which are less likely to repeat. He was in the 80th percentile under pressure and the 93rd on 3rd and 4th down. Where I think Tua may be more likely to repeat spectacularly in an unstable metric is on positively graded throws: Tua was in the 97th percentile in positively graded throws. Since Tua’s first game (a National Championship victory, of course), he has delivered positive plays over and over again. The root of his game is ice-water-in-the-veins accuracy that leaves defenses furious and scratching their heads. He’s certainly pissing off teams around the league who see a small kid with a below-average arm carving them to pieces. And what answers did defenses really have? Tua had the best passer rating against the blitz last year, and the 6th with no blitz. He had the 2nd best passer rating when pressured and the 5th when not. He was the BEST PLAYER IN THE LEAGUE by EPA/play when safeties rotated pre-/post-snap. The best! Safety rotation is the Vic Fangio staple, a key cog in the defense sweeping the league, and the Dolphins happen to have its kryptonite in Tua. Oh by the way, he was also 4th in EPA/play when safeties didn’t rotate. Teams did not know how to slow down the Dolphins offense, and Tua’s success was rarely halted.
Of course, it was halted, and therein hangs the balance of the entire Dolphins season. There are two questions that Tua must face this year, and they will not really be answered until the Dolphins are hoisting a Lombardi or sitting at home: Can Tua stay healthy and will defenses figure this thing out? The first question belongs to whatever higher power you subscribe to, and the extent to which genetics and history define a player. Tua has worked his body into new shapes and sizes throughout his football-playing career. He played lean (around 210, to prioritize mobility) and he played big (230, to maximize durability and strength). A hip injury in college that, without a successful surgery, might have meant the end of his career has left permanent narrative scars, both in national perception and in the reality of his play. He is no longer a future Russell Wilson, but is instead a mobile Drew Brees: Tua can improvise, he can move, he can deliver a shot play, but his throwing motion and confidence in scampering is forever altered. The national media, long before concussions even became a topic with Tua, were waiting for him to break again, and reported heavily on various ailments (thumb and ribs were the most of it). And then the concussions hit. Much has been written about how many concussions Tua may have had last year, but the big one, complete with fencing posture on a national stage, was haunting enough to change the league. He played through his second, falling to pieces on Christmas Day on another national stage. He was diagnosed the next day when McDaniel worried about what Tua was saying to him in the film room. The discourse here has been deafening. I find the pearl-clutching about head trauma in football somewhat maddening given the realities of the game: repeated and compounded traumas, for instance, are far more of a contributor to CTE than the scary play-stopping ones, and a guy like Tua is frankly less likely to develop CTE in his post-playing career than the average OL as a result. This is not a sport that can be morally justified. Tua has learned Jiu Jitsu, as much a leap of faith as thoughts and prayers or putting on 20 pounds. Maybe it will help, maybe it’s just one of those things people do to arm themselves for their reality; another mental game played by an athlete who cannot lose his edge or guarantee safety. I don’t know. The point of those 200 words is to say that I don’t know, that no one knows, and that we simply hope.
The second question, one of actual tactics, will be tougher to decode. Tua’s last great game came against the Browns in week 10, throwing for 285 yards and 3 TDs to no INTs. Off the bye, he was fine against the Texans, but a team without Terron Armstead began to crumble. By the 49ers game, Tua was struggling, with future Texans coach DeMeco Ryans declaring that enough was enough in terms of letting the Dolphins run 20-yard concepts across the middle. He sent the most athletic MLB in the league flying back into the zone, and the underneath passes did not develop in the manner necessary to keep Tua from the teeth of a great pass rush. In the next week, Brandon Staley went nuttier, having his corners physically force an outside release from the great Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, simply refusing to let them run horizontal concepts. Tua connected on a stellar 9 route for a TD, but otherwise played one of the worst games of his career, going 10 for 28. He improved against Buffalo, but a wild weather game made that improvement mostly marginal: the Bills defense played strong contain on the concepts that got them early in the season and Tua had to drop his average depth of target wildly low. The team lost after the weather hit at exactly the wrong time. In his final game, great play concepts put the Dolphins up by 3 scores before another (potentially 3rd) concussion ended his season. Tua threw 3 INTs in succession in a loss. And that was it. So is he figured out? The Dolphins clearly understand that both the Chargers and 49ers hit at a real weakness: Raheem Mostert has been instructed to prepare to catch passes, and the Dolphins added De’Von Achane and Braxton Berrios to ensure the 49ers strategy never works again. Waddle and Hill are surely working with Tua to make sure they have outside releases ready to counter man press. Tua didn’t attempt a single back shoulder throw last year on a vertical route because why would you with the skills your receivers have? If Tua answers those two questions with a solid affirmative (another statistical season like this, with no health concerns), then he will be crowned in Miami. It’s nice to dream.
Coaching
It’s impossible to point to just one coaching decision that I loved in 2022. Mike McDaniel showed mastery up and down the field over the season as the play caller in Miami. This is the first offensive mind of many the Dolphins have hired post-Shula to truly shake up the league. Mike McDaniel’s offense begins with the conceit that, as effective as RPOs and schemed crossers have been in the league, they left meat on the bone with the deep ball. This evolution has been years in the making: the West Coast offense, accepted by all coaches now as the most efficient way to run a passing game and accepted enough the rules of the league changed to accommodate it, is predicated on the idea that route concepts should attack levels of the defense. Either you flood zones to compromise defenses or you get levels up and down the field to allow a QB to find the receiver who has beaten his man. In recent years, after the flooding of deep zones that absolutely nuked the Seattle-style Cover 3 defense was figured out and contained by defensive coordinators, teams have looked to redefine the West Coast offense with new concepts that take advantage of specific new trends. Do you have a dominant running QB like Jalen Hurts or Lamar Jackson? Scheme up looks that specifically threaten designed QB runs every time, attack the edges of the defense in your running game, and feast on through the air on compromised LBs and safeties. Do you have a top tier RB? Invest in your offensive line and utilize the zone block scheme, which can easily translate to bootlegs and wide open looks for receivers (think Tennessee at their best). Do you have a college stud QB with a quick trigger? Incorporate college concepts, which involve many of the same levels of routes (drastically simplified) with a play action that can become a run just as easily, reducing the complexities of football to a set of predictable and binary decisions. The Dolphins have the last version, but despite running more RPOs than any team had ever attempted in 2021, their popgun 2021 offense was a failure against any team with a well-coached defense. Hell, I watched in-person as the COVID-decimated Saints gave them a run for their money on a Monday Night without 20 starters and even more coaches. Mike McDaniel entered in 2022 with a proposition: yes, Tua Tagovailoa is a point guard, and yes, his best bet for maximizing his health, his offensive line, and his best gifts is a strong quick passing game that builds around RPOs. McDaniel agreed with, and utilized, many of the concepts from the mostly-lost 2021 season, but the 2021 Dolphins used Jaylen Waddle for the kinds of underneath routes you see in the NFL, allowing him to set the rookie record for receptions while bringing him under 10 yards a catch. What if all those routes went at lightning speeds down the field? Instead of a 5 yard benchmark on a given route, what if it was a 10 yard benchmark? What if the 15 yard skinny post (you can think of Devante Parker running a million of them between 2019-2021) became a 25 yard over? McDaniel is not the first to think of this by any stretch: Jon Gruden had the Raiders offense humming by sending Henry Ruggs (a somewhat-inferior Waddle) over the top a feverish amount with his 2021 Raiders team. McDaniel IS the first to say “Okay, and let’s add some N02 to this baby with TWO RUGGSES!” Thus, the trade for Tyreek Hill. The trade was worth the steep price tag (a huge contract and five draft picks, including 3 top 100 picks) almost instantly, with Hill immediately buying into this notion of his usage. The Dolphins heat map for routes run is genuinely astonishing. Outside the numbers from 5-15 yards, the Dolphins have simply abandoned the pass. The back-shoulder throws that we watched Ryan Fitzpatrick effectively deliver over and over are just gone. It’s not that they aren’t targeted, I’m saying that they do not exist, despite teams giving a large amount of cushion to the speed threats. The Dolphins do not care for such passes, as they have WRs with speed derived from some kind of bewitched basketball like the MonStars. Think of how far Devante Parker (hate to keep picking on him, but he’s a good player that could not function in this system!) would be after 3 seconds: he’d be running his typical 15-yard dig, moving across the field with an eye to a cushion in the zone. The track stars don’t bother: within 3 seconds, they could be 30 yards down the field with ease. Through one season of alchemy, the Dolphins have a vertical passing attack: within 2 seconds, Tua can tell by defensive leverage if his guys have a step, and can throw the ball to an assigned spot LITERALLY FIFTY YARDS AWAY. QBs can make this throw, but as a designated Spot Throw with an anchor point, WRs aren’t typically anywhere near consistent enough to make this work as an offensive engine (think Mike Wallace and Ryan Tannehill for how it looks when it doesn’t work, think Aaron Rodgers and Marques Valdez-Scantling when it does). Mahomes did this to an extent with Hill, but those passes were often improvised. This is just the base offense. The BASE OFFENSE is that explosive. In the section above, I detailed how it could be “figured out” and when better defenses schemed against it. Tua and McDaniel must diagnose, decipher, and ultimately evolve the plan. The first areas of evolution to watch this year are the running game and how frequently passes underneath are utilized. The players acquired on offense are an attempt to gain chunk plays on routes and passes under 10 yards. It may make for a less exciting product, but that multiplicity will be essential to preserving the effectiveness of the deep ball. If corners play with exclusively inside leverage (meaning they have their back to Tua, as the Chargers did), then there can be interesting new wrinkles to the run game, the slot WR can find opportunities, and, in the red zone, Tua can make them pay with one of the prettiest corner balls in the league.
Oh, and Vic Fangio is here! The single most influential defensive coordinator in the league joins the team after they used Boss Ross’s deep pockets to entice the coach away from a 49ers reunion or a chance to helm the Eagles defense, who employed Fangio as a consultant. Both suitors offer assuredly more proven defenses, as the Dolphins discovered in 2022 (49ers) and will discover in 2023 (Eagles). Last year, the 49ers had the best defense in the league in DVOA while the Eagles were 6th. Both teams met in the NFC Championship game, with the Eagles running all over the QB-less 49ers. Fangio chooses, instead, to come to a team ranked 15th in DVOA, a classic middle-of-the-pack team looking to ascend by empowering a group of young players. The key to his choice is in money and perks, most likely, but after years of the Dolphins being used in bidding wars to up the price, actually winning with the highest bid is a welcome change. Fangio’s coaching history is absolutely unreal. He entered the league in 1986 and, unless anyone has some old newspaper clippings lying around, there’s not much to be seen from his time there. He coached LBs for 8 years, overlapping with the Dome Patrol, a vaunted unit that, in 1992, saw all 4 LBs in the 3-4 scheme make the Pro Bowl. Dom Capers, Fangio’s mentor and architect of the 3-4 Cover 2 scheme, was then given his own coaching opportunity with the expansion Carolina Panthers in 1995. Fangio came with him and received a promotion to Defensive Coordinator: in 1996, the Panthers inexplicably made an NFC Championship game in just their second season, with the defense utilizing Capers’s scheme to a 2nd place finish in DVOA. In Carolina, Capers and Fangio concocted a blitz scheme that would utilize a ton of movement from DBs and LBs, surely inspired by how good they could be with any member of the Dome Patrol sprinting head-on at QBs before the rules changed to protect QBs. After the Panthers could not climb back to the NFC Championship, the ownership cleaned house and Fangio leapt sideways to the Indianapolis Colts under Jim Mora Sr. of “PLAYOFFS?!” fame. He coached the defense every day against a young Peyton Manning, who tells a delightful story of throwing a small tantrum about Fangio’s defense holding all day during a practice (this was before teams hired their own daily refs) and finding wine and cheese left for him in his locker, a clear dig at the Fancy Boy rookie. Fangio denied ever doing it, but Manning swears up and down that Fangio was responsible. Fangio was not popular with ownership and, in his later years, Mora Sr. claimed that his refusal to fire Fangio under Jim Irsay’s orders was what led to his firing and the trade for Tony Dungy. Sometimes, everyone ends up where they need to be. At that point, it was back to the drawing board for Vic and Dom, and they wound up in a familiar situation: leading a new expansion team into the league. They were the founding DC and HC, respectively, of the Houston Texans. There, due to some rule changes to expansion teams set in place after surprising early success in Carolina, they immediately struggled to form a cohesive offense, with QB David Carr the recipient of a legendary beating that mostly ended his career. Their own defenses were middle of the pack in DVOA (20th, 24th, and 17th) before collapsing in the fourth year. They scattered again in 2006, with Capers taking the Dolphins DC job under Nick Saban and Fangio landing as a vaguely-titled assistant under Rex Ryan. Fangio’s movement concepts showed up plenty in Baltimore with Ryan, as Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, and Terrell Suggs all worked different levels of the field and provided the ability to blitz, disguise, and generally create havoc. Fangio was less of a blitzer as his career progressed, but Ryan loved a blitz, and the ideas in the building produced a league-best defense (1st in DVOA, and 13th, 3rd, and 5th in the Fangio years). During that time, Rex Ryan received the call-up to the Jets, and Fangio received a real title, LBs coach again. Then, something happened. Fangio was unexpectedly fired (again for a legend, this time Dean Pees, who has an insane name), and went straight to work with Jim Harbaugh, John’s brother. At the time, it seemed to be classic cronyism, but for a dust-up in 2021 where Fangio called John Harbaugh’s end-of-game play calls “kind of bullshit…Because I know how they operate, player safety is secondary to them.” John Harbaugh’s response that “I thought we were on good terms” kind of cements that something festered between the two. Fangio’s era of Grumpy Old Man began in 2010, now working with the Stanford Cardinal under a different Harbaugh, and following him to San Francisco.
At this point, I feel like we can talk about the Modern Era of Fangio. The 49ers were 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, and 10th in points allowed from 2011-2015. They were also top 10 in DVOA 3 of the 4 years. Fangio made lemonade out of lemons at times, with a rash of injuries breaking out during some of his best seasons. One personnel move foreshadows what Fangio needed to make his defense go: the 49ers traded up in the first round for S Eric Reid. Reid’s career was fairly consistent, most notable for his involvement in the collusion lawsuit with Colin Kaepernick, but the trade-up to 18 for a player many saw as a borderline-1st-rounder was an indication that the 49ers, and Vic Fangio, valued safety at a premium few other teams at that time were interested in paying. Over Fangio’s modern career, safeties with the ability to rotate with speed and precision, while also possessing the physicality to anchor a run defense with fewer LBs and lineman in the box than many other schemes, are key cogs in the defensive machine. Fangio would move from San Francisco (after he left with Harbaugh) to a shockingly strong run with terrible personnel in Chicago to his first, and likely only, head coaching gig in Denver. At these three stops, he coached a laundry list of Pro Bowl safeties, including Donte Whitner, Dashon Goldson, Antoine Bethea, Reid, Eddie Jackson, Justin Simmons, and (while consulting with the Eagles) Chauncey Gardner-Johnson. Fangio’s disciples produced similar results with their own safeties, many of whom made Pro Bowls as well. Fangio’s ultimate contributions to defensive football come through the safeties, who have become the answer to offensive mismatches. Why and how? Any good Madden player knows that the best defense to play is man coverage (if you have the better defense who can stuff and mirror routes) while you control a player in the middle (S or LB) to jump routes that are the most threatening to your defense. Those route threats include the deep crossers that McDaniel loves, the seam balls that annihilated the Seattle-Cover-3 scheme, and other speedy routes across the middle-deep and middle-intermediate part of the field. While old defensive systems asked athletic linebackers to drop into their zone, then turn and run with the routes, the NFL offensive explosion of the late-2000s and early-2010s required coordinators to get creative with their coverages. Fangio wants safeties buzzing into those pressure points while vacating other portions of the field to clog up and confuse QBs. Yes, you could beat this deep, throwing behind the last line of the defense. But as we Dolphins fans know from watching Tua play the worst game of his career in LA last year, there are ways to ensure you can buzz down into intermediate coverage without risk. Fangio spends his games going back and forth between mirrored coverages (both sides playing a cover 4) and split-coverages (cover 4 on one side, and cover 2 on the other for instance). He makes life difficult for the QB by making each and every coverage look essentially the same: two safeties up top at the beginning lead the QB to think he needs to look underneath or, God forbid, check to a run play. But then the defense explodes just pre- or post-snap into a variety of defenders buzzing all sorts of routes, the game plan customized by the other team’s personnel (are they fast? Is the RB a great pass catcher?) and tendencies (Does the team run a lot of motion? Does the QB have certain routes or concepts he likes?) It’s Belichickian in its ability to take away the thing you like to do most. The player who is assigned to be that “User-Controlled” player (to use Madden parlance) is called the hole player, and that player (depending on the coverage) can be any combination of linebacker or safety depending on personnel. Zach Thomas would be an absolute mind-melter in this system, able to fly to the ball if he’s assigned the RB or play as a master thief as the hole player. Credit to Shawn Syed for an excellent explainer on The Read Optional for breaking these concepts down into plain language.
This will probably be my longest section of the year, but when you have a coaching staff that now features two coaches who stand head and shoulders above the rest of the league in their history of play design, they deserve a robust explainer. Fangio’s defense, like McDaniel’s, adapts to personnel: who will the Dolphins consider their centerpieces in 2023? Will the Dolphins scale back on Fangio’s blitz packages because they trust that Jaelan Phillips and Bradley Chubb can win off of the edge or will they dial it up to help the LBs in run defense? Will Jevon Holland find himself down robbing routes or providing exquisite help over the top, and will that change when Jalen Ramsey returns to the team midseason? And, on offense, how will McDaniel change to ensure that Fangio’s proteges will not ruin his careful plans? They both get to find out each and every day, practicing against one another. This is the single most exciting staff since Nick Saban’s in 2005, with the most forward-thinking head coach since Don Shula. It’s going to be fun to watch.
Offense
What more needs to be said about Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle? There’s no route the two cannot run, as Waddle proved in 2021 before Hill even arrived. There’s no position they cannot occupy in the offense, and no speed gear humanly possible in football pads that they have not hit. They’re both fantastic after the catch, with Hill the shiftier of the two. Together, they put up almost 3,200 yards and 15 TDs: that yardage number was first in the league (and outside of Philly, where DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown were 100 yards behind, no one else in the league came close) and the 15 TDs were top 10 to my lazy eye (I didn’t calculate it out, but eyeballed TD numbers, so sue me. They were both top 20 individually, you do the math). The receivers occupy so much individual attention that their interplay creates a wild amount of frustration for defenses: which one will go over the top to end our lives a la the Ravens game (Tyreek) and which will be crossing the field on a deep intermediate that may just run through our defense a la Green Bay (Waddle)? No seemed to have a real answer, even with Tua’s injury. Some individual notes that are fun to consider: Waddle had 9.8 yards per catch in 2021 with Flores playing a Cooper Kupp role for a lesser play caller, but led the league in 2022 with 17.9 yards per catch. Just for fun, I went back and looked at Randy Moss’s 24 TD season in 2007 and he averaged 15.1 yards per catch on a 17 yard average depth of target. So then, out of curiosity, I went to see which other WRs averaged 17.9 or more yards per catch on more than Waddle’s 78 catches. The list: Steve Smith in his prime in 2008 (18.3), Josh Gordon’s unforgettable 2013 (18.9), and (in an offense with OC Mike McDaniel) Deebo Samuel in 2021. Waddle’s season last year, when it can only be compared to three of the most memorable seasons of the century, seems somewhat underrated. Tyreek Hill was PFF’s best graded receiver, and had the most yards per route run (3.07) in the league, with the consensus best receiver in the league Justin Jefferson in 2nd place by a mile (2.55). Waddle was, incidentally, 4th with 2.46. With all due respect to the Marks Brothers, this was the best duo in Dolphins receiving history. We can go light on the other skill players: Braxton Berrios will enter as the favorite for significant time down the depth chart. Berrios is a short-pass and return specialist, with an average depth of target on his career of 6.5 yards and an average yards after catch mark of 6.2 yards. The latter mark, if Berrios qualified in 2022, would rank 6th and Berrios did indeed finish 10th in 2020. He’s a plus slot receiver. The other receiver of note is second-year Dolphins draft pick Erik Ezukanma, who is excellent after the catch with a combination of speed and power. Mike Gesicki is gone, replaced by Durham Smythe and Someone Else. Smythe is what he is, an above average blocker with sure hands but just 3 career TDs and little to offer as a receiver. Eric Saubert, the person I wrote about here in my draft version of the preview, was cut, and only Tyler Kroft and Julian Hill remain on the roster as candidates for the 2nd TE spot. Kroft was drafted in the 3rd round of the 2015 NFL Draft, but never quite lived up to billing as a receiver. He is a useful blocker, but has only topped 250 snaps in a season twice (2016 and 2017). Hill, an undrafted rookie from Campbell, is an interesting prospect: the routes he ran in preseason were basic block-and-release concepts for a handful of yards, but he was a piledriver in the run blocking game and on chip blocks. You may be sensing a theme. McDaniel, when asked at a press conference, said that keeping Hill over Elijah Higgins, a 6th round pick this year, was “more about Julian and less about Elijah.” It’s quite an endorsement, especially as five teams put in waiver claims for Higgins. At RB, a stable of players will be rotated in and out after the Jonathan Taylor deal with the Colts fell through due to Billionaire Derangement Syndrome. Jeff Wilson Jr. and Raheem Mostert were both re-signed. Mostert seems to be the favorite for the lead back, boasting a top 10 yards after contact per carry last year and PFF elusiveness score. Both backs were explosive at times, ending up 13th and 14th respectively in runs over 10 yards. Mostert has said he wants to be a better receiver, which would help with the underneath play that needs to evolve into the Dolphins pass game, as discussed above. De’Von Achane was also drafted in the 3rd-round and the 21-year-old may have an early role. He was an excellent speedster for Texas A&M and a surprisingly good tackle breaker considering he is tiny (5’8” 188), but he already experienced a shoulder injury in the preseason, raising questions about his play strength. We’ll see where he lines up. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Alec Ingold, who is useful in McDaniel’s agenda of deception. Ingold lines up all over the field, making him a poor man’s Kyle Juszczyk for the Dolphins, which throws off defensive tendencies. He had a nice year in pass protection and caught a career high 15 receptions in 2022, and just signed a deal today that makes him the highest paid FB outside of Juszczyk in terms of overall financial commitment.
On the offensive line, the Dolphins are still in slight purgatory. Terron Armstead is an absolute hero, a coach on the field who is as consistent as they come when he plays. Last year, he was not quite the same dominant force, but he allowed just 16 pressures in 14 games, including just 4 in 6 games after week 9. He’ll need to help anchor the run game a bit more, but the guy can only do so much. His problem remains, of course, injuries. He has never played 16 games, or even 1000 snaps, in a season despite multiple postseason runs. Still, Armstead earns his big contract when he is on the field: Armstead and Tua played 13 games together last year, and the team went 9-4 (two of those losses were games in which Tua was concussed, and Armstead wasn’t healthy from week 1 onward). Those games featured many of the best offensive performances of the year, including games against the Browns, Ravens, Bears, and Lions. We can virtually guarantee that Armstead and Tua will be on the field together during week 1 and, from there, it’s anyone’s guess. Center and RG are also set, with Connor Williams and Robert Hunt offering the team good snaps at each spot. Williams has been a locked-in starter since his final two years in Dallas, playing 1000 snaps in each of the last 3 years. He cleaned up his penalty issues from two years ago, when he had 17, to just 6 last year. If the Dolphins are serious about running the ball more and better, they’re lucky to have Williams, who was the third-best run blocking center behind standouts Creed Humphrey and Jason Kelce according to PFF. His 16 pressures allowed was also 12th best among centers who played at least half of their snaps, and only Kelce had as many pass blocking reps with fewer pressures. These stats give some indication as to why Williams was agitating for a new contract: with Miami or with a new team, he deserves it. One note: Williams did have two high snaps in preseason for the second straight year, but the bad snaps did not follow him in the 2022 regular season. Famous last words, I’m sure. Robert Hunt, PFF’s 11th ranked guard, was also solid with the Dolphins. An above-average player in both the pass and the run, he finally harnessed his athleticism to do something more than score an odd TD on a Thursday night. Hunt was 24th out of 54 qualifiers for pressures allowed, a decent mark considering the fact that he was often working with less-than-stellar tackle play next to him. His 12 penalties were tied for 2nd most in the league, and he needs to improve there. PFF ranked him 5th in run blocking, right behind Quinn Meinerz of Denver. All marks represent a new step in Robert Hunt’s career, and he enters a contract year with Williams. The team will have real choices to make next offseason. At that point, the offensive line becomes a murky proposition. At LG, I’d guess the favorite is Isaiah Wynn, the former Patriots standout. Wynn had some great years in New England, but always played under the specter of injury after tearing his Achilles in his rookie year. Patriots talk radio, when I was in Boston, had true loathing for Wynn, who does not quite meet the definition of Patriot Way due to his availability issues and rumored attitude issues. If Wynn is serious about a career renaissance, the Phins can use him. His best year was 2020, his second year in the league, when he allowed just 16 pressures at LT. At that point, he was seen as a franchise player before lower body injuries relegated him to expendable when his contract expired, and the Patriots declined his fifth-year option. In 2022, he slid into guard a bit, but mostly played RT and looked slow. At 6’2” 310 pounds, Wynn is not necessarily a quick mover, and will need to show that he’s back to his college level of physicality and technique to earn more than just a year in Miami. At RT, it seems Austin Jackson is indeed back for one last nightmarish go-around. His stats have been bandied about for years as a show of just how futile one player can be. After getting his first shot as a starting LT in 2020, Jackson proceeded to allow 87 pressures over his first two years despite moving to the easier guard spot in year 2 and only taking about 1250 snaps of pass blocking. Last year, his first with Mike McDaniel and accompanied by the hope that comes with a new coach, Jackson was injured in the only two games he played, both times with an ankle injury. In his only full game against the Texans, he allowed 6 pressures and seemed determined to get Tua killed. If Jackson actually wanted Tua dead, that would provide some comfort, as it would explain why the light never turned on for the talented project out of USC. The RT experiment will likely continue. The fly in the ointment for Jackson is that early reports suggest that Kendall Lamm is performing quite well in training camp against the talented Dolphins pass rushers. Lamm has been solid off the bench through his career and, in Miami, he played a pressureless half against the Patriots in week 17. Lamm appears to be Armstead Insurance right now, and will look to prove that he can play RT, which he has not done consistently since 2016 with Texans (incidentally, he was pretty good!) In summary, Mike McDaniel has some great pieces to work with (LT, QB, WR) and some real question marks (LG, TE, RT), which places the team fairly similar to last year when they finished with excellent efficiency numbers.
Defense
While the Dolphins offense will strive to cover up some holes, this defense seems to feature no holes whatsoever. I mean seriously, barring injury, this defense is stacked. I mean SERIOUSLY, they signed one of the best CBs in the league, he got injured, and I quite literally forgot that happened before writing this section. We can start with Jalen Ramsey, who would be seen as a clear All-Pro candidate if not for a torn meniscus. Ramsey’s game has evolved over his years in the league, and he has been both remarkably durable and versatile over that time. When he entered the league in 2016, Ramsey was instantly thrust into a starting role, holding opponents well under 60% targeting his area. In his second year, PFF listed him as the 2nd best coverage player among all corners, as he broke up 12 passes, gathered 5 INTs, and made 58 tackles with the 5th most defensive stops from the corner position in the league. Teams attempted to target him vertically in man and paid the price. Ramsey’s coverage score naturally moved up and down, as many CBs do in the league, but his tackling improved and, most notably, he transitioned into what colleges call the Star role. The Star is like a nickel player, but also serves as a movable chess piece into any position or alignment. With the Rams in 2021, Ramsey played 737 snaps out wide, 341 as a nickel, and 153 as a box safety. He hoovered up a career-best 74 tackles, picked off 4 passes, and had a career high 15 pass breakups. Ramsey is the perfect player for such a role, one coveted by the Fangio defense. The Dolphins traded for Ramsey this offseason after the Rams began to come apart and needed to dump salary, acquiring him for the low price of a 3rd-round pick and former 3rd-round pick Hunter Long. 2022 was also a tough year for Ramsey, seemingly slowed down by injury and allowing 67% of passes to be completed and 7 TDs to be scored. Those TDs also looked quite bad, especially on the Thursday Night Week 1 primetime game when Ramsey allowed 5 for 6 to be completed for 2 TDs and 103 yards. After that game, though, Ramsey was far better, sliding into the 3rd best CB PFF grade thanks to his run defense and pass rushing, as well as improved coverage. Sometime in October-December, he will arrive to provide juice. On to the corners we will see in Week 1. Xavien Howard played last year with two groin injuries, and he looked slow moving from side-to-side. He managed to play 1000 snaps, but allowed the 2nd worst passer rating of his career (behind 2019, when his knee wasn’t right) and nearly 67% of passes to be completed. He will need to return to form, and seems optimistic in interviews. Howard has some civil litigation pending due to an alleged revenge porn and non-consensual video recording case, which bears some watching for his NFL future. Kader Kohou was much better than Howard last year, despite a heavy workload: he was targeted the most in the league, but allowed less than 10 yards a catch on average and kept QBs to a 83.9 passer rating. The undrafted rookie from Texas A&M-Commerce stayed scrappy, despite coming from the Division II ranks. Next Gen Stats even listed Kohou as #2 on their 10 cover CBs list based on their metrics. The eye test says that Kohou may not be a real top 10 cover corner, but he contests every single pass thrown at him and uses speed, technique, and persistence to keep windows as tight as possible. In Fangio’s scheme, he could be something special, as his instincts appear unmatched. He will play in the slot most of the time. The final corner will remain a question mark. Nik Needham shows no signs of nearing the end of his Physically Unable to Perform list journey and Eli Apple is new but has shown some encouraging performance (his career is that of supreme mediocrity). Noah Igbinoghene is gone, swapped in a trade with Dallas for CB Kelvin Joseph. Drafted to potentially play for Xavien Howard in years to come, Howard’s great season in 2020 (and Noah’s own struggles in 2020 playing for the injured Byron Jones) left Noah on the bench and, because he is not a good special teams player, a healthy scratch more often than not through 3 seasons. Kelvin Joseph is a strange individual: a 2nd round pick in 2021, Joseph fell out of favor with coaches and fans after a terrible 2022 campaign, where he allowed 12 of 18 passes to be caught for 228 yards (an absolutely insane 19 yards per catch). QBs had a near-perfect 149.3 rating targeting him. Most alarming is that Joseph’s main contribution to 2022 football discourse was involvement in a murder in which he was allegedly a passenger in the vehicle that fired the fatal shots. Investigators identified him because of a big chain that said YKDV (You Know Da Vibe), and his rap name is YKDV Bossman Fat. Apparently that is the name he insists upon being called by teammates. Less than encouraging, hopefully good coaching and mentorship can bring out the athletic talent he showed at the combine and a renewed sense of maturity. Cam Smith, the rookie from South Carolina, was also in the mix for a starting role, but fell behind due to a shoulder injury that, as of now, is not cleared for contact. He is a ball-magnet, and the Dolphins will get him on the field in time. At safety, it’s Jevon Holland szn. He was one of two players to get real praise from Fangio in his presser, with Fangio feeling that Holland has potential to be one of the best safeties in the league. Makes sense! He already might be! Holland went the 10th most snaps between targets, as teams avoided his zone last year. He allowed far too many completions, but Fangio should help in that department, giving Holland the freedom to play downhill more often. The Boyer scheme was likely bad for Holland, forcing him to cover large stretches of ground to make open field tackles as QBs could easily decipher the scheme. He missed far more tackles in 2022 than 2021, but remains a dark horse All-Pro candidate if his potential is realized. Next to him, Fangio claims there is “no starter.” Nobody, in this case, is probably DeShon Elliott, at least until Brandon Jones returns. He’s a strong tackler, but was picked on in the pass game: the new Eric Rowe. Like McDaniel to Tyreek and Waddle, Fangio should provide all the safeties with far more statistical success.
This year, multiple analysts ranked the defensive front as a preseason bet for best in the league, and for good reason. They have a massive front 5 linemen, all with game-wrecking potential, in Christian Wilkins, Zach Sieler, Emmanuel Ogbah, Bradley Chubb, and Jaelan Phillips (and don’t sleep on Raekwon Davis). Chubb, Ogbah, and Phillips are mostly lauded for potential, though Phillips was already excellent last year. He had a 90.1 Pass Rush grade from PFF (5th in the league among edge defenders) and 88.8 overall (7th in the league). While his peers in that grading area are incredible (Micah Parsons, Myles Garrett, the Bosas, Maxx Crosby), he was well behind the rest in sack totals, with just 7. It was a bummer for a player who shredded OTs and racked up 77 pressures (6th in the league). But sacks will come for Phillips, and they often do in droves. A better defensive scheme and secondary will help, as well. Chubb was acquired for a 1st round pick and delivered 54 pressures of his own. A former 5th overall pick, Chubb has never quite lived up to his billing, mostly due to injuries. He played with Fangio from 2019 to 2021, which included his best pressure season, 57 on just 421 opportunities. This current version of Chubb is probably good enough with an improved secondary, but the Dolphins are hoping that he shows more of the “Next Von Miller” gear that he had coming out of college. Ogbah has the longest tenure, and is returning from a tricep tear that ended his season against Cleveland. Unfortunately, the team couldn’t see how he looked with Phillips and Chubb in a larger role, but Ogbah is a proven commodity: he had 127 pressures over 2020 and 2021 before the 2022 dip. Ogbah has more versatility than the other two, frequently moving inside and playing through camp at stand-up outside linebacker, and could be a real contributor across multiple positions. With a large cap number, Ogbah is playing for his future in Miami. Wilkins and Sieler are far more proven, both looking like the best interior defenders in the league over the past few years. Wilkins played 1000 snaps last year, a real oddity for a defensive tackle these days, and tallied 71 tackles, far and away better than the next closest player in the league (Dexter Lawrence with 55). He’s a mid-tier pass rusher, but with his athleticism, pursuit, and attitude, he is the tone-setter and leader on this defense. Hopefully that tone is still set positively: the Dolphins walked away from the negotiating table after Wilkins turned down a reported 4 year/$94 million dollar contract and he will be a franchise tag candidate. Sieler offers a bit less as a pass rusher, but is another absolute wrecking ball against the run who has that same kind of blue-collar attitude: when he first signed, he quite literally lived in a van outside the facility. Sieler did get a contract, one that pays about $10 million annually. Both guys are wildly strong and athletic, the bright spots on a relatively poor defense last year. We simply cannot go without mentioning Raekwon Davis as a major part of the upcoming season: perpetually hated by PFF, his size at 6’7” 335 pounds allows for a significantly more clogged up middle, helping Wilkins and Sieler gain single-blocked advantages against any team they play. Perhaps this is the year Davis gets some of his own shine as he, too, enters free agency after this year. At LB, Jerome Baker and David Long Jr. enter as the presumed starters, both coming off of years in which they played relatively solid football. Baker is, of course, a Phins mainstay, and flashes all over the field. He missed a few tackles last year and allowed a lot of completions, but he also allowed the fewest yards per catch of his career in a year where the DBs were falling apart. It was his second best year as a run stuffer behind 2019, which was his second year in the league and a year where the defense spent an insane amount of time on the field (he has Josh Rosen to thank for that). Baker is a known commodity, valued more by the Phins than pundits in a similar vein to Raekwon Davis. David Long Jr. joins the team after a year as the anchor of the Titans defense. The Titans looked to shed salary this offseason and let him go, much to the Dolphins gain and, honestly, to some surprise. Interior LBs got paid relatively big deals, but Long took a much more modest deal given that he was well-regarded by PFF. He had 40 run stuffs in just 12 games. The rumor is that Long does have some medical concerns, but the risk is well worth the commitment, as Long offers far more versatility and instinctiveness than the departing Elandon Roberts. Long is also a violent pass rusher, the best off-ball LB at pass rushing according to PFF. Last year was the best of his career and he could still be trending upward. The Dolphins defense offers few areas of concern and, where it does, the concerns are mostly injury-related. When Jalen Ramsey rejoins this team, fans might just believe it is 2020 again, full of turnovers, opportunism, and, most of all, headaches for the opposition.
Special Teams
There is some uncertainty here, as Dolphins fans collectively held their breath on every field goal last year. Whether it was the yips or some injury or technique, Jason Sanders went 29 for 35, including just 2/6 beyond 50, and missed 3 XPs. He also hilariously missed a 29-yard kick against the Bears then looked like he got hit in the noggin with a mallet. So why is he back? Well, he went 14/15 inside of 49 yards, a good mark for any kicker. Sanders is out of guaranteed money in his contract, and another poor year from deep will affect his employment. Punter has turned over for yet another year, with Jake Bailey now taking the reins. He had an odd incident where he was suspended by the Patriots for some apparent training violations when he was on IR. Bailey pushed back on the reports and filed a grievance with the union. This occurred just 7 months after he signed a long-term 4-year deal, voiding some guaranteed money. The NFL is a mean business. Bailey was not very good in 2022, but one of the best punters in the league in 2019 and 2020. Bailey’s net punting average last year was an intolerable 35.3 yards, worst in the league among punters who had multiple in-game punts, and his 4.14 second hang time was 5th worst in the league. It’s a worry, as the Phins lose Thomas Morestead, who was impressive with his opportunities. Berrios, described above, will likely return punts (his 11.4 yard average was 10th in the league last year) and kicks (23.3 yards per return, 22nd in the league). The Dolphins happily welcome back Andrew Van Stinkel, who was PFF’s 5th best special teams player last year and has 157 career TDs at this point, I think. Overall, thanks to struggles in the return game and kicking game, the Dolphins were the 28th worst team in Special Teams production. That may not improve much as the Dolphins lack some depth at key positions, but it needs to improve somewhat to avoid costing them in silly ways.
