What We Talkin’ ’Bout, Willis?

What We Talkin’ ’Bout, Willis?

It was clear on Sunday, in the November heat down there, that something wasn’t right with Miami’s quarterback. He’d been on and off the injury report for weeks with what the team was calling a foot injury, which had limited his mobility and forced him to eschew runs that he might ordinarily have taken.

But this was different. He could barely move, let alone sprint, made worse by the offensive line looking, well, offensive. Basic pocket movement was limited at best. Trying to throw the ball downfield with any power made him wince in pain. At one point, he tried to roll out and throw on the move.

He looked like a senior citizen trying to find his walker.

The NFL insiders called it a groin injury. In and of themselves, groin injuries can lead to persistent micro-tears and long-term discomfort in the inner thigh and pelvic region. They can become adductor issues. Worst-case scenario, especially for a quarterback trying to prove himself, they can turn into sports hernias: a tearing of the deep layers of the lower abdominal wall or the tendons attaching the abs to the pelvis.

When The Ringer’s Tom Pelissero noted that the groin issue had evolved into a “core muscle” injury, it suggested that a hernia might well be the root cause.

Placing him on injured reserve was the only option. The only questions now are: Is that the end of Malik Willis’s season in Miami?

And is that the end of Malik Willis in Miami?

The short answer is that nobody really knows.

The longer one is much more complicated.

Whatever happens, it’s a precarious situation for the former Liberty passer. He plays a tough position and does so with a physical style. His pocket movement alone leads to more contact than most quarterbacks take, and his running ability means that he’s often taking multiple hits speed from linebackers and defensive backs. It’s why he slides so much in open space: limiting the punishment means extending his playing time. But a failure to stay healthy has always been the most likely way in which Willis would find himself passed over by the Dolphins, despite a significant financial commitment.

Make no mistake: the Dolphins want Malik Willis to succeed, and they want him to be their quarterback of the future. There was a reason they made that significant financial commitment to him. There was a reason they gave him a three-year deal. And despite the up-and-down start to the first part of his career in South Florida, the team has been steadfast in their backing of him, both publicly and privately. Do they want to see more? Of course. Have they seen improvements? Unquestionably. Are they viewing his 2026 season through a filtered lens because of his almost historically bad supporting cast? Without doubt.

And that, whether you like it or not, is extremely important to the Dolphins.

As is this: Miami’s front office does not want to spend a first-round pick in April’s draft on a quarterback. They have long believed Willis can be a top-ten passer in this league, and their off-season goal has been to surround him with the talent to make that happen. Spending high draft capital on a signal caller, especially a 21-year-old such as Drew Mestemaker, Dante Moore, LaNorris Sellers, or CJ Carr, only sets this rebuild backward in the short term. A rebuild that has been carefully narrated around things that fans don’t countenance, such as expiring contracts. You only have to assess the verbiage around the Jaylen Waddle trade to understand how every part of this puzzle has an action and reaction, and how the financial timelines of certain players might not match up with the team’s plans to win a Super Bowl.

SI’s Albert Breer highlighted that very fact in the aftermath of the Jaylen Waddle trade, regarding the Dolphins’ reasoning for sending the wide receiver to Denver:

“For Miami, the operative question on giving up Waddle, a player they very much valued and one beloved in the organization, related back to timelines. If, say, Sullivan and Hafley had the program rolling going into 2028, it would be with Waddle at 30 years old and likely in search of a new contract. Conversely, the first- and third-round picks they bring onto their roster would be going into Year 3, still a year away from even being able to negotiate a new deal. That’s a better timeline match than Waddle would be.”

I have long been told — and have reported it here — that the Dolphins believe they will be competitive next season while winning games, and see 2028 as the year when they really make a push for the playoffs and beyond. The question for Jon-Eric Sullivan is: does that timeline now match the risk of drafting a young quarterback and expecting him to lead a franchise forward?

Each of the aforementioned collegiate passers has upside. But they all have flaws: Mestemaker is young as a QB, inexperienced, and can be profligate with the football. It hasn’t been an issue in the Big 12, but it could be in the NFL; Moore is very talented but didn’t have a great season before his concussion ended his college career; Sellers is up and down like a fairground ride, albeit with incredible physical tools; and whilst Carr has the highest floor, he perhaps has the lowest ceiling. Throw in Arch Manning (issues seeing the field), Darian Mensah (lack of arm strength) and Brendan Sorsby (gambling issues and the fact that he won’t have played a competitive game in 18 months), and you can see why the whole thing is precipitous.

And, of course, we have no idea who’s coming out for the draft and who isn’t. Last year, we assumed Dante Moore was declaring and would be the #2 pick. But instead, he stayed at Oregon. This year, reports say Manning is going back to school, and both Carr and Mestemaker are redshirt sophomores. Missouri’s Austin Simmons, who perhaps is the most Jon-Eric Sullivan quarterback of the entire group, just struck a new NIL deal and is likely going back to Columbia next season, despite looking like a top-ten pick.

An injury to Willis that knocks him out of the evaluation process is the worst possible scenario for Miami, throwing a position they believed was solved — at least for two years — into something of a state of flux. Can they afford to go into next season with just Willis and today’s de facto starter, Kyle McCord? Could Sullivan play the ultimate waiting game and take his original non-QB target at the top of Round One, then pull an Ozzie Newsome and dive back into the first stanza to select someone like Moore, should he still be around at the back end of the first stanza?

Of course, Malik may return in Week 14, albeit with a murderer’s row of a schedule to finish out, including games against Chicago, New England, Buffalo, and his former team, Green Bay, and continue to play his way into a situation that makes you feel comfortable heading into 2027 and beyond.

But whichever way you slice it, the injury certainly clouds the picture moving forward, no matter what your opinion of him.

Miami will have planned for this. Scenarios will have already been worked out during front-office skull sessions. However, this was always a worst-case scenario.

For now, it’s Kyle McCord’s team.

Whether it’s still Malik Willis’s team remains to be seen.