Nothing short of playoff wins will make Miami Dolphins a success in 2024
The look in receiver Jaylen Waddle’s eyes told me I’d hit on something.
We were only minutes into another long offseason for the Dolphins. I was asking a question that you normally don’t need to ask: Was the season that had just ended a successful one?
“No,” he said.
What, then, would have qualified as a success? A Super Bowl?
“What do you think — with our roster?” Waddle said.
Unprepared for an answer that really was a question, I said a few playoff wins.
“I’d say the same,” he said.
Of course, a “few” playoff wins automatically means reaching (or winning) the Super Bowl, so given time to reconsider, I’d amend it to “a couple,” but no matter. There’s no getting around this being the most confounding Dolphins season possibly ever.
They were unstoppable until they were unstartable.
They mauled teams but also were manhandled.
They wouldn’t use Injuries as a crutch but used crutches for all those injuries.
Success? Failure? Neither? Both? Good chance that most Dolphins fans, still absorbing the 26-7 wild-card loss to Kansas City, plus another season that fizzled to a halt, plus a 23rd year without a playoff win — you put all that together and there’s not much appetite for painting this season as anything but a disappointment at best, a failure at worst.
Know what else it was? Interesting. Exciting. Record-setting.
Plus: Tantalizing. Promising. Confusing.
What happened to that potent Dolphins offense?
Face it: No matter where you fall on the emotional scale, you can’t totally dismiss whatever’s on the opposite end of that scale. That’s how all over the board this Dolphins team was. They had the league’s No. 1 offense and put up 70 points in 60 minutes one September afternoon, yet couldn’t score that many over the final four games combined while winning just one of them.
To borrow from Waddle, with their roster? Dolphins claimed six slots on the Pro Bowl roster. Only three teams had more all-stars. The Dolphins were 4 1/2 minutes away from going 10-3 but collapsed against a bad Tennessee Titans team about to fire their coach. With it, another downward spiral was put in motion.
The Dolphins were outscored 123-62 in those final four games. They were dominant at home nearly the entire season, but facing a winner-take-all situation for the AFC East title against visiting Buffalo, only failure. With the Dolphins facing a long road in the playoffs, no one gave them much of a chance. Including, as it turned out, the Dolphins themselves.
Listening to coach Mike McDaniel’s emotional postgame talk with the team, linebacker David Long could empathize.
“As he was talking, I’m thinking, like, what would I say to a team, you know, that had everything in front of them, that put so many expectations on itself?” Long said.
Two consecutive years of bad injury luck for Dolphins
The Dolphins will tell you those expectations remain. Maybe even multiplied for 2024. You know the drill: up and coming team takes baby steps before it learns to run. Get all those guys back off injured reserve and you’ll see. That sounds like last year, when Austin Jackson, Liam Eichenberg and Emmanuel Ogbah went down, when Tua Tagovailoa couldn’t finish the season and when a decimated secondary was sent out to contend with Josh Allen in December. Then came 2023, when Dolphins players took to pointing out the injury rate in the NFL is 100 percent, which it probably is.
In his postmortem news conference, GM Chris Grier was asked if anything needs to be addressed with Miami’s strength and conditioning procedures.
“It’s football,” Grier said. “Injuries happen, but those guys do a fantastic job getting our guys prepared. I think you would have some players who have come here from other teams that have talked about injuries they’ve had at previous places and they’ve had no issues here. It’s just one of those years where it was our turn, unfortunately, to have injuries.”
You can’t point to Jaelan Phillips’ Achilles, Bradley Chubb’s ACL or Jerome Baker’s friendly fire via Brandon Jones and pin that on trainers. Everyone can hope nothing like this is repeated in 2024. You can’t imagine things could be worse, but there’s no assurance things will be better.
Salary cap presents challenges for Chris Grier
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And that’s really the crux of this, isn’t it? For all the talk about the Dolphins being “all in” and their “window” having a finite amount of time left, they’re in rough waters when it comes to preventing that window from shutting right now. They’re $40 million over the cap. Yes, a shell game can be played and money can be moved around, but ultimately, at least part of the bill comes due.
They can pay Tagovailoa. Pay Christian Wilkins. Shed Emmanuel Ogbah and Xavien Howard. But will it be enough to keep Rob Hunt and Andrew Van Ginkel and Connor Williams? And fill gaps in the secondary, tight end and No. 3 receiver?
Not to mention, it’s still to be determined whether McDaniel continues calling plays or perhaps turns that over to Frank Smith, should he remain offensive coordinator.
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Here’s what is known for these next 11 1/2 months: The Dolphins could fly out of the gate. They could win their first division title since 2008. Get the No. 1 seed and home-field throughout the playoffs.
And you know what? It’ll move the needle, but not much. Go back to my original question for Jaylen Waddle: What defines success?
Just win in the playoffs, baby.
Finally, after all these decades, send somebody else home in January.
Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on social media @gunnerhal. Click here to subscribe.
