Miami Dolphins 2026 Profile

Coaching Staff

Head Coach: Jeff Hafley
Offensive Coordinator: Bobby Slowik
Defensive Coordinator: Sean Duggan
Special Teams Coordinator: Chris Tabor

2025 Summary (W-L Record: 7-10)

Mike McDaniel’s tenure in Miami may have fizzled out with a 7-10 season, but his time as Dolphins Head Coach was the best run this franchise has had since Dave Wannstedt led the team from 2000-04.

Ultimately, the defense never got to where it needed to be. And the offense, while dynamic at times, was too reliant on the scheme at the most important position.

In the first two years of the McDaniels-Tua Tagovailoa era, the passing game was seemingly unstoppable at times due to its impeccable timing:

The league caught up over the last two seasons though. Sure, injuries played a factor, but the biggest issue was Tua’s inability to win late in the down since he’s not a good scrambler and doesn’t have the strongest arm.

The more defenses found ways to take away his first read and make him hold the ball, the more you saw plays like this:

And this:

And this:

It makes sense that the Dolphins decided to go in a completely different direction this offseason, releasing Tua and signing a more physically gifted quarterback in Malik Willis (more on that below).

Similarly, the Dolphins went in the opposite direction as a team, hiring a defensive head coach in Jeff Hafley after four years with an offensive guru in McDaniel.

Miami had a lot of personnel turnover this offseason in an effort to rebuild their roster. More than half of their salary cap will go towards players not on the team this year. They cut some good talent, drafted 12 players, and will be in what you can politely categorize as a “transition” year.

Key Additions

QB Malik Willis
WR Jalen Tolbert
WR Tutu Atwell
WR Caleb Douglas (3rd Rd, 75th Overall)
WR Chris Bell (3rd Rd, 94th Overall)
WR Kevin Coleman (5th Rd, 177th Overall)
TE Will Kacmarek (3rd Rd, 87th Overall)
TE Seydou Traore (5th Rd, 180th Overall)
LG Kadyn Proctor (1st Rd, 12th Overall)
OT Jamaree Salyer
OT Charlie Heck

EDGE Joshua Uche
EDGE David Ojabo
EDGE Trey Moore (4th Rd, 130th Overall)
LB Jacob Rodriguez (2nd Rd, 43rd Overall)
LB Kyle Louis (4th Rd, 138th Overall)
LB Ronnie Harrison
CB Chris Johnson (1st Rd, 27th Overall)
CB Darrell Baker
CB Alex Austin
S Lonnie Johnson Jr.
S Michael Taaffe (5th Rd, 158th Overall)

Key Losses

QB Tua Tagovailoa
FB Alec Ingold
WR Jaylen Waddle
WR Nick Westbrook-Ikhine
WR Cedrick Wilson Jr.
WR Tyreek Hill
TE Julian Hill
TE Darren Waller
RG Cole Strange
RT Larry Borom
G/T Daniel Brunskill

DL Benito Jones
EDGE Bradley Chubb
EDGE Jaelan Phillips
EDGE Matthew Judon
LB K.J. Britt
CB Jack Jones
CB Rasul Douglas

Biggest Questions Entering 2026

Did the Dolphins make the right move at quarterback by signing Malik Willis?
I don’t think many people expected the Dolphins to sign arguably the top free agent quarterback during an offseason where they released Tua Tagovailoa and are on the hook for $54 million of guaranteed money.

But they did, taking a chance on a QB with just 6 career starts under his belt in 4 NFL seasons.

To be fair, Malik Willis is a very talented player. He can throw the hell out of the ball:

He can escape pressure and keep plays alive with his legs:

He’ll make the designed run game better:

Most importantly, he’s improved over his last two seasons in Green Bay. He’s been far more accurate, completing 80% of his passes during his Packers tenure. On throws traveling 20 yards or more from the line of scrimmage, he completed 13 of 15 attempts over the last two seasons. He’s also played with far better timing in his limited action.

The concerns with Willis are that he was in a perfect situation as a back up in Green Bay. He had tremendous talent around him. He had a great play-caller and designer in Matt LaFleur. When he played, it was in small sample sizes where LaFleur could take advantage of defenses not knowing exactly how to play him. Over a 17-game season, that won’t be the case.

Willis will need to play the position with more nuance to thrive in a full season, and it’s in this area where there are the most questions about his abilities.

For instance, vision is a trait where I’ve always had concerns with Willis, even coming out of college. He didn’t always see the field well. Sometimes, he didn’t see defenders ahead of the throw, and that would lead to turnovers or risky passes. Other times, he would miss opportunities because he didn’t always see open receivers on time.

That’s continued to an extent in the NFL. I haven’t really seen Willis work many passing concepts in the middle of the field.

In fact, of the 155 passes he’s thrown in his NFL career, he has attempted a staggeringly-low 9 passes between the numbers 10 yards or more from the line of scrimmage. That’s just 5.8% of all his throws.

The ability to attack between the numbers at the intermediate level is generally a decent barometer for how good a quarterback’s vision and processing are. That’s because you have to be able to see more of the field and account for more defenders near the throw. The quarterbacks who don’t see or process that well tend to stay to the outside.

And as I’ve written about with Jalen Hurts and the Eagles, the inability to work the middle generally limits a passing game.

I think there’s legitimate reason for Dolphins fans to be excited about Willis. He has no physical limitations like Tua did. But there is still so much unknown.

What will the offense look like?
The Dolphins moved on from Tyreek Hill and traded away Jaylen Waddle this offseason. So the biggest question is, who will Malik Willis be throwing to?

Right now, their top 3 receivers are Jalen Tolbert, Tutu Atwell, and Malik Washington. They also drafted 3 receivers this year between picks 75 and 177. Perhaps someone emerges. But as things stand now, it looks pretty bleak.

The best thing the Dolphins have going for them is that they still have a good running game featuring De’Von Achane to build around. Achane ran for 1,350 yards and a league-leading 5.7 yards per attempt last season. He also added 488 yards on 67 receptions. He’ll be the key weapon (the only weapon?) for the Dolphins to feature in 2026.

And I imagine they’ll want to run the ball pretty frequently seeing as they drafted a bruising, massive, 6’6” 350-pound left tackle in Kadyn Proctor with the 12th overall pick and plan to play him at guard.

I’m also curious to see how new offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik approaches things. It’s his second year in Miami but his first as their offensive coordinator. While OC for the Texans in 2023, he did a good job developing C.J. Stroud during his rookie season.

He’ll have similar work cut out for him this year with what I guess you could call a 5th-year rookie in Willis.

Slowik comes from the Shanahan tree and likes to operate under center. The question, though, is does that make the most sense here? One of the best aspects of Willis’s game is his legs. The most dangerous element of this offense will be the read-option run game with Willis and Achane stressing the defense. If Miami operates too much under center, a big part of that goes away.

Willis has predominantly operated out of shotgun during his career. Although, he did start to play a bit more from under center with LaFleur (another Shanahan disciple) in Green Bay.

Regardless, if it were me, I’d operate out of gun and ride the Willis-Achane combo as far as they could take me.

Can Jeff Hafley turn the defense around immediately?
As I mentioned above, the Dolphins went in a different direction by hiring former Packers Defensive Coordinator Jeff Hafley as head coach after being an offense-first team for 4 years.

Hafley was very effective in his two season in Green Bay. In his first year, he made an immediate impact. The Packers finished 6th in points allowed and 5th in yards (that’s not something that happened very often in Green Bay over the previous two decades).

Last season, the Packers defense once again ranked 6th in points and 5th in yards entering their Week 15 game against the Broncos. Then Micah Parsons got hurt and the wheels fell off.

Either way, Packers fans were not happy to see Hafley go.

The difference between that situation and the situation Hafley will face in Miami, however, is the talent. He won’t be dealing with a full deck in that department this season and that will make things tough.

One similarity, though, is that the Packers didn’t have a great situation at cornerback, and neither do the Dolphins this year.

In Green Bay, Hafley couldn’t just leave his defense in man coverage and let his players win with talent. Instead, he had to find ways to get the most out of his secondary. He leaned on zone coverage nearly 80% of the time in both seasons, which put the Packers near the top of the league. He was clearly effective in doing so.

This is interesting because Hafley was considered more of a man-coverage defensive mind before joining the Packers. Which shows he clearly has the ability to adjust to his personnel.

He’ll likely need to take a similar approach in Miami to what he did in Green Bay.

In general, Hafley’s scheme seemed to enhance Green Bay’s performance everywhere. He used lots of stunts and sim pressures (more so in his first year before Parsons arrived) to manufacture a pass rush:

We’re likely to see a lot of that this season as he tries to get this Dolphins defense turned around quickly.

2026 Outlook

The Dolphins might be in store for a rough season. They got rid of key talent and replaced it with a lot of inexperience. They selected 12 players in this year’s draft and might need to lean on more than half of those picks to play significant snaps. That’s what happens when half of your salary cap goes towards paying players who aren’t on your team.

The biggest thing that the Dolphins can hope for, though, is clarity at the QB position moving forward. Hopefully they find out this year if Malik Willis is the player to build around. If not, the answer will lie in the 2027 QB draft class.