‘Offense that’s not good enough.’ Huntley remains Dolphins starting QB as team searches for answers
The Miami Dolphins are not a good football team right now.
The Dolphins are 1-3 tied with four teams for the second-worst record in the AFC. That said, the franchise will have a bit of stability heading into Sunday’s matchup against the New England Patriots as Tyler Huntley will remain the starting quarterback, coach Mike McDaniel confirmed Tuesday. Still, the team needs to figure out what has gone wrong before it’s too late.
“To play winning football, you have 11 people executing their jobs in a tied together fashion and it’s not happening,” McDaniel said Tuesday afternoon, adding that there needs to be changes “across the board from coaching to execution.” “You don’t absolve yourself of responsibility in the least. You really force yourself to have a hard look at everything you’re doing.”
The offense, in particular, has been quite lackluster. After leading the league in total offense in 2023, the Dolphins’ have fallen to 26th with a per-game average of 285 yards. The Dolphins also rank last in scoring and have lost three in a row.
“It just feels like an offense that’s not good enough,” McDaniel said. “Whether that’s coaching or playing, we’re all in it together. It’s a bottom-line business.”
It would be easy to blame the offense’s regression on the absence of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who sustained a concussion against the Buffalo Bills that has sidelined him since Week 2. That, however, would ignore the very real issues that have hampered the Dolphins since the start of the 2024 season. With Tagovailoa at the helm, the offense scored 30 points through roughly seven quarters. And while the offense accumulated 400 yards against the still-winless Jacksonville Jaguars, the Dolphins mustered roughly 250 yards through three quarters against the Bills. For context, the Baltimore Ravens’ league-leading total offense has a per-quarter average of roughly 107 yards.
“I think every man here has a job we have to execute,” fullback Alec Ingold said Monday evening after the Dolphins’ 31-12 loss to the Tennessee Titans. “The quarterback is obviously a very important piece of that puzzle, but we need 10 other guys to be performing and executing.”
Ingold agreed that it was fair for people to criticize the offense’s productivity despite Tagovailoa’s loss as the unit only mustered 184 yards against the Titans.
“It’s a performance-based business that we’re all a part of, so I think it’s more than fair and I think that’s where you know we’re doing the same thing internally,” Ingold added. “And to shy away from that because you’re not getting the results I think is weak-minded, and I think we have to we have to attack that; we have to lean into this uncomfortable moment to see what type of team we are and what type of human beings we are.”
Another week in the offense will likely bode well for Huntley. Keep in mind, the Dania Beach native had to lead McDaniel’s complicated offense with just less than two weeks of preparation.
“I felt pretty good,” Huntley said Monday evening when asked about his mastery of the playbook. “I felt pretty comfortable. Just now I got to dig in deeper and just know the ins and outs of the offense, and it will take our offense to another level.”
Added Huntley: “You wish you have 1,000 reps that you went through the playbook, but it is what it is. I’m here. Just got to hone in on it more.”
At a time when many people would begin to point fingers, it’s certainly worth noting that McDaniel seems comfortable with the criticism. Accountability is a word that he often preaches, and as third-year head coach stood at the dais on Tuesday, McDaniel appeared ready to accept responsibility for the Dolphins’ dismal start to the year. The boos that rained down from the fans gathered at Hard Stadium on Monday, he said, are to be expected — that is, until they do something about it.
“People believe when you give them reason to believe,” McDaniel said. “I’m not really villainizing the people who are jumping off the bandwagon; it’s more we gave them reason to. So that’s to be expected. I don’t think people pay what they pay to go to Hard Rock Stadium to watch us lose, so whatever results incurred by our game day failure, we deserve.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2024 at 6:18 PM.
