Insider Explains Why Dolphins Hit With Hafley

The Miami Dolphins’ decision to hire Jeff Hafley as their new head coach maybe wasn’t a splashy move because the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator wasn’t a household name.

Furthermore, Hafley is the only one of the four head coaches hired in this cycle as of Thursday morning to be a first-time head coach, with the New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons and San Francisco 49ers going with head coach veterans John Harbaugh, Kevin Stefanski and Robert Saleh, respectively.

But this doesn’t mean, at all, that the Dolphins didn’t fare as well as those other teams.

While there is an unknown element with Hafley because he’s never been a head coach at the NFL level, this is somebody whose former players have raved about and who was a good enough candidate that he had two other in-person interviews scheduled before the Dolphins made those moot by hiring him.

And those who covered Hafley during his time in Green Bay will vouch for the Dolphins’ decision.

In an episode of the All Dolphins Podcast this week (you can check out the full interview here), Green Bay Packers On SI Publisher Bill Huber discussed what he observed from Hafley the past two seasons and why he liked this move from a Miami standpoint.

THE VIEW ABOUT HAFLEY FROM GREEN BAY

These were some of the comments from Huber that stood out:

On whether Dolphins fans should be excited about this hire:

Huber: Yeah, absolutely. Halfley is a really good coach. And I realized people were going to say, well, he had Micah Parsons, and people were gonna say, yeah, they blew up against the Bears. And I get all those things, but he didn't have Micah Parsons in 2024 and Green Bay was a borderline top five defense. So they were really good without Micah Parsons in 2024. They were really good with Parsons in 2025, then obviously things went in the crapper after the torn ACL but I would say, if you want to point to those late-game meltdowns, (edge rusher) Rashan Gary fell off the face the earth. So without Parsons and without Gary, the Packers had zero pass rush, zero. Also Devonte Wyatt, their best interior rusher, had a season-ending injury as well. So all their pass rush was gone. And if anybody thinks Keisean Nixon and Carrington Valentine are starting-level cornerbacks, you're nuts. So you have no pass rush, you have inconsistent cornerbacks, and your best defensive tackle against the run is Wyatt, and he's gone. So you go without a run-stopping defensive tackle, any pass rush, any corners, it's going to end badly. Those games against the Bears, they allowed three points through three quarters in one game and six points through three quarters in the other, so they played a lot of good football before everything went awry there. So I would say, look at the totality of his work, especially in ‘24 you see, it is a dang good defensive mind.”

On Hafley’s leadership style:

Huber: “Yeah, I would say he's not rah-rah, but he's super smart. He's a great communicator. And, look, I understand that press conferences are not the same as dealing with players behind the scenes, but I think it does provide at least some insight. He was unbelievable. Talking to us, unbelievable. You know how some coaches might bristle at fastballs. He never did. He never dodged any of it. He was informative. He described things, and you're sitting there listening him talking to us once a week, and you're thinking — this is how he talks to us who he doesn't need any of us — if this is how he's with us, how is he behind the scenes of the guys? The guys love him. As much as the players had (Matt) LaFleur’s back at the end of the season, they really had Hafley’s back. So I think the player is going to love him. He's super smart, and he's just gonna do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

On his defense:

Huber: “There are games he didn't blitz at all. There's games he blitzed a bunch. He just found a way to make things work. He's, like Micah Parsons called him a player’s coach a bunch of times. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I think we all heard it enough to get kind of a feel of what it means. The players swear by him. If the players like him, I think that's all that matters.”

On when did the idea of Hafley becoming an NFL head coach really start to materialize:

Huber: Yeah, I thought, I thought it was last year, honestly. He interviewed, I think, for the Jets. You could just see it. Just the way he communicates, and the way the defense went from the previous few years to it being again, being a top 5-ish unit, you could just see right away that this guy had everything you could have. I mean, he was a head coach in Boston College too. So he's used to being that face of the franchise, the main speaker kind of guy, so you could see it right away. I'm gonna say I was half surprised he didn't get a job last year, but it wouldn't have surprised me if he'd gotten a job last year and then when things just kept coming along this year, it's like this guy's gone and even LaFleur at the end of the season said, you know, we're prepared that he's gonna go. So it was pretty much a foregone conclusion pretty early in the season that this would be it.”