Dolphins sit in front seat after AFC East’s noisy offseason
Buffalo didn’t help a leaky defense. New England didn’t lessen owner Robert Kraft’s entertaining impatience with Bill Belichick. The New York Jets made the biggest move and enter 40-year-old virgin territory with Aaron Rodgers.
But the Miami Dolphins won the offseason in the AFC East.
They sit on the edge of training camp with the best look in the NFL’s best division.
So, we enter the peacock phase of this Dolphins era where the road through training camp will be paved with legitimately great expectations.
This isn’t new here. But it’s long forgotten territory. You need to go back decades to when Dan Marino was the franchise, not inside the franchise, to think this team could play into the deepest parts of the NFL season.
How are they going to cope with this?
Better yet: How will South Florida cope with this?
Nobody expected the Dolphins to win more than a playoff game over the past two decades. That was the bar. Even that was too high to reach. Three wild-card playoff appearances in 20 years. All losses. That’s this franchise’s footprint.
So, how are the on-paper Dolphins suddenly the best in the division and, by extension, in contention for the Super Bowl?
They tanked for two years and assembled draft picks for tomorrow. No team in the league had more draft capital than the Dolphins in 2020 and 2021. They then flipped that idea completely starting last offseason and traded for today. No NFL team in history had less draft capital over a two-year stretch than the Dolphins of 2022 and 2023.
Throw in coach Mike McDaniel wanting and owner Steve Ross paying this winter for the best defensive coordinator in the game, Vic Fangio. Everyone asks why he came here — the roster, the weather, the possibilities — when so many teams wanted him. Let’s talk like adults. Money was the clincher.
So the youngish, offensive-minded McDaniel got the perfect complement to him in the veteran, defensive-minded Fangio. Throw in the addition of cornerback Jalen Ramsey to the developed parts in recent years and the Dolphins have a ready-for-prime-time defense that’s paid accordingly.
The money is stacked across roster, too. There will be a reckoning down the line for that. But not this year. These Dolphins may not inflate the attention and expectation on this season. But they’ve pushed all their chips into this season.
Their opening and obvious question is quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, starting with his health. That has to play out. But no team has more speed or playmakers around their quarterback or a better offensive scheme to help. Just look around this division.
The Patriots have a real offensive coordinator again in Bill O’Brien, but hasn’t caught up to the idea that star receivers are franchise-changing players. Somewhere in there is Kraft’s annual lament that they haven’t won a playoff game in now four years.
It’s hard to imagine Belichick on even a warm seat, but Buffalo’s Sean McDermott is on a hot one. Buffalo squeaked by the Tua-less Dolphins last year in the playoffs before getting blitzed by Cincinnati. That makes two consecutive ugly outs for Buffalo. Their defense didn’t resolve much this offseason, either.
The Bills remain the anti-Dolphins, the team that puts everything on quarterback Josh Allen. He’ll try to do it all again this year, just as Rodgers will in New York. He’s coming off his worst season in Green Bay. He’ll turn 40 during the season. You have to get him if you’re the Jets. But this can go either way.
Add it all up, walk around the offseason decisions and full rosters, and the Dolphins enter training camp with the best look in the best division. It’s been a long time since you could think and an even longer time since expectation matched reality.
Belichick and Tom Brady owned the division for 17 years. Buffalo has the past few years. There’s no pushover this year. No heavyweight, either. But the Dolphins begin training camp on July 26 with more on their side than anyone. How they cope with that will be part of the answer.
