Dolphins Defensive Thoughts Heading Into the 2021 Season

The Week 1 game at New England will start providing clues as to whether the Miami defense can match what it did in 2020 or even improve

While there's a certain degree of uncertainty about the Miami Dolphins offense — OK, there's a lot of uncertainty — things appear a lot more stable on defense.

Therefore, maybe there should be more optimism on that side of the ball.

And a large part of that has to do with what happened in 2020 when the Dolphins led the NFL in takeaways with 29, finished first in third-down defense and ended up fifth in fewest points allowed.

The tricky part, of course, will be trying to duplicate the good things that happened last season while shoring up the areas that were lacking — namely in terms of total yards and big plays allowed, which proved costly in losses against Buffalo, Seattle and Kansas City.

At least in terms of personnel, there's no reason whatsoever the Dolphins shouldn't be as good or even better than in 2020. Let's just look at the key players the Dolphins gained and lost since last season, and you'll see it's pretty much an upgrade at every turn.

Newcomers include Jaelan Phillips, Adam Butler, Brennan Scarlett, Jevon Holland and Jason McCourty and they've replaced Kyle Van Noy, Shaq Lawson, Davon Godchaux and Bobby McCain.

-- Of course, it's going to be awfully hard to get duplication in some areas, starting with Xavien Howard and his picks. The truth is he could have another really good season but not come close to getting 10 picks again. That's the challenge of repeating takeaway success.

-- On the flip side, we would expect Byron Jones to build on his breakthrough 2020 season when it comes to picks and top his total of two.

-- If you're looking for someone to lead the way in terms of picks (behind Howard, of course), the place to look would be rookie safety Jevon Holland. Now, that doesn't mean Holland will be an immediate starter for the Dolphins because we expect the call to go to McCourty based on his experience, combined with the fact that Holland missed some recent practice time with an injury. But the kid clearly has great instincts.

-- We don't make very much of the other high draft pick, Jaelan Phillips, being listed on the third team on defense because we'd expect a whole lot of substituting on defense, but we would caution against expecting too much too soon from Phillips in terms of the pass rush. At the outset, the Dolphins are going to want Phillips to handle his assignments, whether it be edge setting or even dropping back into coverage. So don't panic if Phillips doesn't get, like, six sacks in the first half of the season.

-- Finally, we'll close with the one player we'd expect to make the biggest jump in 2021, and that's Andrew Van Ginkel. And we pick him strictly because he figures to get more opportunities this season and not because he didn't deliver last year. He was an impact player in limited playing time, so who knows what he could produce in an expanded role.