Kelly: Time for Dolphins to start another rebuild, scrapping this 10-loss team | Opinion
Imagine Mike McDaniel and Mike Vrabel in a street fight.
One’s a physical former NFL starting linebacker, who made a career for himself ramming his body into offensive players. The other is a former NFL ball boy who might weigh 165 pounds.
The outcome you would expect was exactly how Sunday’s game between the Vrabel’s New England Patriots and McDaniel’s Miami Dolphins played out.
Miami got bullied for three quarters in the 38-10 loss as the Patriots euthanized the Dolphins’ 2025 season in embarrassing fashion, delivering Miami’s NFL franchise a double-digit losing season, the first since 2019.
That happened to be the start of this disastrous franchise rebuild, and surprisingly — or not — South Florida’s NFL franchise is right where it started.
Lost.
Directionless.
Dysfunctional.
Another wasted season down the drain, but what did we learn about this team in 2025?
Atop the list has to be that McDaniel isn’t a franchise savior.
His Dolphins have been outscored 130-27 in the third quarter this season, which is a major indictment of him and his coaching staff.
The Dolphins are 4-24 during McDaniel’s tenure when the team is trailing at the half.
With the season wrapped, during McDaniel’s four-year tenure the Dolphins are 5-26 against playoff teams, and that includes being 1-6 this season, with a 30-13 win against Buffalo as the lone standout.
At least he fixed Miami’s quarterback for two seasons.
Unfortunately, Year 4 taught us that Tua Tagovailoa isn’t a franchise quarterback, and the five-year, $235 million contract the Dolphins signed him to last season was a massive mistake.
Tagovailoa stayed healthy all season, for the second time in his career, but his arm lost its velocity around midseason, and when that left so did his confidence and bold throws.
Tagovailoa was benched in the final month of the season for Quinn Ewers, a rookie quarterback Miami selected in the seventh round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Ewers was tolerable as Tagovailoa’s replacement, winning one of the three games he started.
Keep in mind it’s hard to evaluate Ewers, who was sacked four times and picked off once in the season finale against the Patriots considering he was playing without his right tackle (Austin Jackson), top tailback (De’Von Achane), top receiver (Jaylen Waddle), and top tight end (Darren Waller).
That’s like expecting Michael Jordan to win a game against Larry Bird-led Celtics with Stacey King, B. J Armstrong, Steve Kerr, and Will Purdue as his starters.
It’s possible, but quite unrealistic.
Especially without Tyreek Hill, who sustained a season-ending knee injury in late September, Achane, Waddle and Waller, the Dolphins’ top four offensive weapons.
Speaking of Achane and Waddle, we learned that one is a Pro Bowler, and the other is a nice complementary player being paid like an alpha receiver.
Waddle fell short of handling the attention that came his way in Hill’s absence. We can blame his struggles on whoever you would like, but his impact on the NFL’s 25th-ranked offense was minimal.
Waddle spent the final two weeks of the year 90 yards shy of becoming a 1,000-yard receiver for the fourth time in his career because he missed the majority of those two games with a back injury.
Still, when healthy Waddle didn’t move the needle, and neither did any of Miami’s other receivers.
On the flip side, Achane had the third best season a Dolphins tailback had ever delivered, gaining 1,350 rushing yards on 238 carries in 16 games, catching a team-leading 67 passes for 488 yards, and scoring a team-leading 12 touchdowns.
The most impressive part of Achane’s success was his 5.7 yards-per-carry average, and the fact that plenty of those runs were a result of the offensive line’s blocking.
Sticking with that subject, we learned Patrick Paul’s a franchise left tackle based on his play his second season, and Miami’s offensive line (minus rookie left guard Jonah Savaiinaea) showed some upside, becoming the strength of the team after its 1-6 start.
Unfortunately for Miami, the defense wasn’t good enough to carry the offense this season.
Defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver followed up an impressive debut (ranked fifth in yards allowed and 10th in points allowed in 2024) as the Dolphins’ defensive coordinator with a disappointing second season, one where his unit finished 2025 ranked 21st in yards allowed, and points allowed.
But not everything was a disaster on defense.
Jordyn Brooks, who led the NFL in tackles all season, and Tyrel Dodson shined as a solid inside linebacker duo until injuries slowed them in the final month, and Rasul Douglas proved he’s still a solid NFL starter at 31.
Speaking of the mature, Bradley Chubb had a season worthy of NFL Comeback Player of the Year, which was encouraging. Probably not enough for the Dolphins to honor his $19.7 million salary in 2026, but he will be a starter somewhere in the NFL next season.
The same can’t be said about Chop Robinson, the team’s 2024 first-round pick who finished his second NFL season making very little impact (21 tackles, four sacks and one forced fumble) in his 417 defensive snaps.
But Robinson’s disappointing season shouldn’t be too surprising since just about everything associated with Miami’s NFL franchise fell short of expectations during this rebuild, which clearly needs to be restarted.
