How Dolphins Will Prove Their Offense Hasn't Been Solved

The Miami Dolphins’ offense needs to adapt in 2025. 

Although it was still efficient in 2024, the unit lost two of its pillars from previous seasons under Mike McDaniel — an explosive element in the passing game and a consistent running game. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one is how defenses have changed around the NFL in the last few years. 

That’s something senior passing game coordinator Bobby Slowik is focused on this season. 

“I've watched all the film of 2022, 2023, and then last year 2024, and kind of seeing what it was like then and what's changed, what's evolved, what's the same,” Slowik told reporters Thursday. 

“There are a lot of things with defenses that even over the course of three years have changed. I think last year is a great example of just there's, it felt like at the very least there was a spike in two shell across the entire NFL that I think everyone's kind of going through the process of deciphering.” 

Slowik is certainly right about the spike in two-high defenses across the league, and no team was affected by that more than the Dolphins. 

The Dolphins had the most dropbacks in the league in which opposing defenses played with two high safeties (202). If you include Cover-4 — another defense designed to stop big plays — Miami is still in first. 

Basically, defenses were dictating terms to the Dolphins last season. Slowik knows that will need to change this year, and the way to do that is to threaten defenses differently than the Dolphins have in the past. 

“We feel confident that regardless of what they do, we feel like we have different ways of just dispersing the field in a lot of different areas, horizontally, vertically,” Slowik said. “We feel like we have times where we can get five out.”

“We feel like there's times where we might only get two out, and we're really protected, so just variety and a lot of different ways of putting defenses on their heels is something that definitely, like 2023 was unbelievable watching that film, how much it was clicking and everything was rolling. And I think that had a lot to do with just all we can really control is our stuff.” 

Of course, 2023 featured a much better running game than last season. Miami finished 27th in rushing success rate in 2024, down from its fourth-place finish in 2023. 

That, in turn, affected the team’s vertical passing game, resulting in the Dolphins generating just 15 passing plays that gained over 25 yards. 

While it’s easy to say the solution to all of Miami’s problems would be to simply “run the ball better,” things in the NFL tend to be more complicated than that. 

“Anytime both phases of the game are clicking, that's when offense is really fun,” Slowik said. “But the reality in the NFL is that that doesn't happen an awful lot through the course of a game. There are ebbs and flows, and there are ups and downs, and being able to have answers to all those different situations is really, game plan-wise, what we spend a lot of time on.”

Game Plans Are Only Half the Battle 

One of the more challenging parts for the Dolphins is dealing with the unique variations of two-high defenses that they see. 

Because Miami’s offense is so different — pre-snap motions, heavy outside zone, speed, etc. — than most of the teams in the NFL, defenses have to throw some equally different looks at them to slow them down. Predicting what those looks are becomes almost impossible. 

It’s why Slowik and the rest of the offensive staff are focused on making sure Miami’s fundamentals and technique are on point after the ball is snapped.

“A lot of what we try to do is predict or see or anticipate, what's coming as far as what defense is going to do to us? Absolutely," Slowik said. "But there's so many variables to that, that so much of what we've done now has just become, OK, this is our fundamental, this is our technique, it doesn't matter what they do. This is how we own this.

“We have to be ready to react post-snap. Like a significant amount of what we talk about across every position is how we react post-snap because of the amount of unpredictability that we get. And, I mean, that would be here more than anywhere.” 

Since we haven’t seen this version of the Dolphins’ offense play meaningful football yet, it’s impossible to know what those specific post-snap adjustments will be, but through Slowik’s comments, it’s clear that the coaching staff knows things must be better in 2025.