Expectations Still Low for Dolphins Despite Major Upgrades
That the Miami Dolphins managed to win five games in 2019 while in obvious rebuilding mode ranked as one of the biggest surprises of the NFL season.
Now that they've gone out and replenished the roster through the biggest free agency haul in the NFL and a draft bounty that made them only the eighth team with five picks in the first two rounds, the Dolphins logically should be ready to make a big jump in 2020.
So why are expectations again so low for Miami?
The Vegas over/under on Miami's win total is six, which is only one more win than their total of 2019. Pro Football Focus ranked them as the fifth most likely team to end up with the worst record in the league and therefore the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 draft.
Based on opening odds, the Dolphins are favored in only three of their 16 games, with the other game a pick 'em. That would put them at 3-12-1.
Clearly, there's a lack of respect here.
Even the NFL's schedule-makers seemed to share the belief because they gave the Dolphins only one prime-time game, and that a Thursday road game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Not even the arrival of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa as the fifth overall pick was enough to convince the NFL schedule-makers the Dolphins deserved more national attention.
Longtime NFL writer Peter King expressed some surprise at this development in a recent Football Morning In America column.
"I think Miami getting one prime-time game—and on NFL Network only in Week 3 against the Jaguars, the kind of game stuck in an early-season window to get two teams’ prime-time appearances out of the way—surprised me. Miami had a better record than New England after Halloween last year and has a quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, who will be playing at some point this season. I thought Miami would be a good October game, maybe hosting the Seahawks, or at Denver."
So why such lack of respect?
"At first glance this may seem low for a team that won five games last year, but when we were compiling the odds two things stood out to us," said Pat Morrow, the head oddsmaker at Bovada. "As it stands now the projected starting quarterback is Ryan Fitzpatrick, the same Ryan Fitzpatrick who led them last season. If we look at number 2 on the depth chart we see first-round draft pick Tua Tagovailoa. While the prospect that Tua could start some games this year, we believe that there will be some growing pains with a rookie QB.
"Combined, we believe that seven wins is just as likely as matching their five-win total from last season. So we set the line in the middle at 6. The second factor we took into consideration is the Miami Dolphins are projected to have the third-toughest schedule in terms of strength of schedule. Schedules like that are usually reserved for team made the playoffs."
Yes, the Dolphins have the third-toughest schedule in the NFL, but that's based on the combined 2019 winning percentage of their opponents and we all know things change from year to year.
For example, New England went 12-4 in 2019, but the Patriots are expected to take a step back after losing Tom Brady to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Speaking of those Patriots, they went 4-4 in the second half of last season. Know who else was 4-4 in that stretch? The Miami Dolphins.
And, of course, we don't have to remind anyone that the Dolphins ended their season with a stunning 27-24 victory at Gillette Stadium that robbed the Patriots of a first-round bye and set the stage for their playoff exit the following week against the Tennessee Titans.
The crazy part about all of this? The Dolphins roster for that season finale last December bears no resemblance to the one that will take the field in 2020.
The reason? It was a roster scrapped together while the Dolphins focused on amassing assets — in the form of cap space or draft capital — to build a long-term winner.
That Dolphins 53-man roster for their season finale included 23 players who had entered the league as undrafted free agents and seven who originally were seventh-round draft picks. Only seven of them were first- or second-round picks.
Since then, the Dolphins added three former first-round picks and two former second-round picks in free agency, and then did it again in the draft with the selection of Tagovailoa, tackle Austin Jackson and cornerback Noah Igbinoghene in Round 1 and tackle Robert Hunt and defensive lineman Raekwon Davis in Round 2.
The five veterans who fit into that category were former No. 1 picks Ereck Flowers, Shaq Lawson and Byron Jones and former No. 2s Kyle Van Noy and Emmanuel Ogbah.
If the Dolphins could go 5-4 in their final nine games of 2019 with their depleted roster, why shouldn't they be expected to be much better and win more games in Brian Flores' second year as head coach?
Flores and General Manager Chris Grier are both low-key guys who don't have much use for talk of expectations, and it certainly was that way right after the draft.
"For us – and Brian has always talked about it – it’s one day at a time," Grier said. "It’s building a process of building this team to get better every day. Expectations, people will have that and good or bad, and for us it’s just staying the course and doing a lot of the things that the coaching staff really believes and implements with the team.”
The Dolphins became last season the fifth team to win at least five games after starting a season 0-7, and the 1998 Washington Redskins were the only one that produced a winning record the following year.
Those Redskins went 6-10 before improving to 10-6 and finished first in the NFC East and winning a playoff game.
The other three teams to win at least five games after starting 0-7 included the 1978 St. Louis Cardinals, who went 5-11 the next year, and the 2017 49ers who went 4-12 the next year, although it should be noted they lost quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo for the season in the third game.
And then there were the 2011 Dolphins, who went 6-10 after starting 0-7.
The next year, the Dolphins started first-round pick Ryan Tannehill at quarterback and they went 7-9.
It could be argue that none of the 2020 Dolphins' predecessors underwent as drastic a roster transformation.
And even though it's small in the grand scheme of things, there is some sense, a little movement you could say, that maybe the Dolphins deserve a bit more respect because Morrow points out that a "staggering 80 percent" of the early action on the Dolphins has been on over six wins.
"There is definitely a feeling of 'What are we missing?' when it comes to the Dolphins this season," Morrow said. "Anybody who wants to get in and bet it at 6, I would recommend they do it soon."
