Absolutely, positively nothing has changed for the Miami Dolphins in the last 24 months. Will Stephen Ross waste 24 more?
We’re not calling for him to fire Mike McDaniel after yet another ugly failure on football’s biggest stage.
But if Ross cannot see that the current approach has hit its hard ceiling after the Dolphins’ 30-17 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving night, he’ll have to live through it again in 2025.
The Miami Dolphins Freeze Again
The Dolphins, quite frankly, have become predictable and boring. We know what their flaws are. They’ve been evident for three seasons now.
They’re undisciplined. They get bullied during physical games. Tua Tagovailoa has some bad misses when it’s cold and windy. Tackling disappears when tackling hurts.
All of these things were true two years ago. They were true again on Thursday night.
“If we’re playing our best ball, we can beat anybody,” Dolphins defensive lineman Calais Campbell said postgame. “But today was definitely not our best ball.”
The problem is, this team never plays its best ball against the best teams. The Dolphins shot themselves in the foot so many times on Thursday that doctors are considering an amputation.
Rookie Malik Washington set the tone for the night right off the bat by muffing a punt after an opening-drive three-and-out by the Packers.
Have a free touchdown, Matt LaFleur.
Could the Dolphins answer the first time they got the ball? Nope, because Jonnu Smith jumped offsides and then got flagged for unnecessary roughness, the start of a very messy night for Miami. In all, the Dolphins committed 10 accepted penalties for 75 yards
Tagovailoa wasn’t the problem in Green Bay, Wisc. In fact, he was quite good in stretches, completing 37 of 46 passes for 365 yards and two touchdowns, good enough for a C+ performance (78.1) according to PFN’s QB+ metric.
But with a nonexistent running game — the Dolphins had 39 yards on 14 carries — he again couldn’t do enough to beat a Super Bowl-caliber team.
What about the key stretch, when the Dolphins were down 18 but had the ball inside the first half’s two-minute warning? If they had kicked even a field goal, it would have been a two-score game going into the break, with Miami due to get the opening kickoff after halftime.
Instead, Tagovailoa badly missed on three throws, including on fourth down to not only kill the drive but also to give Jordan Love enough time to tack on another field goal before the break.
So no help from the kicking team or the offense. At least the defense showed up, right?
Nah. The Dolphins had absolutely zero interest in tackling for long stretches of the game. They missed a staggering 20 tackles on Thursday, including 13 that led to 75 additional Packers yards on Green Bay’s first seven possessions. Five of those seven drives ended with points.
Linebacker Jordyn Brooks bluntly told The Palm Beach Post after the game that the Dolphins played soft and allowed the cold to be a factor in the game.
Dolphins LB Jordyn Brooks says the team was soft tonight. Brooks believes the team allowed the cold to be a factor. He says they allowed elements to be a factor.
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) November 29, 2024
But the Dolphins saved their worst for last: Down 16 points midway through the fourth quarter, they had three cracks from the one-yard line to get into the end zone and make the finish interesting. Those three plays went as follows: A De’Von Achane run for no gain, an incomplete pass to Smith, and a sack on fourth down.
Tyreek Hill, the team’s best player for the last two seasons, not only didn’t touch the ball in the most important sequence of the season but wasn’t even on the field on the last play. Hill finished with 83 yards and a touchdown on six catches, but most of that production came in garbage time.
“That’s the thing with narratives: There’s one way to change them,” McDaniel said. “And so, yeah, my expectation would be, the naysayers, you prove them right, they’ll be louder. That’s part of the territory. You carry that until you do something about it. And unfortunately, we didn’t tonight.”
What’s Next for the Miami Dolphins?
The loss dropped the Dolphins to 5-7 on the season and suggested their recent three-game winning streak was a mirage. While the playoffs remain a theoretical possibility, they’re now two games back of the Denver Broncos in the loss column in the race for the AFC’s seventh seed.
They need to win the remaining games on their schedule — which includes dates with the Houston Texans and San Francisco 49ers — and get a lot of help. A sub-.500 finish seems more likely than a postseason appearance.
“As far as season hopes, I would say that this one was a tough one for us as a team,” Tagovailoa said. “I know what this game meant to a lot of guys in that locker room.
I wouldn’t say the dream’s dead for our team just yet. Anything can happen in this league.”
Perhaps.
But even if the Dolphins somehow do squeak into the playoffs, what’s the point? They would have to go to either Kansas City or Buffalo or Pittsburgh or Baltimore in the Wild Card Round.
Loss, loss, loss, and loss.
Their flaws are too great for this nucleus to be anything better than the sixth-best team in their own conference. They need to get younger, get stronger, get tougher, and get smarter.
Put another way: Can McDaniel and Chris Grier be agents of change after too much status quo the last three years? It’ll be Ross’ most important decision of the next two months.