The Miami Dolphins' hopes of saving their season after Tyreek Hill's injury are slim, leaving the team to confront a mess of its own making.
The Miami Dolphins' prospects for a bright future have been dimming for some time. But with Tyreek Hill suffering a season-ending dislocated knee on Monday, a franchise that has long since passed a point of no return now is facing what looks like the beginning of a long-awaited end.
Few franchises could withstand having to navigate the bulk of a season without their top target, and Miami is no exception. Despite having largely struggled to rekindle his connection with Tua Tagovailoa in the early going, Hill still has more than one-third of the Dolphins' receiving yards so far in 2025. His overall presence was instrumental to Mike McDaniel's offense, with the rest of the skill-position crew having grown accustomed to the benefits of working alongside a player who consistently pulls defense's attention and resources thanks to his game-breaking ability.
With Miami having vaulted to prominence under McDaniel by making splashy moves to acquire high-priced veterans, it was natural to wonder whether the organization would take bold action to try to salvage a 1-3 season that's quickly spinning out of control.
But Hill's injury seems more likely to come with a level of resignation for a front office that has few moves left at its disposal. Miami has the fourth-lowest available cap space of any team at just over $3 million, according to Over The Cap. Talented pass catchers don't tend to come cheap, and those who do don't figure to be available at the Nov. 4 trade deadline.
Now, at what could be a career-defining juncture for McDaniel and Grier, the duo has no easy recourse to clean up a mounting mess they have largely overlooked for some time.
The latest injury setback is a massive blow for a franchise that has already seen recent seasons derailed by long-term losses of Tua Tagovailoa, Bradley Chubb and Jaelan Phillips. But the Dolphins are not a mere victim of outside circumstance. Doubling down on a flawed roster pushed Miami to a point where it had limited options to either retreat or move in a different direction, even when it became apparent that blazing a new path was necessary.
McDaniel and Grier began down this road in the aftermath of a 2023 season that saw the team go 11-6 before falling to the Kansas City Chiefs in the wild-card round. With an offense that led the league in yards per game and a defense that finished 10th, Miami harbored hopes of joining the AFC's contending class and securing the organization's first postseason win since 2000.
But while a 12-month run that brought in Hill, Bradley Chubb and Jalen Ramsey via trades transformed the top tier of the roster, Miami didn't see the bill for its imbalanced approach come due until the 2024 offseason.
In addition to signing Tua Tagovailoa to a four-year, $212.4 million extension, the Dolphins also inked wide receiver Jaylen Waddle to a three-year, $84.75 million extension before locking in Hill with a restructured deal that shifted significant money forward to 2024 and '25. Crucial to solidifying that core was a free agency stretch in which standout defensive tackle Christian Wilkins and offensive guard Robert Hunt signed massive deals elsewhere. The widespread defections also included linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel, who went on to enjoy a Pro Bowl campaign with the Minnesota Vikings last season.
Paying exorbitant prices for marquee veterans doesn't have to be a short-term play at a time when the salary cap rapidly expands year over year. But unlike the Los Angeles Rams, who secured a Super Bowl with an analogous caution-to-the-wind approach in valuing draft picks, the Dolphins failed to cover lower-investment spots with capable young starters on the cheap. The Chubb and Hill trades deprived Miami of its first-round choices in 2022 and '23, and Miami managed to find just one notable contributor across those two classes in running back De'Von Achane.
The toll of the imbalanced roster was felt particularly along the offensive and defensive lines, which played central roles in the team's 8-9 unraveling in 2024. Tagovailoa suffered his third documented concussion in Week 2 and missed four games, putting the team in a hole from which it would not emerge. The once-electric run game short-circuited, ranking 31st in expected points added per carry with little help from the blocking up front.
After Grier and McDaniel were retained for 2025 but put on notice by owner Stephen Ross, the general manager seemed to back away from the tactics he once so readily embraced.
"It's just not sustainable the way the contracts are with players and what they're making now," Grier said in late August in explaining the team was in the midst of a "reset" rather than a rebuild. "So in terms of directive, no; for us, it was just good business sense working through it and trying to find value, but we also had to get younger, so we added younger players."
Other than trading disgruntled cornerback Jalen Ramsey and tight end Jonnu Smith to the Pittsburgh Steelers and watching safety Jevon Holland walk to the New York Giants, however, it's essentially been the "status quo" that Ross insisted the organization wouldn't settle for.
This month was hardly the first indication of a deeper problem, as franchise leadership has eschewed off-ramps and resisted other challenges to the team's dynamic. Grier repeatedly shot down trade speculation this offseason surrounding Hill, with the receiver's open-market value likely sapped by his end-of-season meltdown, decline in production and domestic violence allegations. Dealing him at last year's trade deadline amid a 2-6 start might have yielded the optimal return, but doing so was almost assuredly a non-starter for an outfit that would have taken a massive competitive hit and been saddled with extensive cap ramifications.
The fallout from defensive coordinator Vic Fangio's split with the organization after the 2023 season also might have been a harbinger for the multi-season descent. In the aftermath of Fangio's exit, several Dolphins players – including Holland – took shots at one of the NFL's most highly respected defensive minds. Fangio went on to orchestrate a Philadelphia Eagles defense that engineered an immediate turnaround, capped by the unit clamping down on Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in Super Bowl 59. The Dolphins' internal strife only deepened, with multiple reports detailing the organization's widespread effort to push enhanced accountability this offseason.
Yet after a 33-8 loss to the Indianapolis Colts in Week 1, a players-only meeting was called on the team's off day.
The Colts are a meaningful reference point for how the Dolphins have done little to help themselves. Coach Shane Steichen and Chris Ballard faced a similar outlook as McDaniel and Grier did entering the campaign, with late owner Jim Irsay giving a reprieve yet stating improvements were needed after an 8-9 mark.
Steichen and Ballard took that to heart. In signing Daniel Jones and then installing him as the team's starting quarterback, the duo sought to set things right after the disastrous start to No. 4 overall pick Anthony Richardson's career. They managed to do so by reconfiguring the offense once dominated by Richardson's downfield shots into a precise, on-schedule attack replete with schemed solutions for the signal-caller. The shift has unlocked levels of production that once seemed unattainable with Jones at the helm, as Indianapolis averages a league-best 6.5 yards per play.
But the reconsideration of the Colts' previous tendencies didn't stop there. Indianapolis brought aboard defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo to replace Gus Bradley's largely static scheme, and the early dividends have been extremely favorable. Cornerback Charvarius Ward and safety Cam Bynum also arrived as high-priced free agents, with Ballard having the flexibility to address a problem area thanks to his discerning approach to investing. Now, the team stands at 3-1 and in a tie atop the AFC South despite not taking a sledgehammer to the coaching staff or roster.
Maybe comparable avenues for improvement were largely closed to a Dolphins franchise that only had so much room to maneuver. But some degree of creativity was clearly required for a group boxed into seeing out a vision yielding diminishing results.
With no wiggle room and only the faintest of hopes of seeing the "next man up" philosophy push the organization to even the periphery of the playoff race, Miami might be a non-entity at the trade deadline - and possibly the rest of the season. The best course of action might actually be to sell off any key pieces, including Phillips, who could fetch a nice return in the final year of his deal. But going that route would entail the team's leadership taking a short-term hit for returns to be realized down the road, and no one has prioritized the team's timeline in that fashion.
Amid a groundswell of criticism regarding the direction of the Dolphins this offseason, McDaniel put forth a mantra for 2025: "They talk, we do." If only he and Grier had embraced that mindset when it came to reimagining the franchise's approach before it was already too late.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tyreek Hill injury leaves Dolphins to confront mess they built
Category: Football
