Why Miami Dolphins are headed for an uneasy offseason

Henry McKenna

AFC East Reporter

Hard Rock Stadium might not feel like a safe space for the coming weeks. After how the Miami Dolphins finished their season — with the team losing six of its final seven games, including the wild-card loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday — ownership might consider making changes.

Who will stay and who will go?

It’s not easy to point fingers, is it? It’s actually quite complicated.

General manager Chris Grier, coach Mike McDaniel and QB Tua Tagovailoa are reportedly safe. For now. More on that later. But first, let’s dive into the most likely candidate to move on.

The easy scapegoat had once seemed like defensive coordinator Josh Boyer, whose unit was too-often shredded by good offenses this season. But his defense was really the only reason the Dolphins stayed competitive with the Bills on Sunday. If not for the two interceptions and the scoop-and-score strip sack, Miami would have lost in blowout fashion.

It will be interesting to see how the playoff performance offsets some of the rough in-season performances when — to be fair — Boyer managed an abnormally shallow and injury-riddled defensive depth chart. It’s not as simple as putting the blame on him when considering how much of the team’s draft capital and financial capital that GM Grier has allocated to the offensive side of the ball.

That’s where Miami spent the fourth-overall pick on Tagovailoa in 2020 and the sixth-overall pick on Jaylen Waddle in 2021. That’s where the Dolphins gave up a blockbuster-sized set of assets for receiver Tyreek Hill. Left tackle Terron Armstead‘s contract didn’t come cheap either: five years, $75 million.

So Coach McDaniel must be feeling some pressure.

He got much of the credit when the team jumped out to an 8-3 start. He might be deserving of most of the blame for the team melting down in this late stretch, particularly when you consider the coaching errors in the playoff loss. Specifically, McDaniel mismanaged his second-half timeout situation, burning his timeouts after struggling to get his playcalls in to third-string quarterback Skylar Thompson in a timely fashion. McDaniel didn’t get to the root cause of those delayed playcalls and unnecessary timeouts — but he did admit to some issues.

“There was certainly some times where things were kind of going in different directions, and I’m sure the plays got in a little later than I would prefer at least once or twice,” McDaniel said Sunday after the game.

Whatever the issue, it was clearly persistent, and it came to a head on the team’s final drive when Miami committed a delay-of-game penalty on a fourth-down sequence that essentially decided the game. When it mattered most, the Dolphins had no timeout to stop the play clock from expiring. They committed the penalty on fourth-and-1 and moved back to fourth-and-6, which they did not convert. Game over.

McDaniel said postgame that the Dolphins thought they had converted the third down and were preparing for a first-down playcall. When they realized they still needed a yard, they couldn’t get a play in quickly enough — in part because they didn’t have a playcall prepared. (And some coaches are prepared for fourth-down situations ahead of time, just in case they don’t convert third-down. Apparently, McDaniel was not one step ahead of the game.)

It’s hard to know exactly where the process broke down. But it’s clear that the coaching staff came up short. And the coaches needed to be on top of their game if Thompson, a rookie and sixth-round pick, was going to have any hope of beating the mighty Bills.

These mistakes seem fixable. McDaniel can work on in-game management. Or he can hire someone to handle it for him so he can stay closer to the tasks that are most important.

The real question is whether he can get the offense back in shape. Can McDaniel go back to getting the most out of Waddle and Hill, who combined for 113 receiving yards in the final game? At the beginning of the season, we grew accustomed to seeing each of them log that many yards.

Might Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and Grier consider a candidate like Sean Payton? Or another established coach with a résumé of success? I don’t think it’s likely. But when a season ends in this way — with so many issues from top to bottom — it’s easy for the eye to wander and the mind to consider hypotheticals: Would Payton be better than McDaniel? But if the season were flipped and the Dolphins had lost six of their first seven before surging into the playoffs, would they consider firing McDaniel? No.

It was McDaniel’s first season. He showed enough promise to stick around.

So that brings us to the next team member who might take some blame: the quarterback. Tua Tagovailoa doesn’t deserve any blame for his concussion situation. But the late-season skid? Well, he was a big part of that. Defenses did their best to take away Tua’s strengths: quick decision-making and anticipation throwing. When teams like the Chargers and 49ers took away those tools, the Dolphins seemed at a loss as to how to get Tua comfortable again.

There should be some question about whether McDaniel can get his offense jump-started. Maybe the Dolphins were sensational for 11 games, but it’s hard to figure out whether the offense broke because of Tua or McDaniel — or both. Clearly, the offense regressed without Tua. But his late-season mistakes were indefensible.

Though it all, McDaniel continued to defend his quarterback.

“We all see him as the leader of this team and when it’s appropriate for him to lead the team [in a return from his concussions], I will jump on that opportunity,” McDaniel said Sunday. “He’s a great player with only improvement in front of him as well. … Yes, this is a challenging time for him. Yes, his health is of primary importance, but I would be a fool to not embrace him when he’s healthy and ready to go. We’ll all be excited for that.”

Still, the quarterback market might just be booming this offseason. We don’t know for sure, but Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Lamar Jackson and Jimmy Garoppolo could come available. Derek Carr is already very available. The Dolphins will have options. It’s just a question of how actively they want to pursue an alternative — and potentially risk their relationship with Tagovailoa, who has been a good sport about the team pursuing other quarterbacks in the past. But that goodwill could fade after Tua gave Miami so much this season.

It’s easy to imagine the Dolphins missing their opportunities with the QBs on the market. Say Brady goes to Vegas, Rodgers stays in Green Bay and Garoppolo goes to the Jets. So then Lamar? Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe the Dolphins attempt to trade for him in the shadows? They should, in my opinion. And if it doesn’t work out, they pray they can make it work with Tua.

The final key to the equation is Grier. He is the one who assembled essentially every element of this roster. And therefore, he should answer for the greater body of work, particularly when it comes to the composition of player personnel. The biggest gripe, from my standpoint, is that he hasn’t assembled a deep enough cast of defensive backs. But he has responded by building a defensive line — with Jaelan Phillips, Bradley Chubb and others — that should alleviate some secondary concerns.

Certainly, we saw how the DL impacted Josh Allen in the wild-card game, with Miami sacking him seven times. For example, Chubb had an enormous sack that came at the perfect late-game moment. That granted the offense another possession.

Given that I don’t think the team should fire McDaniel, I don’t think Grier should go either. Grier isn’t the best GM in the NFL, but he has provided tools to set up his coach’s vision for success.

So we’ve run through the entire cast of the most important members of the Dolphins. And — if you’re like me — you can see why the Dolphins may not make a change. This is a team that is still growing and rebuilding. If Miami makes a big move on its staff, it is more likely to set the team back than propel it forward.

It’ll be an uncertain offseason, because it was easy to lose faith in the composition of this Miami team. But perhaps with a healthy and improved Tua and a developing McDaniel (and, yes, maybe a new defensive coordinator), the Dolphins will be a bigger threat to the Bills in 2023.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as the AFC East reporter, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @McKennAnalysis.

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