Why The 2025 Miami Dolphins Are a Sleeper Team

Why The 2025 Miami Dolphins Are A Sleeper Team

So, I watched a quick YouTube video from Cayden’s Corner, who gave his expectations for the Miami Dolphins for the 2025 season, and it got me thinking, based on the stuff he was saying, that the Dolphins could be a sleeper team in the AFC that no one is talking about.

A team that no one is expecting to be good this year, and then they absolutely shock the football world by going on some run, but there are some factors to this, and I do have my three reasons as to why they are a sleeper team. I figured I would do this before the season starts to get you all excited about this season, to at least give you all some hope going into this year.

With that in mind, let us take a Deep End Dive into why I think the Miami Dolphins are a sleeper team.

No One Is Talking About Them

A key point in being a sleeper team is that no one is talking about you. This is something that occurred with the Bengals in 2021, to which they went on some Cinderella run to the Super Bowl that season after they beat the defending AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs. They would ultimately fall to the Rams in Super Bowl fifty-six.

Then, in 2024, the same thing happened to the Washington Commanders, who went on to the NFC Championship game after stunning the number one-seeded Detroit Lions. A game that stunned me as well, not expecting the Lions to go out like they did last season.

I am not saying yet that the Dolphins are going to go on a deep run in January because they need to establish themselves as a player in the AFC. This will especially be the case playing the Bills obviously twice, then they play the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday Night Football, where they have an opportunity and a huge one in fact to prove themselves against the ones I like to refer to as the elite teams of the National Football League.

As many of you know, I consider the Bills, Ravens, Chiefs, Lions, and Eagles as the elite teams. The reason the Commanders are not an elite team, in my opinion, is that I need to see it more than once where they go on a deep run. People doubted the Miami Dolphins in 2008, and they won the division.

In 2016, they made the playoffs after a 1- 4 start. In 2023, people predicted that we would be a wild card team, and then the Dolphins started on a heater, winning nine of their first twelve games. However, the injury bug caught up to them later that season.

Will 2025 be the year that they finally get over the hump and win their first playoff game in twenty-five years? Only time will tell, but that is how I feel that no one is talking about the Miami Dolphins going into the 2025 season.

Same Offense That Led The League

The Miami Dolphins offense, not long ago in fact, in 2023, led the National Football League in total yards and had the second total amount of points scored in the league, second only to the Dallas Cowboys, who they beat on Christmas Eve that season on a Jason Sanders twenty-nine-yard field goal as time expired to clinch a playoff berth for the Dolphins.

Therefore, the offense is definitely capable of producing at a high level when it is firing on all cylinders. The only thing we need from this team, and the same applies for the defensive side of the ball, is health. Tua is priority one, not just because it is his jersey number, but because he is the franchise quarterback for this team and is the most important player on this team.

When Tua is healthy, the Dolphins have a sixty-two and a half percent chance of winning when he is the quarterback. Tua also has an eighty percent win percentage at Hard Rock Stadiu,m which leads the league amongst active quarterbacks. Lastly, about Tua, in a recent span of thirty-five starts, he has the third-highest win percentage amongst all starting quarterbacks.

Out of all this, Tua flies under the radar because of the injury risks that the media likes to bash him for.

In the 2023 season, Tua played a full season, and he took them to the playoffs. Now, if he had a fully healthy team, maybe they would have hung with Kansas City, but we will never know that story.

I am no Tua fanboy; I just want him to do well for this Dolphins team and take them to great places. It is not just Tua, though everyone likes to say it is him, but every single starting quarterback in this league is one hit away from their career being changed.

Picture this: what would Kansas City look like without Patrick Mahomes, same with the Ravens without Lamar Jackson, and the Bills without Josh Allen? One significant injury to any of those three quarterbacks I just mentioned could derail their season in an instant. My point is, it could happen to anyone.

Anyway, that is how the Dolphins basically have the same offense that led the league in yards and was second in points scored two years ago, plus my take on the whole Tua injury-prone situation.