The 2025 Miami Dolphins' Season Appears To Be Over Before It Even Began

That was the Dolphins' defense. The Dolphins' offense was similarly beleaguered, as quarterback Tua Tagovailoa completed 14 of 23 passes for 114 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 51.7. And it's not like Tagovailoa was taking chances downfield. It continued one of the NFL's great dichotomies — how can the Dolphins have a quarterback this incapable of throwing deep consistently, when they also have the best deep receiver of his generation in Tyreek Hill, not to mention 2021 first-round pick Jaylen Waddle, and free-agent acquisition Nick Westbrook-Ikhine? Three great deep receivers and no great deep passing quarterback is a recipe for frustration.

Per Next Gen Stats, Tagovailoa failed to complete any of the three passes he attempted under pressure, and both of his interceptions came from clean pockets.

After the game, Tagovailoa had some rather telling comments about everybody in the building.

“For sure. I’m definitely excited to see that," Tagovailoa said, when asked about his teammates responding to this kind of adversity. We don't want to overreact, but we don't want to underreact with what the performance was like. We got to go look at the film. But I'm definitely curious to see., 'Okay, I came in on Tuesday, I’ve seen these guys on Tuesday, last week. I want to see if these same guys are watching film on Tuesday this week. I want to see how everyone goes about their process.'

"I mean, same for me. But then outside of their process, how they go out there and execute what they need to do to be able to turn this thing around for Week 2.”

And that's why the Dolphins are in bigger trouble than one bad game would seem to indicate. Because the entire offseason was about everybody being pissed off about everybody else, and nobody seeming to want to take accountability for the issues at hand.

Hill has been alternating between veiled trade requests and total support of Tagovailoa and the team since the end of last season. Multiple players have said off and on the record that the 2024 team did not show the effort and focus required for success. That put the onus directly on head coach Mike McDaniel, who has lost most if not all of the juice he had as an offensive genius and original thinker back when the team hired the former San Francisco 49ers run game coordinator and offensive coordinator before the 2022 season.

The Dolphins did trade cornerback Jalen Ramsey to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the offseason after Ramsey made that request, and while Miami's defensive backs were wandering around lost in space on Sunday...

...Ramsey was making a game-clinching play against the New York Jets for his new team.

It's all well and good for McDaniel to try and hold things down with his words, but if there's no weight behind them, and nobody's paying attention, what's the point?

"I think there was a lot of preparation for Week 1, and I don't think it looked it," McDaniel said of this debacle. What does that mean? That means that guys let Week 1 and the bells and whistles of the season starting to get the best of them. My job is to prevent that. I did my best – not good enough. So, you have two games in 11 days, and that's what you do with it. The National Football League teaches tough lessons. I think we're a much better team than we displayed today, but that doesn't matter either. You have to play good football. So, when you play bad football, you have 20 minutes less of time of possession. You don't take the ball away. You don’t put them in the offensive, negative situations. You don't take care of the ball.

"It's a young team having to learn some very hard lessons and that's what the league is about. It's all about the ebbs and flows. You can't overcook a success and you can't overcook a failure. You have to continue to learn from things and look at the tape, and it will be a very, very critical day tomorrow to be accountable so that we can with absolute certainty learn from it. Otherwise, you just sit in this, and I don't think that's an option. So, we’ve got two games in 11 days, no time to sulk. But yes, it was not the way I think our team wanted things to go for sure, and they got some strong humility today.”

Unless they didn't, and this crazy train rolls into another ditch in Week 2 against the New England Patriots. If that's the case, Dolphins fans might want to start boning up on prospects worth top-three draft picks, what kind of trade value could be wrangled for a cadre of receivers who would be better represented by just about any NFL quarterback, and who the interim head coach might be.

Because this was not a one-week blip. The 2025 Dolphins were heading right into this freight train all offseason, and the time is past for any hope that it was a light at the end of the tunnel.